HONOLULU, Hawaii -- The 599th Transportation Brigade facilitated port operations on the M/V Jean Anne on behalf of the 25th Infantry Division's 25th Combat Aviation Brigade at Honolulu Harbor on March 12.

The brigade partnered with Soldiers from the 25th CAB; staff from the carrier, Pasha; and Hawaii Stevedores, Inc. to discharge helicopters and equipment returning to Hawaii from their deployment to National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California.

The cargo returning to Hawaii had originally left for NTC in early January.

"The offload started at midnight. It was a pretty slow start," said Jimmy Quilon, 599th Trans. Bde. traffic management specialist.

"The load was co-mingled with civilian automobiles, which were offloaded at the same time, so that delayed the move somewhat," he added.

"The helicopters took most of the night to offload, and then the rest of the cargo was offloaded relatively quickly after the shift change, at 5 a.m.," said Carlos Tibbetts, 599th terminals chief.

"The Soldiers worked safely and efficiently, and all of the helicopters were offloaded before the shift change," said Quilon. "They had a one-and-a-half hour shift change, otherwise the offload could have been completed in eight hours."

"The rest of the cargo was mostly containers," he added.

"The Jean Anne isn't set up for containers," said Tibbetts. "It's a roll-on, roll-off ship without any ship's cranes, so unless the port has a gantry crane that can lift containers off the deck, stevedores have to drive trucks hauling containers down the ramps to get the containers off of the ship. Sometimes they have to back them all the way in and then load to drive out, which makes for a much longer upload or discharge."

Tibbetts pointed out the importance of smaller missions like this.

"This mission, while smaller than most of what we do here in Hawaii, wherein we load or discharge up to 1,700 pieces, is still vital as the 25th CAB probably deploys more than any other 25th I.D. unit to support not only their parent unit, 25th I.D., but also many other units going into the 'box' at NTC and JRTC [Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana].

"We proudly support the home team," he added.