BAGHDAD–The questions on the minds of families and soldiers in July were direct and centered on one word: “Why?”

“Why was the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team being kept in Iraq for up to 120 days beyond the year it was about to wrap up in northern and western Iraq?”

“Why were the soldiers of the 172nd being sent to Baghdad?”

Happiness did not accompany the announcement of the extension, both when it was received by families and when it was delivered to the 172nd in Iraq.

Now, about halfway through the overtime period, soldiers say they appreciate that commanders haven’t tried to portray the soldiers as pleased about the extension. They say that while morale has suffered, it hasn’t affected their work.

“If they want to do it right, they need us, a Stryker brigade,” said Sgt. Brian Patton from Texas, drawing on a cigarette early one day while waiting for his platoon with the 4th Battalion 23rd Infantry Regiment, part of the 172nd, to get ready for patrol. “We could’ve, should’ve, come months ago.”

By the time the 172nd was scheduled to leave Iraq in August, soldiers had spent a year battling insurgents and training Iraqi forces in the northern city of Mosul and in the western rural areas near the Syrian border. Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, was one of the country’s most violent places during the war’s first years. Soldiers said they saw a marked difference in security and development as a result of their time in that region of Iraq.

And then, having achieved that success, they were shipped to Baghdad amid new and broader violence. The trip back to Alaska would have to wait.

Commanders said the mission was to aid the U.S. troops already in the capital by lending soldiers and assets to the fight, namely the Stryker vehicle. Many soldiers said it’s the vehicle and the brigade’s year of experience that gives them an edge in this city.

“You can’t substitute that experience,” said Lt. Col. Chuck Webster, with the 2nd Battalion 1st Infantry Regiment, speaking from his sparse office on Forward Operating Base Taji, north of Baghdad. The office of the 45-year-old colonel has nothing by a map of Baghdad on its pale walls, lending to a sense of only temporary placement.

Getting the Strykers’ experience into Baghdad, however, meant a sudden and, for many, disappointing change of plans for soldiers who had expected to soon be out of a war zone.

Dealing with delay

No one, not even the commanders, downplays the disappointment that soldiers experienced upon hearing of the extension.

Capt. Steve Dunn, chaplain with the 2-1, said he spent several days leading up to the announcement trying to squash rumors that he believed were incorrect.

“Rumors were running amok,” he said speaking from his quarters that serve as his room and counseling office, just off a small chapel fashioned for the 2-1 soldiers with salvaged lawn chairs, plywood walls and handmade benches that serve as pews. The altar is a cloth over a stack of small storage containers and topped with a small, white marble cross Dunn brought from Mosul.

“They called me the fireman, going around trying to tell people it wasn’t true,”

The battalions were called into a formation and given the news.

“There was a sense of relief,” Dunn said. “Pain mixed with relief when we found out.”

Soldiers bristle at the way the media was involved in the announcement. Many believe the brigade commanders told soldiers as soon as they received news. But soldiers were not pleased that their families found out from television and newspapers before hearing from them personally.

“If we would have been told before CNN told us, it would have been better,” said Pfc. Erich Mattice, from Canton, N.Y., with the support battalion riding a bus back to Camp Stryker after lunch last week.

“If we had been told before our families, it would have better,” replied another soldier.

Dunn said the reactions varied among soldiers and family members. “Everyone has their own heartache,” he said.

Dunn communicates with families of the 2-1 each month with a newsletter he compiles. In July, he penned what he thought would be the last newsletter from Iraq and started it; “Hard to believe — but from where we sit right now the Task Force should be home in just a few short weeks!”

He signed off: “The next time you hear from us it will be us hollering “Honey, Where’s the toilet paper?”

The newsletter had already been sent to Alaska but not distributed to families when the extension was announced. Dunn set to work writing a new version, addressing the emotions families and soldiers were experiencing.

“You need to understand your emotions for what they are, a byproduct of grief and bereavement — you are in fact mourning the loss of a dream,” Dunn wrote. “The dream of your family being together again. (But) your dream to have your family back together again isn’t dead — it’s postponed.”

As Dunn sat in his room, a room fashioned with plywood desks he built himself and a metal locker he salvaged so he could use magnets to hang pictures of his wife and two sons, he flipped through old newsletters and photos from the brigade’s last days in Mosul. He said the worry that exists between families and soldiers is one of the hardest aspects of the extension.

“The families are worried about us, and we are overcome with how this affects our family,” he said.

Spc. Brooke Miles said soldiers are upset by the extension but have reacted better than commanders, the public and family members thought they would and have adapted.

“I know brigade hates it just as much as we do,” Miles, a 20-year-old medic from Washington state, said while she was riding the bus back to Camp Stryker with a group of soldiers. “But I think we’re stronger than they think we are.”

While the extra 120 days has made the soldiers more cynical and brusque, many say they’ve thrown themselves into their work and patrols in order to stave off boredom and make time go quickly. Others said they figure the harder they work, the better chance they have of getting home sooner.

“If we just sit on our asses and don’t do our jobs, we won’t get home at all,” Sgt. Kirby Neal of Texas said after lunch last week.

Making days go by

The brigade had a big adjustment in a short period of time when it came to Baghdad.

Most of the work keeping the brigade busy is different from its work over the first 12 months. Here, it’s about presence, which means positioning Stryker vehicles in neighborhoods for an immediate impact. Soldiers also help in other operations, such as house clearings and sniffing out weapons caches. The Stryker brigade’s 1st Battalion 17th Infantry Regiment alone has cleared more than 26,000 houses in two months.

The 172nd isn’t the only brigade in Baghdad, a vastly different situation from Mosul, where it was the major presence and took a year to get to know one specific area. Baghdad has six other brigades, all sharing battle space and each with a unique way of doing things.

Last week, sitting in his office, a subdued Lt. Col. Al Kelly used a large, colored wall map to point out the half dozen neighborhoods around Baghdad the 2-1 has patrolled or conducted sweeps in over the last two months.

“Do I think the extension has been worthwhile? Yes,” the 45-year-old North Carolinian said. “But if I were an American citizen reading about the violence I’d think, ‘What a waste.’ But what they don’t see is wherever we go, the violence stops while we’re there.”

Kelly is an active battalion commander, preferring patrols over desk work. The extension has given him plenty of opportunity to be in the field. He said his unit hasn’t stayed in one neighborhood more than a few days. But he said the violence stops each time residents see the Strykers, which are more imposing then Humvees and hold more soldiers.

One neighborhood that he and others would like to spend more time in is Sadr City. Kelly and his soldiers were inside the city for two days. Lt. Col. John Norris with the 4-23 and his soldiers spent a few days just along the border of the notoriously bitter Shiite neighborhood.

Kelly, sounding weary but focused, said the citizens there suffered greatly under Saddam Hussein and have revenge in mind. But he said that sending in Stryker vehicles only enraged the people. Battlefield commanders decided that a less-visible approach was needed in Sadr.

Lt. Col. Chuck Webster with the 2-1 said the Strykers could quell even Sadr, given the chance.

“There’s not a neighborhood we can’t go into.”

Time well spent?

Whether the 172nd has a lasting affect in the overall outcome of the war is yet to be seen, Kelly said. He said the Stryker Brigades are needed in Baghdad and other areas of the country now and that he can envision two full Stryker Brigades in Baghdad, one on each side of the Tigris River, which cuts through the city north to south.

“If we don’t maintain a presence like we are, it will just go back to the way it was before,” Kelly said, emphasizing that his thoughts in this area are just his personal opinion.

Kelly said it’s been frustrating seeing some increased violence in Mosul, where the 172nd labored for so long. It might be because the incoming unit there is still adapting to the area, but Kelly said it’s irksome.

“You hear about some of the stuff going on and think ‘That didn’t happen when we were there,’” he said.

But does that mean the time has been wasted? Commanders and soldiers alike said they believed the brigade made much progress in its first 12 months and is doing so now during its extension, especially with the Iraqi people its soldiers have come into contact with.

Back in December, while patrolling the streets of Mosul, Kelly commented that Iraq would be won “one soccer ball at a time,” referring to the thousands of balls, toys and candy that soldiers handed out to Iraqi children and the relations they fostered with residents.

Thousands of Iraqis were treated during day-long medical screenings in the neighborhoods. Soldiers spent countless hours with residents, visiting them in their homes and businesses, sipping chai and smoking cigarettes with them, airing concerns about safety and security.

Those actions fostered relations and impressions that soldiers said are long lasting. Kelly said his hope is that whatever happens politically within Iraq, a generation of Iraqi children will remember that U.S. troops tried to foster good will and security and that maybe they will remember that as adults.

“We touched a lot of lives,” Kelly said. “My hope is that those lives we touched, they remember what we did here.”

The circumstances, the moods, the environment are different. So has been my work. It’s easy to see I haven’t written a story each day. Since I’ve been here, it’s been a struggle to write even a blog entry each day.

This was not my intention, nor likely my editors. When I left for this assignment, I thought, like last time, that each day, each patrol would bring something new and newsworthy.

Each day is newsworthy for the 172nd, but for much larger reasons than a single patrol. Each day is newsworthy because they’re still here, in Iraq, instead of Alaska or across the country visiting family and friends during what should have been their block leave time. Instead, they are playing a continued role in Iraq and on the streets of Baghdad.

When I arrived here, I quickly realized my stories and reports would have to go beyond the daily grind. As many soldiers said, referring to two of my more featurey stories from last trip, this time its about more than tattoos and glow-in-the-dark golf.

So instead I’ve tried to capture what is important to them and their families and the role they’ve been asked to play during their additional 120-day stay.

Mainly, that consists of their concern for their families, their disappointment but stalwartness in being extended, the work they are being asked to do here and the effect they’re having.

Those things are more complex than a day’s patrol.

Take the mood for example. Many families and readers have asked, “How do the soldiers feel about the extension?”

It’s a fair question, one of concern. But there are 3,900 answers to that question. There is no word, or general terms that can encompass each emotion the soldiers have. I can say the most common reaction I’ve come across is one of disappointment, accompanied by a shake of the head and shrug of the soldiers, followed often by a “what are ya gonna do?” acceptance.

They aren’t an overly dramatic or expressive bunch.

They’re weary, but keep working. There are more gray hairs, but they still find things to laugh at. They’ve replayed their story countless times this year for media that has tagged along with them asking the same questions, but they graciously repeat their answers without a hint of annoyance.

Brigade commander Col. Michael Shields prefers to call them, all of them, professionals.

No one emotion can categorized all the soldiers. This isn’t a political poll and the margin of error is too great.

Once I got here and surveyed the scene and atmosphere I was working in, I took on another role, a reporter not only for the News-Miner but passing on news about Fairbanks to the soldiers became a regular part of my day. The time spent answering questions of the soldiers didn’t net stories or photos, but I enjoyed talking about the weather, the town and the local reaction to the extension many soldiers wondered about.

Many were surprised to hear how amped up Fairbanks was for the brigade’s return. I told them about the welcome home signs that lined the fence at Fort Wainwright from the front gate at the Richardson Highway to Bassett Army Hospital and how local businesses had displayed welcome home signs around town. That news surprised even Shields.

“I didn‚t know that,” he said in casual conversation. “I hope they do that again for when we come home.”

I told him that when the time finally comes, I don’t think he has to worry about the brigade being welcomed home with gusto.

I told soldiers how news of the extension traveled the national radio waves, newspapers and TV news, a point that often caused grimaces as soldiers detailed how many of their families had to hear the news from media rather than the soldiers themselves.

Some asked about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to Fairbanks and his meeting with family members. I told them I saw a video of the meeting and described how some of the wives asked challenging questions. Some soldiers couldn’t help but crack a smile at that and mumble an “Atta girl,” though I respect the fine line they must walk and honor their “but don’t quote me on that.”

Discussion of Fairbanks and Alaska and the things soldiers miss about it have yielded an array of interesting comments, but here’s two that convey a common theme:

“I’m looking forward to getting back home, even though it’s going to be winter,” said Staff Sgt. Rayez Alvarez with support battalion. “That’s one thing I’m not going to complain about anymore.”

The disappointment of missing fishing and hunting season is also common.

“There’s a lot of moose and caribou alive right now because we’re still here,” said Maj. Jonathon Fox.

So while I didn’t write as much as I do on a daily basis or as much as my editors, and I, had anticipated on this trip, I was a reporter more hours of the day than I’ve ever been. And as I struggle with technical difficulties at the end of my stay, I also bring home a few more stories and photos that will appear in the News-Miner as soon as the jet lag wears off.

I hope the readers and soldiers got a little something from this trip, that I was able to help connect some dots between Alaska and Iraq, to put a face, some names, some personality, some reality on what the 172nd does on a daily basis.

Like the first trip, I’m leaving Iraq with more questions than answers about this war and a new respect for soldiers, their families and Iraqis. I hope this experience makes me a better military reporter during the rest of the 172nd’s time in Iraq, after they come home, and as the state faces future deployments of military forces.

Many of the soldiers here are keeping in mind the Alaska National Guard as they prepare to deploy here for a year.

And after having to decline many lucrative offers to try to fit soldiers into my suitcase, or request an escort home, we’ve signed off with, “Be safe and see you soon,” as we say our goodbyes and I head to Kuwait and back to Fairbanks.

Hopefully, the 172nd isn’t far behind me.

Good, I think, because he was trying to emphasize the danger his soldiers face in this area north of Baghdad. A point he made well, thanks to the many visual aids he used in his presentation.

This northern area is unassuming, mostly rural and predominately Sunni. But as the day progressed, I just kept getting a little more on edge, salted with a few white knuckled moments.

The 4-11, even though part of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, does not have Stryker vehicles. As the brigade’s light infantry unit, they use armored Humvees. Since arriving in Baghdad, they received the newest model, with increased armor and durability.

But the prospect of riding in a Humvee, after two weeks being bear hugged by the slat armor and 360 degree protection of the Strykers, I was already apprehensive about today.

On the upside, Humvees offer a great view compared to Strykers. I got my first real glimpse of the countryside, a nice concession to the ride. Until being able to see my surroundings started to add to my anxiety. First, driving down a road called Tampa, Wuestner began pointing out blown up pieces of asphalt. That’s where improvised explosive devices had detonated. Then the large, dark stain on the road and dirt shoulder. That’s where a fuel truck had been blown up. The palm grove Wuestner pointed to seemed mundane enough, maybe almost a peaceful reprieve from the remnants of road attacks. Until he said the palm grove is just a land mark; that’s where on Jan. 29 ABC’s Bob Woodruff and Canadian cameraman Doug Vogt were seriously injured in an IED attack.

We continued to see remnants of explosions; burned up hulls of vehicles, filled in holes from explosions, darkened spots on the road. Near a bridge, Wuestner points out a site of another IED attack, one that killed an Eielson Air Force Base airman. Wuestner and his soldiers came upon the site that day moments after the attack.

Returning from a meeting with local leaders, we backtracked along the same road and sites, and now a new one. Three Humvees, not with the 4-11, were stopped in the middle of the road, one with damage to the front driver’s side. They had just hit an IED. There were no injuries — all the soldiers are talking and walking — and we skirted around them as I asked incredulously, “But we drove over that exact spot like an hour ago, didn’t we? Didn’t we?”

A few times we stopped, as soldiers peered through binoculars at suspicious items along the road, looking for tell-tale wires or disturbed earth. We saw a tank unit cordon off what their equipment detected as an IED just under the road surface. We skirted around that site too. Wuestner pointed out an area where shots are often fired at passing Humvees.

Eventually, we made it back to base. Wuestner seemed almost surprised we encountered no major activity today.

No worries. There’s plenty of opportunity for that today, Sunday, when I ride out with the colonel again.

BAGHDAD — The young artist, sitting in a comfortable upscale home earlier this week, told Lt. Andrew Pfeiffer he didn’t feel safe in his own western Baghdad neighborhood. The home offers a nice coolness on a clear, hot day as they speak.

The man, who specializes in ceramics, bronze and glass, said the increased violence keeps him and his family living in fear.

As if on cue, a single gunshot rang out a few blocks away.

“You see?” the man said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder and speaking through an interpreter. The gunfire was just a warning shot that soldiers with the 2-1 Infantry Battalion fired when a vehicle approached them too closely.

Soldiers with the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, of which the 2nd Battalion 1st Infantry is part, have heard similar concerns in the many neighborhoods they’ve patrolled since arriving in Baghdad in August. Many residents see the presence of U.S. forces as helpful, at least while their own Iraqi forces and government struggle to gain hold over the violence.

Two days of patrolling with different elements of the 172nd offer a variety of views and sharply different images of the Iraqi capital.

On Wednesday, Pfeiffer, a 23-year-old Maine native, and the two dozen soldiers and the four Stryker vehicles of his platoon patrolled the affluent neighborhood that the young artist calls home.

The gated homes are large and well maintained and there is little trash along the streets, portraying, on the surface, no sign of unrest. Still, the soldiers are quick on their feet when going house to house, scurrying from one street corner to the next and hugging the high walls against the homes, before quickly disappearing into the gated yards.

Other platoons have encountered improvised explosive devices in this area. Even though the streets are just west of the secure Green Zone, this area is host to its share of sporadic violence. On Wednesday, residents told the soldiers there was a bomb scare at a nearby school and that two bakers and a butcher have been killed in the last few days. The attacks on shopkeepers and businesses is a way to disrupt the daily life of the neighborhoods, Pfeiffer surmises.

“Bakers, meat cutters, maintenance repair guys–it’s just somebody you depend on day to day,” he said. “Everyone needs to buy bread.”

Most residents are hesitant to give their names or have their picture taken. That includes the young artist who was speaking to Pfeiffer and who lives in his home with his siblings and some of their children. The artist told Pfeiffer he was planning a rare outing in the afternoon to attend a meeting of fellow artists nearby. Mostly, though, the family stays at home out of fear of attacks.

Pfeiffer and some of the other soldiers move on to the house next door after a short while.

Inside, Pfeiffer sits on a yellow brocade couch sipping chai tea with a large family of mostly women. The middle-aged widow who owns the house said she drives her son to grade school each day in fear, although her children, like those of her neighbors, stayed home Wednesday because of the bomb threat. When she needs to go shopping, she said she takes her sister or one of her nieces with her because she fears going alone and encountering snipers or kidnappers.

The Sunni widow, whose husband worked for the Ministry of the Interior before dying of diabetes less than two years ago, distrusts not only the Iraqi police and army but also some government officials, who she believes practice sectarian favoritism.

“People should work for Iraqi people,” she said. “Not Sunni, not Shiite, not Kurdish. Just Iraqi people.”

One of the nieces who was visiting the home Wednesday lives with her husband and daughters in another neighborhood. But her husband, a Shiite, does not feel safe coming to visit his wife’s predominantly Sunni family in their neighborhood. Nor do they feel safe going to the niece’s home. The niece said that when her husband wants to take part in family events, the entire family must meet in another area. The widow tells Pfeiffer that the family, originally from northern Iraq, hopes to have enough money to move to Syria soon.

The third house Pfeiffer and his soldiers visit belongs to an older merchant who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 20 years. He drives about 20 minutes, on a good day, to his shop. Other days, checkpoints manned by Iraqi Security Forces can hold him up longer. And he tells Pfeiffer he sees little point in the traffic stops where he said Iraqi forces routinely ask motorists if they are Sunni or Shiite.

“Checkpoints do nothing,” the merchant said. “They just make traffic jams.”

He’s wary of reporting suspicious activity to Iraqi forces because he fears for his own safety if he was to speak up. But the merchant mostly blames the Iraqi Security Forces–not for their malice but for their inexperience, he tells Pfeiffer.

“Most Iraqi police are kids,” he said. “They don’t have good experience to deal with situations and people, and they are afraid to try to protect themselves.”

The next day, Lt. Col. Al Kelly, a 45-year-old North Carolinian with the 1-17 Battalion of the 172nd, led his platoon around a much different neighborhood. But he netted some of the same sentiments.

Well more than 200 soldiers with the 1-17 were tasked with clearing hundreds of homes in this rundown, mostly Shiite neighborhood in western Baghdad in response to the mortar attack on a U.S. ammunition depot at the nearby Forward Operating Base Falcon. The attackers likely fired the mortar from this neighborhood, Kelly said. Residents told him they heard and felt the huge explosions and saw the subsequent fire that lasted into the evening.

“It rocked your world, huh?” Kelly said to a young man who was leaning against a wall, watching the soldiers roam the neighborhood. Kelly meant the phrase literally.

The heat of the day serves as an incubator for the trash and standing water and contributes to the stench filling the air. The standing water has drained from crumbling homes, which are a testament to the relationship this neighborhood had to Saddam Hussein, the leader ousted by the United States.

“He didn’t do anything for us,” one resident said from his front gate, where he and his young daughter were watching the soldiers pass by. “He had palaces all over the city, but just look at this,” he said motioning to the rancid trash strewn in an empty lot across from him.

The soldiers from 1-17 found little in the sweeps Thursday except some illegal weapons and ski masks in a few of the homes. Soldiers said the ammunition depot’s attackers likely fled the neighborhood, figuring coalition forces would soon be sweeping in.

The bright spot in many of the conversations with the residents was their cautious optimism that the presence of the Stryker vehicles and soldiers might quiet the violence. They said they hope the U.S. forces can help the Iraqi forces gain a handle on security in the neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, they said, they will continue trying to adapt to the random violence, doing what they can to minimize their risk while trying to lead normal lives.

“Even though people generally feel unsafe, they have to continue with their lives,” Pfeiffer said.

It came in as a warm, whipping wind, stirring up dust and dirt but obscuring the usually flaming sunset. As the clouds moved in, the misting began, then the steady, light rain. The first effect was not in the temperature but in the soles of boots everywhere. Muddy season has arrived. Caked gravel and mud on the buses that shuttle soldiers and civilians around base, mud in the PX, mud in the dining hall. Stomping and scraping helps with big chunks, but it’s a season these soldiers know all too well from last fall and winter in Mosul and Rawah. And one they didn’t expect to have to see again. Still, the rain offers a reprieve from the heat that’s been soaking uniforms with sweat since they arrived. Not just a little sweat, but saturation. Enough so that when the shirt dries, it’s stiff as a board. Today I thought as I licked my lips, they haven’t tasted this salty since I last swam in the Atlantic at the Jersey shore.

Soldiers realize they will likely (hopefully) return to Fairbanks in the height of cold, snowy weather, weather many of them once thought annoying.

But now?

“No matter how you put it I’d settle for Alaska weather over Iraq weather any day,” said one today pondering, for only a split second, if he prefers mud-caked boots or snow-soaked ones.

He said soldiers have appreciated every care package, piece of mail, bag of candy, and variety of toiletries and other items. But who would guess the Alaska Trappers Association would provide soldiers with some of the most coveted items in the form of the 2006-07 Alaska hunting and fishing regulations. Dunn said the magazines, like Field and Stream and trapping journals from the group are lined up on the handcrafted wooden benches that serve as pews in the 2-1’s chapel and are quickly snatched up when he gets packages from the ATA.

But since the extension, when many soldiers discovered they would missing salmon fishing and moose hunting season, the stack of hunting regulations have been poured over and scrutinized, trying to find what hunt soldiers can take part in as they anticipate a December return to Alaska.

“They don’t care if it’s going to be 50 below,” Dunn said. “They just want to get out there when they get back.”

Talk about a change of plans.

While preparing to return to Alaska from Iraq in August, most of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team’s personnel had packed up equipment and supplies to be shipped home or had turned them over to an incoming unit. Most of the items were en route to Kuwait or already waiting there for the brigade.

Then came word that the brigade’s tour had not only been extended for up to 120 days but also that it was being moved to Baghdad.

It was the Brigade Support Battalion that bore much of the responsibility for carrying out that move.

All equipment heading from western and northern Iraq to Kuwait had to be rerouted to Baghdad. Think of it as a family of 4,000 moving from Fairbanks to Seattle but having all the household goods and vehicles in transit somewhere in between.

The support battalion is responsible for nearly everything that’s not infantry-related, including moving equipment and material between bases in Iraq, providing medical staff and treatment for soldiers, and maintaining Strykers and other vehicles, weapons and radios. Since arriving in Baghdad, the battalion has also provided security for civil affairs projects, helped install barriers around traffic control points and transported items from weapons caches back to base to be destroyed.

Capt. Matthew Arbogast said the toughest part of the move from Baghdad was finding and accounting for all the equipment the brigade needed–and doing it on short notice. The battalion was told the 172nd had to be ready for patrols and operation within seven days of arriving in Baghdad.

“When we got to Baghdad, we basically started from scratch,” he said.

Arbogast had already signed over most of the brigade’s vehicles–except for the Strykers–to a Fort Lewis, Wash., brigade that was replacing the 172nd in Mosul, but he was able to reacquire a few of them. Still, many of the vehicles, like wreckers and transportation trucks, that the 172nd needed remained in Mosul.

So the support battalion had to get resourceful.

“We had to scrounge,” said Capt. Jason Shropshire, speaking from behind his desk, handmade by a soldier from plywood scraps.

Lt. Col. Bill Keyes, talking over dinner about the challenges of the move, said there’s more competition for supplies in Baghdad because of the number of soldiers now in the city. Baghdad contains six brigades, Keyes said, all needing similar equipment and supplies. It’s different than in Mosul, where there 172nd was the only brigade in the area and had personal contacts with most of the contractors.

“In Mosul, we were the only game in town,” Keyes said.

The scrounging for equipment and vehicles included some pleading with other units around Baghdad and doing a little bartering here and there to get some of the needed materiel. Shropshire said he recovered many items–like tables, desks and chairs–from the trash and a sort of transfer site for units on base in Baghdad.

The battalion eventually scrounged up more than 300 support vehicles, most of them of the second-hand variety that the other units weren’t interested in fixing up themselves. The brigade’s mechanics spent weeks patching up those vehicles and bringing them up to working condition.

And where did they fix up these run-down vehicles? What facilities did they have to bring radios and weapons back to life? In a makeshift motor pool and repair yard that doesn’t compare to the repair operation in Mosul, where buildings, sheds and work areas were already established.

In Baghdad, the support battalion was offered a gravel lot containing a few concrete pads for vehicle repairs. They soon transformed it into a well-stocked motor pool and repair shop, complete with the sound of generators humming, socket wrenches cranking and welders’ torches crackling.

They turned mobile units into a tool shed and used old car seats and a shade tent for a common area.

The battalion’s mechanics and four welders have been doing more than bringing hand-me-down vehicles back to life. They’ve also been busy equipping Strykers with new add-ons for adaptation to the reality of wartime Baghdad.

One of those add-ons is a sniper blind for the soldiers who stand in the hatches. The mechanics and welders fabricated rebar frames that can be covered with camouflage netting to conceal the soldiers from snipers, who have become prevalent in Baghdad. Stryker mechanics have been helped by General Dynamics contractors, many of whom also extended their stay in Iraq to accompany the brigade to Baghdad.

The support battalion also helps maintain the brigade’s people.

Each platoon has a medic from the support battalion on each patrol. The support battalion medics also staff the aid stations on base. The ripples of the full brigade’s sudden shift to Baghdad reached into the medical component as well–aid station personnel had packed up all medical supplies for the expected trip home, so they had to reorder supplies such as medicine and bandages, said Maj. Mary Reed, with the medical company.

“We might have had a Band-Aid left,” she said. “Somewhere.”

Reed said the medical company prepared for an increase in the need for mental health services after the extension was announced but that the services weren’t needed much. She mostly attributed the outcome to the work of others, like commanders and chaplains, who made sure a variety of resources were available after the extension was announced.

Reed said the medical company did see an increase in heat-related dehydrations once the brigade moved to Baghdad as soldiers acclimated to temperatures that reach into the 120-degree range. But she said those cases dropped off after two weeks as soldiers learned to keep hydrated and leaders shortened patrols during the hottest part of the day.

Not all of the needed gear qualifies as brigade gear. Some of the items that needed rounding up were of the personal variety.

Capt. Jeff Dayton said that, by the time the extension was announced, most soldiers were down to a rucksack’s worth of personal gear that included a few changes of clothing.

Most of their belongings were found and rerouted to Baghdad, but Dayton said few soldiers have unpacked the extra gear. Mostly it’s so they won’t establish a sense of permanency in Baghdad, he said.

“The more stuff you put up, the longer you stay.”

Taji looks similar to Camp Stryker in many ways, but soldiers live differently here. The base used to be an important Iraqi Army Base and many of the structures still remain. Soldiers with 2-1 are staying in long, open warehouse-type buildings dubbed appropriately as “barns.” Each barn holds a company worth of soldiers, usually more than 100, in bunks positioned in one large open area. They, like the soldiers at Camp Stryker, use porta-potties and have running water for showers.

The barns do have electricity and air conditioning and, recently, soldiers began installing Internet connections in their quarters.

Several soldiers said they prefer the barns to tent living, although neither offers an optimum amount of privacy.

While truckloads of personal gear were returned to the brigade after the extension, many soldiers have decided not to open what they packed and prefer to keep the “living out of the suitcase” aura to make it seem like their return home is imminent. Still, many have purchased small comforts at the PX and local shops available on base. Who wouldn’t feel a little more at home with a giant Winnie the Pooh fuzzy blanket?

While Taji has a large PX and two dining facilities, along with a food court that includes Subway, Taco Bell and the sinful Cinnibon, the 2-1 soldiers have to take a 10-minute bus ride between the amenities and their living quarters. Some have even purchased bikes to make their way around base. Some say it’s an inconvenience, while others say they prefer to hunker down in their own area away from some of the other units that have been here several months.

One highlight of the base is a 25-meter swimming pool, a popular area for soldiers during the high temperatures. The Alaska-based soldiers even convinced the powers that be on base to keep the pool open through October. Normally the pool closes at the end of September as temperatures begin to cool in the autumn season. But with the afternoons still reaching into the high 90s, the soldiers made a convincing argument that they could hack the chilling waters in the unheated pool and that it should be made available for a little while longer.

None of them, however, would be willing to check the box on the application asking if the applicant plans to remain in the state, or country, indefinitely.

Patton, who spent more time in Anchorage stationed at Fort Richardson than most soldiers, asked about the governors’ race and other headline topics in Alaska. But for the most part, he said soldiers don’t pay much attention to politics. Except for the Stars and Stripes and precious internet access, there isn’t much time to keep up on state elections and even national politics.

Patton did issue a prediction about at least one political figure. Remembering how U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited soldiers, including the 172nd last Christmas in Mosul, Patton said he’d be surprised if Rumsfeld made any holiday visits this year.

“I don’t think he’s coming this year,” Patton said. “If we’re still here.”

Signs like these are posted on the shower trailers around Camp Stryker in Baghdad, reminding soldiers and others to conserve water and utilize “combat shower procedure,” a phrase I think kind of sounds like some sort of personal hygiene mission worthy of a battle plan. Really, it’s just a way to encourage water conservation in a desert combat zone.

Living conditions on Camp Stryker, and the other bases soldiers of the 172nd were moved to in Baghdad after its extension, is a major concern of many family members. On this end, few soldiers gripe about the accommodations. Not that they’re calling it the Hilton, but many acknowledge that the two-man “choos” with beds, lockers, and sometimes a porch, as was the norm on bases in Mosul, were the upper crust of combat living.

Here at Camp Stryker is some quintessential Army living, with acres of the low-slung Army tents, supported along the sides with sandbags. Cots replace beds, although air mattresses to accompany them are coveted. Some soldiers warily eye the green or blue, Alaska-type tarps that cover the tents, hoping the brigade makes it home before rainy season arrives in earnest and the tarps resilience is tested. But the tents are air conditioned and have electricity. Some soldiers said the biggest change was having to adapt to the lack of privacy in the tents, compared to the choos.

Flush toilets were the luxury on bases in Mosul. But rows of porta-pottys offer more ways to conserve water here. The showers offer hot water, but like most Fairbanks cabin dwellers with a holding tank know, an occasional rush on water usage can cause some showers to be more luke warm than hot.

Still, many soldiers said even though these accommodations are a step down from the bases in Mosul, they could be much worse.

“You can’t become accustomed to luxury living in a combat zone,” said Spc. Zach Sherman of the 4-23.

The chow hall offers much of the same foods as in Mosul; hot entrees, sandwich fixings, salad bar, dessert bar, hamburgers, French fries and some fried mozzarella sticks I’ve taken a particular liking to. But, unlike Mosul, when soldiers just can’t stand the thought of another routine meal at the dining hall they can escape to the Burger King or Pizza Hut on base. There’s even a 24-hour coffee shop called Green Beans. It seems to the be the choice coffee shop chain for combat zones, touting shops elsewhere in locations like Dijibouti, Kyrgyzstan and Kuwait.