Migration News
Okinawa-based Marines help rebuild Iraq school
Stars and Stripes
May 28, 2008
Marines with Marine Wing Support Squadron 172 help off-load the gear in April necessary to build or modify helicopter-landing zones in the Al Anbar Province. (Michael Stevens / USMC)
Marines with Marine Wing Support Squadron 172 help off-load the gear in April necessary to build or modify helicopter-landing zones in the Al Anbar Province. (Michael Stevens / USMC)
Combat engineers with Marine Wing Support Squadron 172, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing (Forward), work with Iraqi Army engineers to complete construction of an Iraqi infantry battalion's new headquarters in Baghdadi, Iraq. (Michael Stevens / USMC)
This Baghdadi school had been the headquarters for 3rd Battalion, 27th Brigade, 7th Iraqi Infantry Division, for two years; but it will soon resume its intened use as a school thanks to a new headquarters site that Marine Wing Support Squadron 172 helped construct. (Michael Stevens / USMC)
For more than two years, a schoolhouse in Baghdadi, Iraq, hasn’t been used to teach local children.
Instead, it’s served as headquarters for 3rd Battalion, 27th Brigade, 7th Iraqi Infantry Division, which maintains security in the area.
But soon the children will reclaim their school due to a construction project in which the Okinawa-based Marine Wing Support Squadron 172 took part, according to a Marine Web site.
"This is a great opportunity for the Marines and Iraqi Army to give something back to the town," 2nd Lt. Crystal Serrano, MWSS-172’s combat engineer platoon commander, was quoted on the Web site.
The squadron was part of a multi-unit task force that fortified a new headquarters site with barrier and concertina wire and built guard houses and barracks.
Earlier this month, the squadron also modified or built key helicopter landing zones in the province, according to the Web site.
"Every landing zone we create or modify brings us another step closer to catching the enemy," Staff Sgt. Donald E. Stehley Jr. was quoted as saying on the site.
More than 500 Marines with the squadron left on the seven-month deployment in late March to support Multinational Force West operations in the Anbar Province of Iraq.