Last Hawaii Army National Guard unit returns from Afghanistan
For the last three years Hawaii Army National Guard Sgt. Gilbert Pascua says he looked at Afghanistan as "being my residency."
Pascua, a 16-year veteran of the Hawaii Army National Guard, has served two combat tours in Afghanistan.
Yesterday morning he was among the 67 citizen soldiers who returned home bringing to a close the largest deployment of Hawaii National Guard soldiers since the Vietnam War. More than 4,000 were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003.
Pascua is a commercial truck driver in civilian life. For the past year he was part of the 57-member detachment from the National Guard's 298th Engineers.
Maj. Gen. Bob Lee, state adjutant general, told a gathering of several hundred relieved family members and friends that the 298th Engineers worked on construction projects and repaired buildings. Although Hawaii Army National Guard engineers were based in Kandahar, Afghanistan they regularly sent construction teams to various outlying forward operating bases to fortify their facilities.
He said their other major task was to build a road through mountainous Afghan terrain connecting Kandahar to Tarin-khot, working deep in areas held by insurgents.
In 2003, Pascua was part of the first contingent of Hawaii Army National Guard soldiers to be deployed overseas since the Vietnam War. He was working as a supply clerk for Bravo Company, 193rd Aviation when part of the unit was sent to Afghanistan.
This time he returned to Afghanistan as a heavy equipment operator with the 298th Engineers and described his latest deployment as "more like a a real mission. The first time I stayed on base almost all the time. This time we had to go out into Taliban country where there was real danger."
Also returning from Afghanistan yesterday were 10 members of the 117th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment.
This was the second active-duty tour for many members of the 117th, who were mobilized for a year's tour of duty in Bosnia in 1996. This time the Hawaii Army Guard journalists were assigned to Kandahar and were responsible for putting out the base newspaper and the coalition's newsletter.
Sgt. 1st. Class Stephen Lum, who was part of the 117th's Bosnia deployment, said Kandahar Air Base where he was stationed "was hammered a couple times by rocket attacks."
Lum said that unlike the deployment to Bosnia, whenever the his unit went into the field in Afghanistan to record and photograph the activities of the soldiers there were "Apache helicopter gunships providing cover from above and their convoys were heavily armed."
Sgt. 1st Class Curtis Matsushige, another member of the 117th, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Salerno near the Pakistani border where soldiers referred to Fridays as "steak and rocket days" because of the numerous attacks by insurgents.
"Two days before Christmas a rocket hit our laundry area," said Matsushige, who is a Campbell High School science teacher. "Luckily, only 30 percent of the rocket detonated ... but we were hit generally several times a month."
Other major deployments by the Hawaii Army National Guard include:
» The 2004 deployment 200 aviators and mechanics from Charlie Company, 193rd Aviation who were sent to Iraq.
» In August 2004 more than 3,500 members of the 29th Brigade Combat Team were mobilized and, after five months of training at Schofield Barracks, Fort Bliss in Texas and Fort Polk in Louisiana, were deployed to Iraq, arriving there in March 2005 for nine months of desert duty.
Sixteen soldiers with the 29th Brigade, nicknamed the Lava Brigade, were killed. Of those 16 soldiers, Sgt. Deyson "Dice" Cariaga, 20, was the only one from Hawaii to die in Iraq. He was killed by a roadside bomb July 8.
All members of the Hawaii Army National Guard who were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan are back home.
A few members of the Hawaii Air National Guard remain deployed overseas.