The citizen-soldiers of the 741st Explosive Ordnance Disposal Battalion have returned from Afghanistan.
The 25 Washington National Guardsmen of the battalion’s headquarters detachment were mobilized for a year and provided command and control for Task Force Paladin, the main counter-IED effort throughout the country. Bombs are by far the top killer of American and coalition troops throughout the country.
Stars and Stripes did a great two-part series on them last year. (Read it here and here.)
The unit was the first local group to deploy to Afghanistan after the Obama administration laid out its revamped strategy in early 2009.
“The members of the 741st provided critical support to our forces in Afghanistan and we congratulate them on a job well done,” Maj. Gen. Timothy Lowenberg, the state adjutant general, said in a press release.
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