Above: Lance Cpl. Wayne Jarvis helps unload gear from the belly of the plane that brought his unit to Okinawa from Camp Pendleton, Calif. Below: More than 300 Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment load buses at the Kadena Air Base flightline Wednesday. (Photos by Cindy Fisher/S&S)
Above: Lance Cpl. Wayne Jarvis helps unload gear from the belly of the plane that brought his unit to Okinawa from Camp Pendleton, Calif. Below: More than 300 Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment load buses at the Kadena Air Base flightline Wednesday. (Photos by Cindy Fisher/S&S)
KADENA AIR BASE, Okinawa — The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit welcomed more than 600 Marines of the Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, to Okinawa on Wednesday evening.
The battalion is replacing 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, also based at Pendleton, as the combat element of the MEU — a change that takes place about every six months, Staff Sgt. Marc Ayalin, an MEU spokesman, said Wednesday.
In all, more than 1,000 5th Marine Regiment troops are expected to arrive by week’s end to form the MEU’s battalion landing team.
While here, the Marines will get a training package that’s a little different from their predecessors’, as they will jump right into ship-based training, Ayalin said.
Usually, incoming infantry troops run through a series of land-based MEU integration exercises designed to familiarize them with how the MEU works, he said.
But the MEU is scheduled to board ship for Thailand and the annual Cobra Gold exercise in February.
Col. Paul L. Damren, the MEU’s commander, said jumping right in to shipboard training would be "challenging" but "very rewarding."
"We’re Marines," he said. "We’re meant to go on ship."
Cpl. Joshua Toliver, 22, with 3rd Battalion, said he too is looking forward to the training the battalion will undergo here.
This is Toliver’s first time on island and with an MEU, so it will be "some good training" and "a chance to see a bit more of Okinawa," he said.
