3/5 Marines begin coming home

Families, friends and fellow Marines await the arrival home of members of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment. Photo: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

More Marines from the battalion will return home over the next couple of weeks.

Exhausted yet exhilarated, Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment, returned Monday night to Camp Pendleton after seven months of combat, death and survival in Afghanistan.

Hundreds of family members holding signs and waving American flags waited on a parade deck for 250 members of the battalion. Known as the Dark Horse battalion, the unit suffered 24 killed in action and more than 175 wounded as it fought to wrest control of the Sangin district in the Helmand province from the Taliban.