After an eventful four years at the helm of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, Col. Ron Johnson will relinquish command to Col. Peter Petronzio in a ceremony here Thursday.
The time-honored ritual, in which Johnson will formally pass the unit’s colors to Petronzio, is expected to draw several hundred Marines and other well-wishers.
The occasion coincides with Johnson’s last official day at Camp Lejeune, where he has spent most of his 28-year career. Recently selected for promotion to brigadier general, he will soon relocate to Washington, D.C., to begin his next assignment as the Marine Corps’ director of operations.
Petronzio is currently the operations officer for Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, a unit he helped establish a little more than a year ago.
Johnson’s tenure at the 24th MEU included a seven-month tour in Iraq, recovery efforts in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, and the evacuation of Americans from war-torn Lebanon last summer.
He took over the 24th MEU in June 2003, immediately following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. During the drive to Baghdad, Johnson served as the operations officer for the Camp Lejeune-based 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which formed the bulk of Task Force Tarawa.
The task force briefly encompassed the 24th MEU, which had deployed separately in the fall of 2002 and was sent to Iraq in April 2003.
Iraq Deployment
The 24th MEU returned to Iraq in June 2004. The unit’s seven-month tour spanned one of the more turbulent junctures in the long campaign to stabilize the country.
Through scores of direct-action raids, hundreds of cordon-and-knock searches, and thousands of patrols and vehicle checkpoints, the MEU gradually thinned insurgent ranks in northern Babil and southern Baghdad provinces and chipped away at their supply of weapons. Working alongside Iraqi security forces, the Marines rounded up nearly 900 criminals, thugs and terrorists and seized more than 75,000 munitions.
In the end, while area militants had not yet lost their will to fight, they had lost steam. After several months of steadily growing activity, insurgent attacks fell by 20 percent in December 2004 and nearly 50 percent in January 2005. The historic national election on Jan. 30, 2005, drew 72 percent of eligible voters, a stunning turnout in a region home to both Shia and Sunni Muslims.
Hurricane Katrina
On Aug. 29, 2005, as the 24th MEU prepared to begin its next round of pre-deployment workups, Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast, overwhelming the capacity of local and state resources to deal with the disaster.
As II MEF’s Alert Contingency Marine Air-Ground Task Force, the 24th MEU immediately began preparing to deploy in support of the fledgling recovery efforts. By Sept. 4, nearly 1,200 Marines from the MEU had arrived in Louisiana and Mississippi, part of the vanguard of a military force summoned by the president to gain control over a situation that had quickly turned desperate.
In the first two weeks following the Aug. 29 storm, the Marines searched more than 5,000 homes; rescued 610 stranded residents; transported nearly 1,500 other displaced citizens; delivered two million pounds of supplies; and cleared debris from more than 1,000 homes, schools, and municipal buildings.
Lebanon Evacuation
In the summer of 2006, the 24th MEU expected to return in full to Iraq, where most of its Marines had served at least one tour.
After a series of visits to Mediterranean ports throughout Europe, the ships of the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group moved through the Suez Canal on July 4, officially entering the Central Command area of operations.
When fighting broke out on July 12 between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah, the MEU raced from the Jordanian desert to Lebanon to assist in the departure of some 15,000 Americans caught in the crossfire. It was the largest-ever evacuation of American civilians from a foreign country.
The 24th MEU returned home in December 2006 and is scheduled to deploy again early next year.