Pendleton Marines to be Deployed, Again

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published January 5, 2006 at 9:00 PM PST

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

Several hundred marines and sailors from the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Camp Pendleton are scheduled to leave Saturday for Iraq . For many of them, it will be their third deployment. KPBS re

Several hundred marines and sailors from the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Camp Pendleton are scheduled to leave Saturday for Iraq . For many of them, it will be their third deployment. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

This is the beginning of a major deployment of around 25,000 marines from Camp Pendleton who will relieve the second Marine Expeditionary Force based in Camp LeJeune. Master Sergeant John Cordero who expects to be deployed later this month, says the focus of this deployment is different from previous ones

Cordero: "Our focus now will be on mentoring and training the Iraqi security forces, whereas before like in 2004 our mission was primarily to fight the insurgency over there. It's really the Iraqi security forces that need to step up and fight the insurgency over there and we need to take more of a supporting role."

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The 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment , which was involved in fierce fighting in Fallujah in 2004, is headed back to Al Anbar province in Western Iraq. Alison St John KPBS news.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.