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Fort Sill soldiers deploying to Africa

LAWTON, Okla. — Students and teachers from a Lawton elementary school attended a departure ceremony at Fort Sill for about 300 soldiers being deployed to Africa.

The students at Flower Mound School showed support during Friday’s ceremony for soldiers of B Battery, 2nd Battalion, 18th Field Artillery who visited their school last Veterans Day.

“We brought 17 fifth- and sixth-graders, and we have seven or eight teachers and several assistants,” said Brenda Parker a teacher at Flower Mound, an elementary school in southeast Lawton.

Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Dial, the husband of pre-kindergarten teacher Kristina Dial, is among those deploying with the battalion, and it was his battery that came to talk with the students on Veterans Day. Kristina Dial was in the stands Friday with the couple’s two children.

The battalion that Fort Sill honored Friday is deploying to Djibouti and several surrounding countries in the Horn of Africa.

In a previous deployment to Iraq, the battalion conducted numerous missions, including combat operations, training an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps battalion, and transporting tons of ammunition. It then reorganized as a security force infantry company to deploy to Afghanistan in November 2006 in support of Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix. There it provided security for embedded training teams.

It returned from Afghanistan a year ago, and now the battalion will send 300 soldiers to the Horn of Africa to conduct “force protection, military-to-military training, quick reaction force and ground force package for tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel tasks throughout the area of responsibility,” according to Fort Sill spokesman John Beemer.

It will also provide support to Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa to prevent conflict, promote regional stability and protect coalition interests in order to prevail against terrorism, he said.

The unit is commanded by Lt. Col. Alfredo Najera and Command Sgt. Maj. John Tidwell.