Local Guard unit to return from Afghanistan

Richard and Cora Moore of Rohnert Park are looking forward to a Thanksgiving family reunion, including their son, Sgt. 1st Class Randall Moore.

"It will be great to see him," said Richard Moore, a retired bus driver and Navy veteran.

Randall Moore, 41, is one of about 150 battle-tested California National Guard soldiers scheduled to return next month from a year-long tour in Afghanistan.

Capt. Cory Marks of Ukiah, commander of the Petaluma-based 235th Engineer Company, said in an e-mail that his unit -- including about 40 North Bay men -- expects to leave Afghanistan around Nov. 15 and will arrive stateside at Camp Shelby in Mississippi.

The company, primarily assigned to clearing Afghan roads of deadly hidden explosives, earned 60 Purple Heart awards for wounds and 130 Combat Action Badges for receiving or exchanging enemy fire, Marks said.

Some soldiers were wounded more than once, officials said. Two Bronze Stars for valor also were awarded.

"We took the infantry into battle many times," Marks said. "Most of these times, due to our location in the front of the movement we . . . ended up doing a majority of the fighting."

Just when the soldiers will get home is uncertain, said Capt. Edward Albert of the 579th Engineer Battalion in Santa Rosa, which includes the 235th. The soldiers may come home in two or three groups, he said.

Debbie Skolnik, family assistance center coordinator for the 579th, said she hoped the men would all be home by Thanksgiving.

An official welcome home celebration might not be held until January after the soldiers have spent the holidays with their families, Albert said.

The Moores plan a Thanksgiving reunion, including Randall Moore's three sisters and his girlfriend, a UC Berkeley student.

Richard Moore said his son will retire after 22 years in the Army, Reserves and National Guard. "He's going to get out of it and I'm glad he is," said Moore, a Navy medic in the 1950s.

If the United States sends additional troops to Afghanistan, a decision that President Barack Obama is currently weighing, more National Guard members will likely deployed, Richard Moore said.

"We don't belong over there," he said.

Randall Moore, a Rancho Cotate High School graduate and former print shop technician, had applied for military retirement before the 235th deployed last year, but postponed it when the Afghanistan mission came up.

"I've known these guys for a long time," Moore, a platoon leader, said last October before the 235th departed from the Petaluma Armory. "I couldn't very well retire and watch them go off without me."

The Moores haven't seen their son in a year. He got a leave from Afghanistan two months ago, but spent it touring Italy on a motorcycle with his girlfriend.

Isadora Marks, 28, the company commander's wife, said she is "counting down the days" until her husband's return to their home in Ukiah.

"This deployment is no fun any more -- not that it ever was," she said. "It's been a hard year for everybody, especially for them to be in that environment."

Frequent phone calls and e-mails from her husband helped her cope with the year they've been apart, Isadora Marks said. But her worries were relentless.

"Even when they are in the base they are never safe," she said.

Cory Marks and elements of the 235th were assigned to Forward Operating Base Orgun-E, a small compound ringed by mountains in southeast Afghanistan near the Pakistan border.

Winter was cold and the surroundings dirty and colorless, Marks, a CHP officer in civilian life, said in an earlier e-mail.

Imagine a one-lane dirt road, he wrote, potentially studded with hidden bombs made from 40 pounds of homemade explosive, 60-millimeter mortar rounds, 155-millimeter artillery shells, or all three "daisy chained together.

"Oh and by the way, you KNOW the device is there," he wrote.

An article in the July edition of Grizzly, the California National Guard magazine, described the 235th's mission in Afghanistan.

"It's the most stressful and risky job in the military," Staff Sgt. Alden Camaya of South San Francisco, a member of the 235th, said in the article. "You never know when you're going to get blown up."

The 235th participated in 222 missions, clearing more than 6,200 miles of roads, Marks said in an e-mail Monday.

The Petaluma-based company went to war once before -- when it was named Alpha Company -- serving for a year in Iraq from 2004-05. The company, which then had 90 soldiers, sustained three fatalities and about 20 wounded men, more casualties than any other California National Guard unit at the time.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.