If you’ve been asked on Facebook and Twitter in recent months to pray for the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment by all means — you can. Just don’t believe the hoax attached to many of these swirling posts. The ones that say the service members in the deployed unit (otherwise known as the “Darkhorse Marines”) being killed in Afghanistan.

They’re not. They’re safe.

Currently, they’re training at Camp Pendleton. In San Diego County.

Like many faulty claims, however, the gossip did originate from some truth.

This from the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Deployed to Afghanistan’s restive Helmand Province in 2010-11, 3/5 Marines and the 1st Combat Engineers suffered 25 deaths and nearly 200 wounded. Some of the most brutal fighting was concentrated near the district of Sangin, triggering widespread support on the social media from well-wishers at the time.

After the Darkhorse Marines rotated home, calls for prayers for their safety continued to flare up in late 2012, both the summer and late winter of 2013, the summers of 2014 and 2015, late December of 2015 and then again two months ago, according to a San Diego Union-Tribune analysis of Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Twitter and Facebook followers often have demanded to know why the “mainstream media” or “MSM” refused to cover the old story, failing to realize that the Union-Tribune and other news outlets reported extensively about the Darkhorse battalion’s real deployment of 2010-11 in Afghanistan.

The 3/5 Marines’ current training is in preparation for a future deployment with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit.