About 2,220 Marines and sailors, part of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp LeJeune, N.C., are getting ready to ship out this spring to Afghanistan. They’ll stay there at least seven months to boost combat troop levels in time for an expected Taliban offensive.

Since the war on terror began, thousands from Camp LeJeune, the gigantic military base near the coast of North Carolina, have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Many of them have returned. Some have not.

Camp LeJeune is the lifeblood for Jacksonville, N.C., the city that surrounds the camp. The base generates $3 billion in commerce each year, coming from payrolls and contracts let to support the structure required to train and equip Marines, according to base’s website.  It is home to an active duty, dependent, retiree and civilian employee population of nearly 150,000 people.

The camp is spread out over 156,000 acres, with 11 miles of beach. It includes satellite facilities at Camp Geiger, Camp Johnson, Stone Bay and the Greater Sandy Run Training Area.

Camp Johnson was the first training base for black Marines. Originally known as Montford Point, black Marines attended boot camp there during segregation. When segregation ended, it was named in honor of Sgt. Major Johnson, and Marine Corps Service Support Schools was located there.

For the past two years, Camp LeJeune has been led by Col. Adele E. Hodges, a black woman, who was the first female head of the installation. She relinquishes her command today and will go on to serve in the office of the Inspector General in Washington, D.C.  

In a year when America will elect its first new president in eight years, cities like Jacksonville and many others across the country see first hand the toll that war can take on a community.

“We understand military operations and structure,” said Jerome Willingham, one of two blacks on the Jacksonville City Council. “We understand the military is not a political organization.”

If residents are discontented with the war, “they direct their actions toward Washington, D.C., and not Holcomb, the main street on the base,” Willingham told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “We support the troops and their families. The Marine Corps is our industry.”

Willingham’s ward includes much of the residential area for Camp LeJeune in a city where 24 percent of the 67,000 residents are black.

“We accommodate them and their needs,” he said.

The clergy and members of First Baptist Church on Broadhurst Street have developed a ministry to serve military personnel. The church is virtually surrounded by the camp.

“We can hear them doing PT. We hear the helicopters,” said the Rev. James Brown.

“We want to be here for them and their families,” Brown told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “We have programs that address post traumatic stress disorder. We have programs that help support families after and during deployment.”

The church owns five horses and offers a horseback riding program and a intiative, both designed to help relieve stress.

“For the families, we have roller skating outings. We watch movies at the church, and we have a tutorial program,” Brown said. “There are times when the pressures of father or mother being absent from the family will add additional stress to the children. We want to have to help the children in their educational pursuit.”

First Baptist has about 300 to 500 active members, according to officials. Military personnel and their families come and go, depending upon their assignments. So far, Brown said, he has not lost a church member in combat, though he has known of some who were wounded or killed.

“It becomes a way of life. Persons have to be mentally and emotionally prepared for the fact that there will be separations. [Personnel in the] military too carry the burden of knowing that they may be called on to sacrifice their lives to save ours,” he said.

A total of 476 from U.S. military have been killed in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. A total of 3,931 have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Lt. Col. Curtis Hill of the public affairs office at Camp LeJeune said he could not detail the number of casualties specifically from that camp, because of the method in which the data is gathered.

A total of 846 U.S. Marines have died in Iraq, and 127 Marine reserves have died, according to the website icasualities.org.

One of the most recent U.S. Marine Corps war casualties was a soldier from Camp LeJeune. Lance Corporal James M. Gluff died January 19 while fighting in Iraq's Anbar Province. He was 20 years old.

The entire community in Jacksonville continues to embrace the base, just as it has down through the years, Willingham said.

“You can drive around town and still see yellow ribbons on the trees,” he said. Those ribbons, he said, are a holdover from Operation Desert Storm.

Many people of Jacksonville's residents were once based at Camp LeJeune while serving active duty. While a lot of younger military members are not impressed with Jacksonville, more of them consider staying in the city when they retire, Willingham said. “The military retirees are an integral part of our political and social structure. The base is interwoven socially, and there is a huge retirement community.”
 
Rev. Brown said Camp LeJeune and the surround community have a relationship of support. “I don’t work on the base, but because I am there so much, some people may think that I do,” he said.

“We go to the base, and we have personnel from the base to come talk with our youths about the Navy, about the Marines and about scholarships,” he said. “The congregation is instructed to pray daily for the men and women in the military, as well as their families. They feel the strength of that support.”