Bravo Company returns from Iraq ahead of schedule

YAKIMA, Wash. -- About 100 Marines reserves are returning to Yakima after serving several months in Iraq.

The 4th Tank Battalion's Bravo Company is expected to arrive Friday morning at the Army's Yakima Training Center for a brief homecoming ceremony with relatives and invited guests.

The reserve company left Yakima in April to deploy in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and had been expected to spend up to seven months overseas.

The tour was cut short due to the recent drawdown in troops, 1st Sgt. Michael Pullom said Wednesday.

Pullom described the deployment as successful, saying the unit had prevented attacks while escorting convoys from Camp Al Asad and Camp Korean Village, west of Baghdad.

The company originally had orders to carry out its primary tank mission, but that changed once the Marines arrived in Iraq, Pullom said.

The unit did not sustain any deaths or major injuries, said Pullom, who is part of the company's inspector-instructor command staff, based at the Armed Forces Reserve Center on Tahoma Avenue in Yakima.

Most of the company's members will likely remain on active duty through January, he said. They will perform vehicle maintenance and other tasks.

This was the company's second deployment during the Iraq war. The unit gained a reputation as "the best tank killers in the world" for destroying 119 Iraqi vehicles and taking 800 prisoners while leading the assault into Kuwait in the opening days of the first Gulf War.

A handful of the company's Marines live in the Yakima Valley, with the rest coming mostly from other Washington cities as well as Oregon. About a quarter of the 100 Marines were on the 2005 deployment.

The Army Reserve's 737th Transportation Company is the only full military unit from the Yakima Valley that remains in the Middle East.

The 737th is serving in Afghanistan.