278th soldiers honored before heading to Iraq
Two-year-old Robert Kimery, with red and white balloons in hand, stood at attention Thursday and saluted thousands of National Guard soldiers who will soon be heading to Iraq.
“I’m proud of all of them for what they’re doing,” Regina Kimery said as she kept watch over her son while searching for her husband during the send-off ceremony at Camp Shelby. “I worry about him and I want him to come home safe.”
Staff Sgt. Earnest Kimery, 42, of Greenville, Tenn., is one of about 4,000 Guardsmen from six states who will be deploying in the next two weeks as part of the Tennessee National Guard’s 278th Regimental Combat Team.
Thousands of people from across the country, many carrying balloons and wearing yellow ribbons, were on hand for the Veterans Day send-off for soldiers from Tennessee, Wisconsin, Texas, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Vermont.
The soldiers — more than 3,200 from Tennessee — have been training at the sprawling 136,0000-acre Mississippi National Guard facility since June, with a brief stint at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin in California’s Mojave Desert.
The some 3,000 seats available for the ceremony quickly filled with family and well-wishers as the soldiers paraded under overcast skies with M1 Abrams tanks and a crane topped by a large American flag in the background. The overflow crowd spilled onto the damp, grassy parade ground at the camp south of Hattiesburg.
The regiment will leave for Kuwait before replacing about 4,800 soldiers assigned to North Carolina’s 30th Infantry Brigade from Clinton, N.C.
The 30th patrols towns and borders while training Iraqi National Guard soldiers and working with the Iraqi police force near the border of Iran in northeast Iraq, according to Sgt. Marcus Spade of the North Carolina National Guard.
Many of the troops in the 278th expressed sadness at leaving their families but said they are prepared to do their duty.
“Everybody I am going with are a great bunch of guys,” said 44-year-old Sgt. William “Bill” Cagle of Athens, Tenn. “If I stay with them, I’ll be all right.”
Sgt. James E. Thompson, 44, of Morristown, Tenn., gunner on an Abrams tank, said he is confident in his training and the quality of his equipment. “I just want everybody to keep us in their prayers so we can get over there and get the job done and get back to our families,” he said.