Cincinnati State hosted returning Marines, families

February 26, 2010

A U.S. Marine reserve unit that left last summer for service in Iraq returned to Cincinnati on Saturday, February 20 to reunite with their families at the Evendale campus of Cincinnati State Technical and Community College.

The Marines are from Communications Company, Headquarters Battalion, 4th Marine Division, which is based in Cincinnati and Indianapolis. They represent some of the last Marines to withdraw from Iraq.

The Marines arrived by plane in Cincinnati and Louisville and came by bus in two separate groups to Cincinnati State’s Workforce Development Center, 10100 Reading Road in Evendale. A brief welcoming reception was held in the auditorium at the Workforce Development Center.

The Communications Company, Headquarters Battalion, 4th Marine Division specializes in providing field communications networks for division headquarters. All or part of the Cincinnati/Indianapolis unit has been mobilized on four separate occasions over the last six years.

In the most recent deployment, members of the Communications Company left Cincinnati June 9, 2009 for Camp Pendleton, California, and went from there to Iraq in September. There they augmented 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines to form a Provisional MP Company at forward locations to help provide security, train and professionalize Iraqi security forces and help supervise the transition of the provincial government of Iraq.