DIBIS, Iraq — For Sgt. Mike Jepson and Spc. Trevor Fallows, it was kind of a relief to leave the trucking to somebody else, at least for the day.

Sgt. 1st Class Kevin Maybon and his small band of mechanics also didn’t mind one bit sitting back and watching others grip a wrench for a change. Someone needed to retrieve the portable housing units from the forward operating base in Dibis, which is closing. And in north-central Iraq, that’s a made-to-order task for the 145th Support Battalion based in Kirkuk.

Often the Idaho National Guard unit will take logistical challenges, such as this one, and do it all. This time, they needed to procure a few flatbed trucks, drivers included, and coordinate with a detachment of engineers on base.

“We’re just the hired guns on this trip,” Maybon said.

That suited Maybon and the others involved just fine. One of the ironies of this deployment, Jepson said, is that their basic soldiering skills are being used as much as their individual advanced training, and sometimes more.

As a truck driver, “all we are doing is going out on convoys, and there’s no glory in it,” Jepson said. “We’re outside the wire every bit as much as the infantry. The nature of support is that it sounds like the gentle sister.”

On this mission, due to the cargo and the need for a small fleet of flatbed trucks, the detail got the chance to concentrate entirely on soldierly things. Convoy security is something no unit in Iraq takes lightly anymore, given the continued use of improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers.

Jepson and Fallows have encountered IEDs, small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. During one recent convoy, Fallows said, a suicide bomber tried to ram his way into heaven, or hell, depending on one’s view.

“And we’re there for all of it,” Fallows said.

Once at Dibis, a small base that, at its peak, held several dozen soldiers, the team met up with the Army engineers, who went to work moving five more of the housing units onto the flatbeds. Whenever they could, the support team assisted, though the engineers had things under control.

Above it all was Sgt. James Taylor, of Battery B, 1st Battalion, 148th Field Artillery, the unit that helped guard the nearby oil pipeline and train local security forces.

Standing guard in an observation tower overlooking the Little Zaab River, Taylor was getting one of his last views of the place. The Army expects to formally turn the base back over to the local Iraqi army battalion next week.

“We couldn’t have done our job without those guys,” Taylor said of the support battalion.

Normally, support battalions bring items — from “beans to bullets,” as the cliché goes — to forward operating bases. But this crew arrived empty-handed to take something, which they did once Sgt. 1st Class Robert Buczynski and his detail of Army Reservists finished lifting and loading the last of the prefabricated housing units.

“We’re moving in the right direction,” Staff Sgt. Robert Thorn, of the 415th Base Support Battalion, said after returning to Kirkuk. “We’re closing down a FOB [forward operating base] and turning it over to the Iraqi army.”

By that time, folks like Jepson will be back at their normal job, until something else pops up.

“That,” said Jepson, “is the nature of support.”