[TexKat]

God bless these 3 men and all of their love ones. And may the injured one be totally healed.

[Howlin]

Crap.

[The Shrew]

A ping for your treadhead list!

Regards,

TS

[Old Sarge]

Not a good start for the Stryker Brigade.

Damn, fellas...

[demlosers]

Ping.

[Peach]

Oh, no.

May their families feel the strength of prayer and may God hold these soldiers close to his heart.

[Libertina]

Sad ping. God bless and comfort their families.

[KriegerGeist]

I know this is small consolation, but it is appropiate here.

2 Corinthians 5:1-9

Our Heavenly Dwelling

1. Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.
2. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling,
3. because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked.
4. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
5. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
6. Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.
7. We live by faith, not by sight.
8. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
9. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.

[Humidston]

Prayers for Donald from Houston and Steve from Illinois!!

[mystery-ak]

This happened in Balad..it's been raining there for a week and my hubby said the mud is over his ankles...God Bless these soldiers..what a way to start their mission.

[CurlyBill]

God Bless each of these men. May he take them into his Kingdom and give their families comfort in their time of grief. Each of them a true American Hero!

[GeronL]

There is a reason Iraqi's never drove near those levee's and embankments... well, they probably been shot but... how many times have we heard this story? Those things are not safe.

[Samwise]

All humanity is of one Author, and is one volume; when one dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.

-- JOHN DONNE (1572–1631)

[cavtrooper21]

As a trooper for many years, I can honestly say that mud can be just as deadly as a bullet and even worse, you can't get away from it.
Weather is a soldier's worst enemy, just ask any of the gunts or treadheads out there.
A real shame that these ment perished in such a manner, and my heart goes out to the families, and my prayers to the troops, Stryker Bde, 101ABN, 3rd ACR and and all the rest of them.
Have a SAFE and if not all that festive, a dry, warm and secure holiday season..
CT 21

[Steve_Seattle]

I am not ex-military, so can someone explain to me why there are so many "accidental" deaths [of soldiers] in Iraq (and presumably other wars)? Is it because in war the military is doing a lot of dangerous things that aren't technically combat-related? Is it poor training? Carelessness? As Donahue used to say, "Can somebody help me with this?"

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Three killed, one injured in Stryker accident in Iraq

MIKE GILBERT; The News Tribune

NEAR DULUIYAH, IRAQ -- Three Stryker Brigade soldiers from Fort Lewis were killed Monday evening when two Stryker vehicles plunged from a collapsed embankment and landed upside down in an irrigation canal near the Iraqi town of Duluiyah.

The accident occurred about 5:30 p.m. (6:30 a.m. Monday PST) as infantrymen were just beginning nighttime patrols in the area.

The names of the deceased are being withheld pending notification of their families.

A fourth soldier was revived after he was pulled from one of the vehicles. He was evacuated by air to an Army hospital at the nearby city of Balad. Information about the extent of his injuries was unavailable at presstime Monday.

It was the first fatal accident involving a Stryker since the vehicle was introduced into the Army 18 months ago, and the first deaths in the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division since it deployed from Fort Lewis in mid November. It comes in just the first week of the brigade's operations in Iraq.

"An embankment on a road collapsed, causing two Stryker infantry carrier vehicles to roll over into a canal," the brigade said in a statement. "The accident was not a result of hostile action. It is unknown whether recent heavy rainfall contributed to the cause of the accident.

"The cause is under investigation.Units who have been operating in this area the past several months had cautioned Stryker leaders that vehicle rollovers posed a serious risk. They said everything from M-1 Abrams tanks to Humvees have rolled on the narrow, unimproved tracks that run through this mostly rural and suburban area along the Tigris River.

After the accident, only the wheels of the flipped, eight-foot-tall vehicles could be seen above the waterline of the canal.

Soldiers worked throughout the predawn hours today to pull the vehicles from the canal and return them to the brigade's forward operating base.

It was unclear at presstime whether the dead soldiers were riding in the same Stryker. It was also unclear whether they died from drowning or from injuries sustained in the rollover.

Meanwhile, the brigade's commanders used tactical radio to tell other soldiers to push on and focus on their mission. Infantrymen have been conducting patrols, traffic checkpoints and other operations in the area.

"We take the death or injury of any soldier very seriously and our thoughts and prayers are with the families of these soldiers," according to the brigade statement. In addition to hundreds of traditional Army vehicles, the 5,000-soldier brigade is pioneering 309 first-generation Strykers. At $2 million apiece, they feature cutting-edge surveillance and communications gear, move on wheels instead of treads and are designed to deliver infantry troops quickly. They also are covered with a cage-like "slat armor" to protect them from rocket-propelled grenade attacks

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 was with an infantry company doing field operations at the time of Monday's fatal accident. (Published 8:57PM, December 8th, 2003)

[watchin]

My son is in the Stryker Brigade in Iraq. We heard from him this morning, but probably won't hear again for eight weeks.