CAMP PENDLETON — The event Saturday night was a farewell for Marines being deployed to bring peace to one of the most dangerous cities in the world, but it had the outward appearance of family night at the local school.
Classroom lights burned brightly, tables outside the buildings were stacked with cookies and other snacks, families wandered inside and out, music played softly on a boom box (some rock, some country), and large groups of students were everywhere -- some quiet, some nervously talky.
For many of the families, the day they dreaded had arrived. Their loved ones, after weeks of training in the field and in the classrooms of the school of infantry, were finally leaving for a war zone.
The departing troops were members of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, an infantry battalion being sent to bring stability to Fallouja in the violence-wracked Sunni triangle region of Iraq.
By early April, 25,000 Marines will relieve the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in the area west of Baghdad that has been the heart of anti-Western attacks by Iraqi insurgents.
The Marines and Navy medics of the 2nd Battalionwill be in the thick of the action, a fact not lost on the troops and their families. Buses were waiting to take 250 members of the battalion to March Reserve Air Force Base in Riverside for the 24-hour flight to Kuwait, where the 1st Marine Division is staging before going to Iraq.
"I hear the name Fallouja on the television, and the news is very bad," said Albert Cisneros of Los Angeles, whose son, Albert Jr., 33, is a medic. "They say there are lot of young Iraqis without jobs there, and they're being offered money to kill Americans."
Inside the classrooms at the school of infantry, bulletin boards list rules of engagement for the Marines as they leave on a mission that mixes combat and nation-building.
* Don't flaunt your power but do not show fear.
* Curse if you must, but avoid using phrases starting with "God."
* Think as if every Iraqi wants to kill you, but do not treat them that way.
On the same bulletin boards are pictures of the weapons being used by insurgents to attack U.S. forces and Iraqis who cooperate with them: AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices.
"This is all so new for me, so frightening," said Aracely Tapia, a hairstylist from San Diego, whose son is Pvt. Omar Tapia, 20. "I'm very proud of him but I'm very nervous about this."
