Reporting from Iraq

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.”