RAPID CITY, S.D. – About 110 members of the South Dakota National Guard’s 235th Military Police Company were honored during a deployment ceremony at the The Monument’s Fine Arts Theatre in Rapid City, Jan. 5, as the unit departs for a year-long federal deployment to Cuba.
Hundreds of family members, friends and community supporters came out to bid farewell to the Rapid City and Sioux Falls-based unit as they depart on their mission to provide detention operations support to Joint Task Force Guantanamo.
“This is the moment we have been preparing for almost the last 16 months – we have put in a lot of time, effort and sacrifice so we could accomplish this difficult mission,” said Capt. Pat Moran, commander of 235th Military Police Company, while addressing his soldiers. “One thing that I know about the 235th, is we are ready, we are trained, and we have the leaders and experience to handle this mission. I know that our soldiers and family will get through this next year together.”
This will be the fourth time the unit has been federally mobilized since 9/11. The unit deployed stateside to Fort Carson in 2003, and twice to Afghanistan in 2007 and 2013. This will be the first time a SDNG unit has performed this mission at Guantanamo.
The ceremony included remarks from several state and local government leaders, including Gov. Kristi Noem, Congressman Dusty Johnson, Rapid City Mayor Steve Allender and SDNG Adjutant General, Maj. Gen. Jeff Marlette.
“There is not a doubt in any of our minds that you will serve with excellence and that you will be an example to those around you of what service with dignity and respect for others is,” said Noem. “I am so incredibly grateful that you are going to serve, protecting our freedoms and our liberties in a very unique mission that is so incredibly necessary.”
“We simply cannot say thank you enough on behalf of a grateful state and a grateful nation,” said Johnson. “For those of us who have not served we cannot know the kind of cost this has on families and our citizen-soldiers, so we just have to say thank you.”
The unit will report to Fort Bliss, Texas, to complete several weeks of training prior to deployment overseas.
“To the families and members of the 235th, thank you for your sacrifice, inspiration, commitment and everything you have done and will continue to do in the future,” said Moran. “You are all true heroes in your own right, and in many ways that is a more difficult task to ensure life continues back in South Dakota.”
(The S.D. National Guard contributed this story/news release.)
