Posted on 11/16/2003 7:21:28 AM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
CAMP UDAIRI, Kuwait - The Stryker brigade has landed in Kuwait.
The last of its 5,000 soldiers were to arrive today, completing a six-day airlift out of McChord Air Force Base and the largest movement of Fort Lewis combat troops since the Vietnam War.
They've been showing up day and night at this desert post about 10 miles south of the Iraqi border. They'll spend the next few weeks gathering up all their gear and vehicles before they move up for their yearlong assignment in Iraq.
This marks the first deployment of the brigade, and the first battle test for the new fast and flexible Stryker vehicle that forms the unit's backbone.
Their departure date and ultimate destination are still being worked out, said Lt. Col. Joe Piek, spokesman for the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.
Wherever they wind up, the first job at Udairi is to move some 2,500 vehicles and cargo containers up the 50 miles from the port at Kuwait City.
The supply ships USNS Sisler and Shughart, which left the Port of Tacoma on Oct. 19, arrived in port Wednesday and were unloaded by Friday.
A bit of Stryker brigade trivia: Its first vehicle to set wheel on Kuwaiti soil was a heavy truck, which rolled off the Sisler at 3 p.m. Wednesday. The first eight-wheeled Stryker cleared the ramp of the Shughart five hours later, Piek said.
There's also the matter of settling in, even if Udairi is to be a short-term, temporary home.
Soldiers compare the Kuwaiti post to the Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., where the brigade trained for more than a month this spring. It's high in the Mojave Desert, with lots of scrub vegetation and hilly terrain.
At Udairi there's nothing green and no hills. Just flat mile after flat mile of sand. This time of year the wind blows round the clock and it gets relatively cold at night.
But the soldiers, so far, aren't complaining about the accommodations.
"I'm sleeping in a tent - on this," said Capt. Evan Gotkin, stamping his feet on the plywood floor of the brigade's tactical operations center. "That's better than NTC.
"I'm eating inside, sitting down at a table. Better than NTC."
There's a post exchange, a sandwich shop, an Internet cafe (online time costs $6 an hour), a gym, a tailor, a barber shop.
"I'm very happy with the living situation, very happy," said Sgt. Roberta Kemnitz, who was digging sandbags Saturday.
"I'm especially happy about the showers; we didn't think they'd have showers this good."
Local truck drivers are hauling the cargo containers up from the port. They're loaded with everything from lumber and spare vehicle parts to coffee makers and printers and video game consoles.
But some are warning the soldiers not to let the relatively comfortable living standards, and the gradual arrival of comfort items, mislead them about the difficulties that are likely to come when they move north.
Capt. Vinnie Bellisario, the brigade's headquarters company commander, urged his senior non-commissioned officers to remind their soldiers that things won't be easy when they cross into Iraq.
"I just want them to stay focused," Bellisario said later.
There are plenty of other reminders around, like the first-aid training session Saturday that dealt with hot- and cold-weather injuries - and burns, like the kind soldiers suffer when their vehicles are hit by rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs.
Sgt. 1st Class Brian Peplinski, a Stryker medic, offered a sobering bit of information even as he put his subject in glass-half-full terms.
"You may lose an arm, you may lose a leg," he said, "but the good thing about it is you don't have a lot of bleeding because the explosion cauterizes the wound."
He went on to instruct the soldiers in what they must do to keep a burned buddy alive - stop the burning, cover the wound, give a victim lots of water as long as he is still conscious.
There will be more instruction like that to come. Later this week soldiers will start training on Udairi's huge live-fire range, culminating in drills for how to react when a convoy comes under attack.
Michael Gilbert: mjgilbert41@yahoo.com
Staff writer Michael Gilbert is an embedded journalist with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the Army's first Stryker brigade. He has been a reporter and editor at the paper for 15 years. He began covering the military beat in February 2001, and traveled to Iraq earlier this year with Fort Lewis' 62nd Medical Brigade.
(Published 12:01AM, November 16th, 2003)
2500 vehicles for 5000 men?
Immediate action drills for how to react when a convoy comes under attack. That first road march from Camp Udairi to Tikrit or Fallujah or the Syrian border will be something to watch. I wouldn't want to be an al Jazeera video cam operator trying to film that convoy.
Unless he tags a different Yahoo address for each of his stories- mjgilbert41@yahoo.com for this one, mjgilbert40@yahoo.com for the previous, mjgilbert42@yahoo.com for the next one. I have a sort of soimilar workaround.
-archy-/-
I wish our troops the absolute best. But... I've got an odd, bad feeling about these Stryker vehicles under true battle conditions. I pray to God they will be safe.
And I imagine I'm no the only one who expects to hear reports of these Strykers getting popped left and right by RPGs and IEDs, resulting in a half a dozen KIAs at a time.
Hope like hell I'm wrong.
Considering how much a professional Betacam looks like an anti-tank missile launcher, I would not want to be anywhere near a twitchy US soldier with one
Hope like hell I'm wrong.
I hope so too. But if not, it'll be a dozen at a time inside the Strykers, assuming they're stasffed with the full squad they were developed to carry.
If the Army hedges their bets by just putting three of four inside while the rest of the squad protects the vehicle's flanks and rear outside, we'll know.
-archy-/-
Would YOU want to be giving a US soldier 1/2 second to have to decide whether what you're holding 300 yards away is a pro video camera, or a Milan rocket launcher?
archy has beaucoup pics.
I sure do feel the pain and anguish of the Troops, (and their families) who have been compelled to ride around that freaking place in those thin skins!
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