Strykers prepare for Iraq
FORT LEWIS, Wash. – The Army’s first Stryker brigade is in training for a return to Iraq next summer. By the time brigade members head out in June, they’ll have been home about 20 months – long enough to rest, handle a few odd jobs and gear up for another year in combat.
“We’re back on the warpath,” the brigade commander, Col. Stephen Townsend, told The News Tribune of Tacoma.
His troops are engaged in a three-week exercise that includes Fort Lewis, the Yakima Training Center and the Umatilla, Ore., Army Depot. The training includes simulations of roadside bombs and ambushes, hidden weapons caches and insurgents out to kidnap American soldiers.
It’s the last major event for the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, before a February mission rehearsal at the Army’s National Training Center in the Mojave Desert.
But if they were needed, the brigade’s 4,000 soldiers are pretty much ready to go now, Townsend said.
They’re drawing much less attention this time. The brigade spent three years under scrutiny as the first to use the Stryker armored vehicles and new high-tech communications networks. On their way out in November 2003, the soldiers got newly designed uniforms and $20 million worth of individual gear.
Townsend, who took command after the brigade returned last October, said some of his guys complain that the process isn’t quite as plush as last time.
“But we are getting everything we need on the timeline we need. I can’t complain,” he said. “Our priority is still high. We still enjoy a good level of resources. … We are still the only Stryker Brigade Combat Team that the Army has to flex around the world.”
Their Stryker comrades from the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division aren’t deployable because they just returned to Fort Lewis after a year in Iraq. They’re preparing for a move to Germany next summer. The 1st Brigade was succeeded in Mosul by the 172nd Stryker Brigade from Alaska.
The Army is preparing four other Stryker brigades, two at Fort Lewis and one each in Hawaii and Pennsylvania. But they are years from completion.
Under current plans, the 3rd Brigade will head to Iraq as the 172nd nears the end of its yearlong deployment.
Their tasks will depend on conditions in Iraq, said Lt. Col. William “Buck” James, now the brigade’s deputy commander.
The brigade might be used as a rapid response force, able to quickly send large numbers of combat troops great distances. That’s what soldiers are practicing in the current exercise.
Battalions convoyed 120 miles to Yakima via Interstate 90. One conducted a mock attack at Fort Lewis, found intelligence that pointed to insurgent activity at Umatilla, then loaded up and drove to the Army depot in Oregon, some 270 miles away.
About 450 soldiers are assigned to play the roles of insurgents, imams, sheiks, villagers and others. They’re encouraged to employ what Townsend and other infantry leaders call “devious bastard” techniques to infiltrate Stryker troops and collect intelligence.
The real-life goal is to prevent a repeat of attacks like the December 2004 suicide bombing that killed 22 people in a Stryker brigade chow hall in Mosul.
On the first day of the exercise, two men posing as village leaders walked unescorted and unchallenged into Townsend’s headquarters.
“We had a real come-to-Jesus meeting about security after that,” the commander said.
About 45 percent of troops in the brigade are veterans of the first deployment, said Townsend, a veteran of Panama, Haiti and Afghanistan who will be making his first Stryker tour.
Another 5 percent or so were in Iraq with other units. Most of the rest are new to the Army since the brigade’s return.
Sometimes there’s a downside to experience, said Capt. Teddy Kleisner, an infantry company commander who worked in the brigade operations center the first trip.
“It’s harder to train these guys because sometimes they have that ‘been there, done that’ attitude,” Kleisner said. “The Iraq we go back to is not going to be the same as when we were there. We need to remember that we can always get better.”
Twenty Stryker brigade soldiers were killed and about 400 wounded in the first deployment.
“That’s what I tell my guys when I have to: I don’t want to bury any of you,”’ Staff Sgt. Michael Robinson said.
“I don’t want to write a letter to your mom. I don’t want to visit your wife and daughter. I’ve done that already and I don’t ever want to have to do it again.”