Reporting for duty back home

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

ELLEN M. BANNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Spc. Michael Boyd and his daughter Victoria, 8-½, check each other out before embracing after a ceremony at Fort Lewis welcoming back 298 soldiers assigned to the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. With the arrival of the latest group, about 1,400 Stryker brigade soldiers from the division have returned from Iraq.

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The first Army brigade to take the eight-wheeled Stryker vehicles into combat is ending a yearlong deployment that included missions in strife-ridden cities across Iraq.

The more than 3,500 soldiers of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division began returning earlier this month to Fort Lewis, and the homecoming continued yesterday as several hundred soldiers showed up at a Fort Lewis gymnasium to be greeted by a brass band and hundreds of cheering relatives and friends. Stryker and Rivera

"You survived the war; now survive the peace," said Lt. Col. Buck James, the commander of the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, which was based in Mosul in northern Iraq for most of the year but also saw duty in the southern city of Kut, the Sunni Triangle city of Samarra and the Baghdad area.

Before the reunion with awaiting families, there was a moment of silence for those who did not make it home.

The brigade lost 20 soldiers to accidents or hostile fire. Some 300 soldiers were wounded in Iraq, though most were able to return to duty without being flown to hospitals in Germany or the United States, Army officials said.

	ELLEN M. BANNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Heather Leard hugs husband Lt. Dan Leard at the end of welcome-home ceremonies yesterday at Fort Lewis. In addition to happy reunions, there was a moment of silence to honor those who died.

The brigade's Strykers, the first new Army combat vehicles in more than 20 years, are hailed by Pentagon planners as a significant step toward a nimbler, high-tech 21st-century force. Carrying up to 11 soldiers, the vehicles serve primarily as troop carriers for the infantry and benefit from a new generation of computerized communications and cameras that can home in on images more than a mile away.

The Strykers, which cost more than $2 million each, also have engendered criticism from skeptics within and outside the military. Critics have said that the vehicles are an overpriced, underarmed alternative to Bradleys and other tracked vehicles, and that they are too heavy to be deployed — as originally envisioned — in quick-response airlifts to trouble spots.

Concerns about the Stryker's vulnerabilities increased in summer 2003 as the Army had to make late improvements on the armored plates and build a kind of steel cage around the vehicles to increase protection against rocket-propelled grenades.

In Iraq, there have not been mass fatalities resulting from an enemy attack on a Stryker vehicle full of soldiers, Army officials said. And while some Strykers have been heavily damaged by hostile fire, many others have withstood hundreds of hits from rocket-propelled grenades and hundreds of shrapnel blasts from improvised explosive devices.

"Back in August, my vehicle was hit with 5 RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] rounds, and all we had to do was spot-paint," said James, the 1st Battalion commander.

The Army is moving ahead with the Stryker program. The Army has decided to outfit six Stryker brigades at a cost that climbed from an estimated $7.1 billion in 2000 to $8.7 billion in 2003, according to the General Accounting Office. One of those brigades — also based at Fort Lewis — has recently deployed to Iraq to replace the 3rd Brigade.

In Iraq, the Army has readily deployed Strykers to trouble spots.

James said that units in his battalion moved about 600 miles in 24 hours to combat insurgent Shiite forces in the cities of Taji and Kut in southern Iraq. Kut had been a relatively peaceful city earlier in the year, but it was the scene of violent late-summer clashes.

For most of this year, the Stryker soldiers were based in Mosul, a major city in northern Iraq that has been racked by spasms of violence against U.S. troops, Iraqi police and national guard members, and Iraqi civilians.

Mosul is full of hilly, narrow streets and early in the occupation was one of the most peaceful cities in Iraq. By the time the Stryker brigade arrived in January, the city was becoming more violent.

Mosul was a big change from the Stryker's earlier assignment in a remote, open area of the Sunni Triangle near Samarra. Though the brigade had practiced in a mock urban setting, Mosul was so sprawling it seemed — at times — to swallow up the Stryker vehicles, James said.

Throughout the year, the Stryker brigade worked to build up Iraqi national-guard police units to take over the patrolling of Mosul.

James said the brigade made progress in training the Iraqi forces and is hopeful for the future. "I think that the people need to know we are making a difference," James said.

Some soldiers said the situation in Mosul is increasingly strained, with frequent mortar attacks on their base, numerous bombings of U.S. and Iraqi forces, assassinations of local officials and kidnappings. "It's been really tense," said Sgt. Shawn Ray, a battalion intelligence officer.

For the families of brigade soldiers, it has been a long, sometimes unnerving, year.

Laurie Patten of Dallas said the hardest moment came three months ago, when she received correspondence from her son, Ryan Badeaux, 23.

"Due to some difficult circumstances, he was asked to write one of those, 'if-something-should-happen' letters," Patten said.

After she got the letter, Patten said, she did a whole lot of praying, and so did a lot of her friends. "We were all keeping him in our thoughts, and that's what kept him safe," Patten said.

Some of the relatives of those who did not make it home also showed up yesterday. They included Jennifer Coppock, whose brother Spc. Joe Blickenstaff died in a Dec. 8 vehicle accident.

"He would have wanted us to be here; the last e-mail he sent to me said, 'please pray for our safe return.' "

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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