Brigade is ready to roll
MOSUL, Iraq–Over the next several weeks, members of the 4th Battalion, 11th Field Artillery, 172nd Stryker Brigade will assume combat operations at Forward Operating Base QWest in northern Iraq as its predecessor returns to Fort Lewis in Washington.
Departing soldiers have been giving members of Alaska’s Stryker Brigade “right-seat rides” in their Stryker vehicles to prepare them for their mission over the next year.
“The thunder rolls and we are ready to go,” said the unit’s commander, Lt. Col. Scott Wuestner, as he took off his body armor following a right-seat ride through his area of operations with Lt. Col. Bradley Becker, commander of Fort Lewis’ 2nd Battalion, 8th Field Artillery.
“We know what our mission is,” he added.
Wuestner’s battalion takes over an area of operations where two other Stryker battalions from Fort Lewis have worked since fighting began. Since they are new to the fighting, members of the 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division and the 2nd Battalion, 8th Field Artillery, 1st Stryker Combat Brigade Team, 25th Infantry Division, have passed on their knowledge to Wuestner’s soldiers.
That knowledge is vital. The battalion shoulders the same responsibilities with fewer personnel than the previous two battalions.
The 172nd Stryker Brigade assumes responsibility for combat operations in northern Iraq, with the city of Mosul as the focal point. In that context, the 4th Battalion, 11th Field Artillery will conduct operations in the Tigris River Valley. The battalion’s moniker is “Task Force Thunder.”
Many of those operations will be of an economic, political and military nature. It is what Wuestner calls an “effects-based operation.”
Working with the local sheiks and muktars who comprise the Regional Security Council is also crucial to economic growth. Sheiks are wealthy local individuals who wield influence with the various tribes. Muktars are the mayors of the towns and villages throughout the valley.
–From The Fort Lewis Ranger
September 2005
Stryker troops face big task in Mosul
Col. Robert Brown gave some insight Wednesday into what the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team may face during the next 12 months of its deployment in Iraq.
Brown is the commander of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, which will return to Fort Lewis, Wash., after 11 months in Iraq. The 172nd is taking over operations and duties in northern Iraq from the 1/25th.
Brown spoke from Mosul via teleconference during a special Defense Department operational update briefing at the Pentagon on operations in northwest Iraq.
Brown said that during the last year, the 1/25th has fought from Fallujah, Baghdad and the Euphrates River valley, up the Tigris River valley, in Mosul and out to the Syrian borders.
Brown’s soldiers faced tumultuous times and suffered 33 fatalities. The brigade experienced both pre-election and post-election Iraq and weathered the changing tide of public opinion. He described the 1/25th’s activities over the last year. He estimated the brigade conducted some 2,100 cordon-and-searches and thousands of aggressive offensive operations, killed approximately 550 insurgents and captured more than 3,000.
Soldiers acclimate to Iraq’s desert heat
It’s rainy and chilly in Interior Alaska, and the long dark days of winter are fast approaching. But the 3,800 soldiers of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Forts Wainwright and Richardson have acclimated to scorching sun and 100-degree temperatures as they settle into their yearlong deployment in northern Iraq.
They have found that the Arctic training they underwent in Alaska readied them for the rigors of the desert.
“The same discipline and leader skill that it takes to train and survive in Arctic conditions are the same skills that you need to train and fight in hot weather conditions,” said brigade commander Col. Michael Shields.
“The battalions have been very busy,” Shields said. “There are no down days. They are fighting the threat every day at platoon, company and at the brigade level.”
October 2005
Brigade takes on variety of projects
Soldiers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Wainwright and Fort Richardson Army posts have been busy in Iraq.
The Task Force Freedom Multinational Force-Northwest in Mosul has issued several press releases over the last two weeks about the activities of the brigade, including detaining suspected terrorists, finding weapons caches and recovering explosives. But the brigade is also carving out time for humanitarian projects.
According to Maj. Herman B. Cheatham Jr., chaplain with the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment with the 172nd, soldiers with the 1-17th held a one-day medical clinic for Iraqi citizens in the unit’s area of operation.
Soldiers conducted a medical screening of women, children and men in Al Jededa, a neighborhood within Mosul. The team consisted of interpreters, medical professionals, infantry soldiers, coalition forces and a religious support team.
Cheatham said the clinic was mainly an effort of goodwill to the people in the local area. More than 234 people were medically screened and treated.
Stryker Brigade finds weapons caches
Huge. Significant. Crippling to anti-coalition forces. Like an early Christmas.
Soldiers with the 4th Squadron, 14 Cavalry of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Wainwright are running out of words to describe the importance of the number of weapons caches they are finding in recent days throughout their area of operation in Iraq.
The 4-14 is stationed out of Rawah in western Iraq and patrols along the Euphrates River Valley. According to the unit’s operations officer, Maj. Michael Hood, soldiers discovered two significant cache sites early this week that are larger than the jackpot found last week at a chicken farm outside Anah. That find was the largest the brigade has uncovered. Hood said the two finds this week add to a huge number of weapons that have been uncovered and destroyed.
Included in the find were more than 180 rocket-propelled grenades, 1,600 artillery projectiles, 38 antitank mines, 200 machine guns and assault rifles, hundreds of pounds of explosives including TNT and black powder, 50,000 rounds of small arms ammunition, five improvised explosive device initiators that allow IEDs to be detonated from a distance and eight indirect fire systems, Hood said.
November 2005
Strykers make difference in Mosul
Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry from the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team have been bringing down some big names in the terrorist organization al-Qaida.
The 2-1 is stationed mainly in Mosul and have captured more than 180 suspected terrorists in the nearly three months since the brigade left Alaska. Lt. Col. Charles Webster, commander of the 2-1, spoke with reporters Thursday from Iraq and described a recent operation that he said crippled an al-Qaida cell in Mosul.
Webster said since the brigade arrived in Iraq in August and in Mosul a few weeks later, soldiers have found what he dubs the “Opel Gang” to be particularly bothersome. While soldiers patrol the chaotic urban war zone of Mosul, they are often hounded by groups of compact cars loaded with insurgents and small arms.
They prowl the streets in their cars, attacking Stryker convoys and patrols and shooting at soldiers before outmaneuvering the Stryker vehicles and disappearing through the alleys and avenues.
Soldiers receive medals for valor
A unit with the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team honored some of its soldiers for their actions in Iraq.
Ten soldiers with the 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry, C Co. received medals Nov. 6 in a ceremony in Iraq. According to 1st Lt. Anthony Fennell, who wrote about the honors in the Alaska Post, the newspaper for U.S. Army Alaska, the soldiers received medals for their valor, one of which was the Bronze Star Medal.
The valor awards were the first of their type the Tomahawks and the 172nd have received since the Vietnam War, according to Fennell.
Soldiers who received medals for heroism, valor and conduct were 1st Lt. Jeffery Marshburn, Sgt. 1st Class Karl Zaglauer, Sgt. 1st Class Jason Wozniak, Sgt. Daniel Davila, Sgt. Charles Diale, Sgt. Matthew Gilbert, Spc. Adam Maganello, Spc. Favbian Barela and Spc. Paul Mireles. Spc. Matthew Bailey received the Bronze Star Medal.
The Bronze Star Medal is given for heroic or meritorious achievement of service in connection with operations against an opposing armed force. The Army Commendation Medal is awarded for heroism, meritorious achievement or meritorious service.
November 2005
Students get heroic designation
Fourth-grader Alyssa Weiss knows without a doubt what her father does in Iraq as part of the 172nd Stryker Brigade.
“He hands out candy to kids in Iraq,” said the 10-year-old girl at Arctic Light Elementary School on Fort Wainwright.
She and her family keep the sugar pipeline from home full so Sgt. Kenneth Weiss won’t run out of sweets. As thanks, a little girl in Iraq presented the sergeant with a yellow rose, Alyssa reported.
Other children at Arctic Light, where “A is for airborne” and “B is for boots,” have similar stories.
The public elementary school has 430 children with one or both parents in the military. About 85 percent of those students said goodbye to mother, father or both as their parents deployed to Iraq, said principal Bill Martin-Muth.
On Wednesday, Arctic Light named its student body “Hometown Heroes” because they work hard, play hard and are good while their mom or dad is away, said Sally Myers, the school’s community resource coordinator. The students, in kindergarten to sixth grade, got ice cream from Pike’s Landing and Food Factory and yellow and tan rubber bracelets.
Each also received a certificate naming them an “Outstanding American Military Family Member and a Student of Arctic Light Elementary.”
“All the attention is on the soldier or the wife left behind,” Myers said. “Nobody trickles on down to the kids to ask them how they’re doing.”
Wounded Stryker
soldier recuperates
A soldier with the 172nd Stryker Combat Team injured in a fire fight last week in Iraq is on the road to recovering.
According to Maxine Barrera, her husband, Staff Sgt. Mike Barrera suffered five gunshot wounds Nov. 19 in Mosul, Iraq after a gun battle with insurgents. The clash injured about a dozen U.S. soldiers, including Barrera, and killed one, Pvt. Christopher Alcozer.
Maxine Barrera received word of her husbands’ injuries from him directly.
“Mike was the one that called me and let me know,” she said. “He was just like, ‘I’m O.K., I’m O.K. but something happened today and I was shot.’”
Maxine said her husband was shot twice in the right hand, once in the right triceps, once in the left hand and once in the chest.
“I was really worried there for a little bit,” she said. “But he seemed calm and he was real reassuring.”
Once she was convinced that her husband was all right, Maxine said she became worried about the other soldiers and their families who were involved.
“We all pretty much stick together in our group,” She said. “Not only the guys but the wives too.”
The couple was reunited Sunday afternoon at Eielson Air Force Base. Maxine said her husband was scheduled to be on a plane arriving at Eielson to drop off another injured Fort Wainwright soldier to recover in Fairbanks. Maxine was to join her husband on the plane that would transport the couple to Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, Wash., where Barrera will continue his recovery.
According to Lt. Col. Chuck Webster, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, the clash that injured Barrera and other soldiers with the 2-1 occurred when about 15 soldiers from a Stryker platoon attacked a three-story house in Mosul that turned out to be a factory for explosive devices. In the initial attack, the platoon encountered more resistance than expected and several soldiers were wounded.
Strykers join Iraqi forces for operation
Soldiers from two battalions of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Wainwright Army Post participated in a large offensive operation earlier this month to root out insurgents and secure the Syrian border in Iraq.
Soldiers from the 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry and the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry participated along with nearly 2,500 other members of U.S. military forces, according to Lt. Col. Mark Freitag, who spoke from Iraq with reporters Tuesday. Operation Steel Curtain began Nov. 4 and lasted 18 days.
“What was special about the operation was that it was, in all circumstances, a combined joint operation,” said Freitag, commander of the 4-14.
The two battalions along with Iraqi forces were among the 1,000 soldiers conducting operations north of the Euphrates River. The 4-14 and 2-1 were mainly responsible for clearing the town of Ramana near the Syrian border. The U.S. and Iraqi forces detained 96 suspected insurgents during their operations, according to Capt. Rusty Topf, commander of B Company with the 2-1.
Freitag said the U.S. and Iraqi forces suffered no casualties and did not face heavy fire except for an improvised explosive device detonated near Topf’s vehicle.
Freitag said the areas near Ramana and the Syrian border were targeted because they are known safe havens for anti-Iraqi forces trying to enter Iraq.
Key to the success of the operation was the cooperation of the Iraqi forces, according to Freitag and Topf. The 2-1 and 4-14 worked with the 3rd Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Iraqi Operation Force, which was assembled 19 months ago. Freitag said the unit has seen combat in a number of areas across Iraq.
The Iraqi and U.S. forces were intermingled during the operation. Topf had about half the Iraqi group working under his command and the Iraqi commander, who was subordinate to Freitag, had two reconnaissance units from the 4-14 working with him.
December 2005
Injured soldier recovers in D.C.
WASHINGTON–Fort Wainwright Sgt. Wayne Landis is recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center after being injured in a Nov. 19 firefight in Mosul, Iraq, during which a fellow soldier died.
Landis, who suffered head, chest and hip injuries, was initially on a respirator at Bethesda Naval Hospital, according to his mother, Kay Landis. He was moved to nearby Walter Reed in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, she said.
His mother said she has not talked with Landis yet, but she and her husband, Arden, communicated with him using hand signs. His voice has not recovered from the respirator, she said.
“He whispered this morning to his wife that he loved her,” she said. His wife, Michelle, is also in the Army, stationed at San Antonio, Texas.
Kay Landis said her son appears to be alert and recovering well. “What gets us through is the Lord,” she said in a telephone interview from the couple’s catering and bed-and-breakfast business in Middleburg, Pa.
Her son was struck at the base of one eyebrow by what the family believes was shrapnel, she said.
Senator salutes soldier’s courage
Spc. Timothy Stewart has been through a lot in the past three weeks, but you wouldn’t know it from hearing him talk about it.
Stewart was one of a handful of soldiers in the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team called in during a raid on a house in Mosul, Iraq, that turned out to be an explosives factory. Stewart was shot in the left arm after going into the building to get others out.
A roommate in his 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry platoon, Pfc. Christopher Alcozer, was shot and killed outside the building.
Stewart, 21, returned to Fort Wainwright last week. Since then he has been living in a small, simple room on the fourth floor of Bassett Army Community Hospital with a television and a window that looks out over the mountains. Sometimes he watches “America’s Funniest Home Videos” for hours. He jokes with the nurses, and is a self-described pain in the butt.
Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who was at Fort Wainwright to tour the new hospital, dropped by his room. When she asked him what the soldiers in Mosul needed from her, Stewart answered, “Just the support.”
“I’m so proud of you, sir,” she said. Cameras snapped off shots as the senator and specialist shook hands, and Stewart started to laugh.
“How are you doing?” Murkowski asked. “You went through some tough stuff.”
“Little bit,” Stewart said.
In Mosul, Stewart spent his days patrolling, going out on missions, even blowing in doors.
“Usually you say you want to turn around and go back. I wouldn’t mind going back,” he said.
Terrorist stronghold is now training center
HAMMAM AL ALIL, Iraq–An Iraqi officer training school is rising from the rubble of war in the verdant fields of this community 15 miles south of Mosul.
The area was a hive of terrorist activity a year ago. Today, the city of 60,000 is preparing to open The Northern Iraq Regional Training Center in an effort to continue strengthening the Iraqi army for the fight against terrorism.
“Twelve months ago it was the most dangerous area in Iraq and now it’s the most safe area in Iraq,” Iraqi army Col. Haje Maher Alzebari said Thursday.
Alzebari showed the nearly completed academy to 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team commander Col. Michael Shields on Thursday. The completion of the center is a combined effort of members of the 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry from Fort Richardson and the Iraqi army. Noncommissioned and junior officers will be trained there in monthlong courses in marksmanship, combat, first aid and other leadership techniques.
“All these courses will provide the backbone for a highly efficient Iraqi army,” Alzebari said.
The center used to be the site of Mosul University’s agriculture college. But buildings had been destroyed and gutted during the war and the insurgency that followed in the area.
About a year ago, Army officials proposed creating the center. There are two other officer training sites run by battalions of the 172nd. But Shields said this center will be more formalized and quickly turned over to the Iraqis. The other two programs are also set to be turned over.
The pilot course for the academy begins Dec. 20 with 20 students. They will graduate Jan. 13. In this first course, there will be a combination of U.S. and Iraqi instructors. The campus includes several buildings that will be used for classrooms that can hold more than 200 students, newly reconstructed dormitories and training areas.
DECEMBER 2005
Election Day mostly quiet for brigade
MOSUL, Iraq–With only a handful of attacks that caused no damage or injuries, Lt. Col. Chuck Webster said the cooperation between U.S. and Iraqi forces to secure Iraq’s parliamentary elections Thursday was success.
“The coalition forces were responsible for preparing against a catastrophic event,” said Webster, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment. “And luckily, nothing happened. Maybe we did something right.”
The elections and security at polling places were the sole responsibility of Iraqi security forces, who had trained with U.S. forces in preparation for their role. More than 8,000 Iraqi soldiers and police were involved with securing polling places and searching voters.
But that’s not to say U.S. soldiers weren’t busy.
Within an hour of beginning their predawn patrols around polling areas, members of Charlie Co., 3rd platoon were hit with two improvised explosive devices along the side of the road. One of the squads left their Stryker vehicle to search for the spotter and trigger men who fire the bombs remotely, but continued the patrol a few minutes later. The series of early morning explosions prompted speculation by troops that there might be several attacks during the day.
“It’s like the Fourth of July,” Pvt. Donald Terriquez said.
Medics make do on front lines
MOSUL, Iraq–Maj. Julie Tullberg is a pediatrician who usually can be found on Fort Wainwright Army Post keeping office hours at Bassett Army Community Hospital. Normally, she sees patients under the age of 16 with complaints like the sniffles and broken bones.
These days, however, her office is in a modest aid station in Iraq and her patients are adults with maladies such as gunshot and shrapnel wounds.
“The weird thing for me is I’m treating all the dads of my patients,” she said.
Tullberg is one of three medical personnel from Fairbanks stationed at Camp Freedom Aid Station on Forward Operating Base Courage in Mosul. She is deployed with the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Ky., but attached to the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat team. Capt. Bob Hillman, a physician assistant, and lab technician Spc. Jason Tonn are also deployed here with the brigade along with six other medical staffers.
There are two aid stations on Courage. One is specifically for the soldiers of the 1st Battalion and 2nd Infantry Regiment. But the Freedom Aid Station treats all battle wounds and traumas along with other soldiers and civilian and Iraqi employees on base. Hillman said only the Combat Army Surgical Hospital in south Mosul sees more trauma cases in the northern region of Iraq.
Christmas in Iraq
everything but white
MOSUL, Iraq–It wasn’t a white Christmas, but there was just enough of a nip in the air to make it feel a little like it was Christmas Eve.
In this part of the world near where Christ was born, soldiers with the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team on Forward Operating Base Courage did the best they could to make it feel like Christmas this week.
At Camp Freedom Aid Station, the entire staff received presents from Maj. Julie Kullberg’s church group, and her grandmother knitted stockings for everyone. On Friday night, the aid station staff watched “A Christmas Story.” In the chow hall there was a life-size animated Santa Claus that belted out carols. Christmas cookies from church groups in Missouri were washed down with Welch’s Sparkling Grape Juice. Christmas trees sprouted up in operation centers and rooms all around base, and soldiers in Santa and elf hats whistled a few bars of “Jingle Bell Rock.” On Christmas Eve, the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment gathered outside its headquarters for a Christmas program that included a tree-lighting and a battalion slide-show. Each company sang an altered version of a carol, including “Oh Come All Ye Terrorists” and a version of “Jingle Bells”: “IEDs, RPGs, reports of small arms fire, Rear differentials, power packs and countless flattened tires.”
After a rough interpretation of the angel visiting shepherds in their fields–as performed by soldiers of the 2-1–Lt. Col. Chuck Webster had some more solemn words for the holiday.
“Christmas in a combat zone,” he said. “We knew it was coming but that doesn’t make it any easier.”
Soldiers tee off to wind down
FORWARD OPERATING BASE Q-WEST–As a glowing fluorescent projectile hurtled through the Iraqi twilight, narrowly missing a pedestrian on this military installation, Staff Sgt. Todd Brown yelled to the person from the roof of his workshop.
“FORE!”
Next, Sgt. Wyatt Clark went to work, and with a “whack” he sent another glowing projectile into the night sky, nearly hitting a Humvee.
“It’s OK,” quipped Staff Sgt. Phil Henize. “They’re bullet-proof.”
Welcome to tee time for the threesome of Brown, Clark and Henize at the Forward Operating Base Q-West golf range. Dress code is combat boots, camouflage, fleece jackets and anything else you don’t mind having spattered with glowing chemicals.
It’s not hard to tell that this tight-knit threesome had not graced the sport of golf with their collective talents until they were deployed to Iraq with the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team of Fort Wainwright. But this nightly roof-top ritual–involving chemical glow-sticks, golf balls and a wide-open field of gravel near the edge of the base–has provided the soldiers an unconventional, but effective, way to unwind.
“It’s something to do to break the monotony,” Brown said.
July 2006
Stryker mission called a success
Soldiers from Alaska have spent 10 months in Iraq, fighting insurgents, maneuvering through a fledgling government, training and empowering regional forces, drinking chai with locals and riding the political waves of the vexing and complicated conflict.
The soldiers have succeeded in their efforts, said their commander, Col. Michael Shields. But that doesn’t mean the work in Iraq is complete.
“The answer is ‘Yes,’ we’ve achieved our goals and objective,” Shields said Thursday by phone from Iraq. “That does not mean our work is done.”
The roughly 3,200 members of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Wainwright are the largest group of Alaska forces to deploy since Vietnam. The team increases in strength and number to nearly 4,400 when combined with the National Guard forces, joint forces and a team of airmen from Eielson Air Force Base who are attached to the brigade.
During the last 10 months, the bulk of the brigade has been stationed in the Nineveh province, an area the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined, with a population of more than 3 million.
The area includes Iraq’s largest northern city, Mosul, and some of the country’s most rural areas, which stretch west to the Syrian border. The area has a diverse population of Sunni Arabs, Shi’ites, Christians and Kurds.
Shields said the brigade’s first and most important task when soldiers arrived last August was battling insurgent activity. But through the months, the brigade also began training and working with Iraqi army and police forces.
The brigade developed two Iraqi police basic skills academies, the Northern Iraqi Regional Training Center for Iraqi army soldiers and a noncommissioned officers training academy. Now, U.S. soldiers partner with local forces on almost every type of mission.
Shields said as the local forces increase their competence, confidence grows among Iraqi residents.
During a Department of Defense briefing Friday, Shields was cautious about estimating a timeline when Iraqi forces would be ready to take full control of the province.
Shields said the soldiers’ spirits have remained high throughout the deployment, with above average re-enlistment numbers. He said morale has not been swayed by recent reports and investigations into allegations of abuse by some U.S. service members in other areas of the country.
The transition of battle space to the 3rd Stryker Brigade from Fort Lewis, Wash., has begun and Shields said he expects those soldiers to adjust to the fluid political situation just as the 172nd did.
“I fully expect they will see changes and, in the end, they will have to adapt to them,” Shields said.
And the 172nd is anxious to return to Fairbanks in the next few weeks, with hopes of making it back in time to catch a salmon or two, Shields said.