Stryker Crews Find New Vehicles Can Take A Punch

SAMARRA, Iraq - Like many soldiers in the Stryker brigade, the crew of Charlie 1-4 had their worries about how their vehicle would hold up if it were struck by a roadside bomb.

Count them as big believers in the Stryker after their encounter with an improvised explosive device on a dirt street a week ago.

"If it had been a Humvee, we'd all be dead," said Sgt. 1st Class Mike Farnum, the senior man aboard Charlie 1-4 when it was struck by the IED the afternoon of Dec. 13.

Only the driver, Pfc. Chris Hegyes, 21, was injured, suffering a broken right foot and ankle. The rest of the crew was unharmed.

Their vehicle was destroyed - not by the blast, soldiers said, but by a fire in the engine compartment that spread throughout the vehicle and ignited their ammunition.

A second Stryker was hit by an IED on Saturday en route to a raid in Samarra, not far from the location of the Dec. 13 attack. Soldiers said it knocked off the left front wheel and damaged the hub, but no passengers were hurt and the vehicle continued on under its own power.

An OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter crew spotted a pickup driving away from the scene and radioed its direction of travel to other Strykers in the raiding party.

They maneuvered on the truck, surrounded it and detained five men armed with four AK-47 assault rifles, said the brigade spokesman, Lt. Col. Joseph Piek.

That the Stryker was able to continue after the bombing, and that the others could move quickly to catch the pickup, demonstrated the vehicle's agility and ability to take a punch, Piek said.

In the Dec. 13 strike, the crew from Crazyhorse Troop of the 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment were at the end of a seven-vehicle convoy. The scouts were showing infantrymen around town in preparation for the brigade's Operation Arrowhead Blizzard, which was to begin in less than 48 hours.

As it turned out, the news the next day that Saddam Hussein had been captured postponed the start of Blizzard by two days.

The convoy had been riding around the city for a few hours when they headed out at 1 p.m. to return to a staging area outside the city.

They were passing by a dirty two-story brick house - like all the other dirty mud-brick houses in Samarra - when the blast occurred directly under the center front section of the vehicle, crew members said.

"That was the loudest damn explosion I ever heard in my life," said Sgt. Johnathan Vines, 23, who was standing in the rear right-side hatch.

Soldiers said the front of the vehicle lurched upward, then bounced back. Farnum, 37, who was riding across from Vines in the left rear hatch, said a great cloud of dirt and smoke instantly flew up around them.

They didn't know whether it was a bomb or a rocket-propelled grenade, but immediately the soldiers opened fire in all directions. They call it suppressive fire, and it's meant to kill or chase off anyone who might be waiting to follow the first explosion with another attack.

Inside, their medic, Pvt. James Nguyen, a 20-year-old from Seattle, went to work right away on Hegyes. The blast occurred almost directly under the driver, whose compartment is at the left front of the Stryker.

"I kept yelling at him. I thought maybe he was unconscious," Nguyen said. "I heard him making these moaning sounds, and I knew he was hurt."

Hegyes managed to crawl over his driver's seat but then stopped moving in the tight space between his compartment and the rest of the vehicle the soldiers call "the hell hole."

"Then I put him on the floor and laid on top of him because I thought we were under fire," he said.

"Then I took him to the nearest building, found a corner and put him down and told him to stay there. I was pointing my weapon out in the street. I fired three or four times.

"Then Tillotson (Spc. Cody Tillotson, 20) came over and helped me pick him up and take him to another Stryker."

"He had his boot off and ankle and foot wrapped in like 30 seconds," Womack said.

Womack said he used the fire extinguisher on the flames that were licking from the engine compartment, but to no avail.

The fire spread and set off secondary explosions when it reached the two antitank rockets, 40 mm grenades, 15-pound shaped charges and other ammunition.

All the crew members' belongings were in there, too - their clothes, their personal photos, all their snacks, a PlayStation, everything.

"We lost all the things that make us comfortable and remind us of home," Farnum said.

Soldiers from their unit and the 296th Brigade Support Battalion rounded up replacement clothes, some poncho liners the soldiers call "woobies," and sleeping bags.

They haven't had a chance to tell their families back home about their ordeal and put in orders for care packages.

Likewise they haven't been able to send best wishes to their driver Hegyes, a Sacramento native who they said served as the crew's deejay, serving up everything from Sinatra to rap.

"He's a good kid, a great soldier," Farnum said. "He was all worried that it was his fault when it happened."

Crew members were cheered, though, by the news that their comrades in the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment on Saturday bulldozed the house where the IED had been set. After the blast the crew found wires running from the crater to the house and up to the rooftop, Farnum said.

Farnum said the crew did a great job reacting to the explosion, getting everyone out of the vehicle and getting medical care for Hegyes. If there's a next time, he said, they'll be better at catching or killing whoever sets it off.

"Oh, we'll get the guy," Farnum said. "Unless he's a world-class Olympic sprinter, he won't get away the way we've got it set up."

And for the folks at the Stryker factory, he said, "Tell 'em thanks. They did their homework."

Another Stryker rolls, one soldier thrown

MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

NEAR DULUIYAH, Iraq - Another Stryker vehicle rolled over into an irrigation canal, but this time no one was hurt, a brigade official said Friday.

One of the five soldiers aboard the vehicle was thrown clear when it rolled about 4:40 p.m. Tuesday near Samarra. The other four were quickly rescued from the submerged Stryker by two soldiers from another vehicle who witnessed the accident, said brigade spokesman Lt. Col. Joseph Piek.

Meantime, brigade officials said a supply convoy on its way Friday from the Stryker base camp to a logistics base near Tikrit was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade and small-arms fire east of Duluiyah.

The RPG detonated in the dirt along the road, destroying the windows of a truck in the convoy. Soldiers in the trucks and Humvees returned fire and kept driving through the attack.

No one was injured, and there was no information about whether the soldiers shot any of the attackers, brigade officers said.

The convoy was from the 44th Corps Support Battalion, a Fort Lewis unit attached to the Stryker brigade for its yearlong deployment in Iraq. The 44th is headquartered at a U.S. Army base just north of Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, about 50 miles north of the Stryker base.

Tuesday's rollover follows a similar accident Dec. 8, which involved two Fort Lewis-based Strykers that tumbled into a canal north of Duluiyah. The earlier accident claimed the lives of Staff Sgt. Steven Bridges, 33; Spc. Joseph Blickenstaff, 23; and Spc. Christopher Rivera Wesley, 26, all of the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment.

The vehicles were about 250 meters apart when a road along the canal gave way, plunging both Strykers into water deep enough to nearly submerge them.

The Dec. 8 accidents are under investigation by the brigade staff as well as a team from the Army Safety Center.

Piek said Tuesday's rollover is likewise being investigated.

He said the vehicle, from the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, was on a route reconnaissance mission ahead of the early Wednesday start of Operation Arrowhead Blizzard, the brigade's offensive to root out Iraqi insurgents in Samarra.

The vehicle was traveling cross-country through agricultural land when an embankment along a canal gave way, sending the Stryker rolling into the water, Piek said.

The vehicle commander was thrown. The four passengers inside braced themselves and were unharmed.

Piek said the two soldiers who witnessed the accident went into the water and opened the crew hatch in the rear ramp to get the four out safely.

There was little structural damage to the $2 million vehicle, but significant interior water damage to the engine compartment and the electrical system, which will have to be replaced, Piek said.

Following the first accident, Col. Michael Rounds, the brigade commander, ordered that no more vehicles be driven along roads next to irrigation canals.

Piek said the vehicle in Tuesday's accident was driving cross-country, not on any road.

"But that's one question that will have to be investigated," he said.

News Tribune staff writer Michael Gilbert is embedded with the Stryker brigade in Iraq. Reach him at mjgilbert41@yahoo.com.

WITH THE STRYKERS IN IRAQ

Capt. Robert Robinson, left, and Spc. Mark Webber, center, move down an alley with other soldiers from Blackhawk Company, 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment on Wednesday in Samarra, Iraq, as they raid four houses where insurgents might be hiding.

Soldiers hunting insurgents walk fine line between firmness, fairness

MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

SAMARRA, Iraq - It looks like the bad guys got out of Dodge.

Which is not surprising: They've known for a few weeks that 5,000 U.S. troops were moving in just up the road.

Stryker brigade soldiers so far have met little resistance and found few of the guerrillas they were looking for when they kicked off Operation Arrowhead Blizzard early Wednesday in this dingy, stubborn city of 210,000.

They've made one big catch: a former Iraqi regime official thought to be a senior logistical planner of guerrilla operations. Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment's Comanche Company nabbed him in their first raid early Wednesday.

And they've dealt a heavy blow to guerrillas who try to fight. The day before the operation formally began, a platoon from the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment killed 11 who tried to ambush them in Samarra just as school was letting out.

No U.S. forces have been injured, aside from the guy who accidentally shot himself in the calf with his light machine gun.

The brigade is pouring hundreds of infantrymen at a time into its half of one of Iraq's toughest cities. The other half of Samarra is being scoured by troops with the 4th Infantry Division.

The Fort Lewis soldiers swoop in aboard their Stryker vehicles, shut down several square blocks and go house to house for the folks they're after.

After an hour, or sometimes two or three, they load back up and drive away, just as another company of troops is on its way to do the same in another part of town.

This is what the new Stryker rigs were built for: quickly moving infantrymen into tight spots.

They've been doing this for three days now, varying the pattern and striking new targets. The raids don't always yield detainees and weapons, but each turns up a little more information about who's who in Samarra.

They've turned up a Muslim cleric with a wad of U.S. cash and a bad ticker.

They've turned up bunches of women, children and working men just trying to mind their own business.

They've even survived a brief, confusing firefight with each other - a reminder how easy it is even for well-trained, well-equipped soldiers to make mistakes.

And they've done it all while grabbing a few hours' rest sprawled on benches and seats in their Strykers.

'Stay on your toes'

1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment commander Lt. Col. Buck James checks in via radio Thursday morning with his company commanders.

He repeats his strategy in Samarra: Develop whatever information they can from the people in town and the detainees they bring back to camp for interrogation, then act on hard intelligence.

He won't just send units in without a destination in mind.

"I'm not willing to go on any goose chases, not interested in trawling for contact," James says.

He wants his guys to put the hammer down, but to use common sense as well. He doesn't want to make enemies out of folks who might otherwise be inclined to get on with their lives once the country calms down.

"Stay focused. Stay vigilant. Complacency is our enemy, especially now that we've been here a couple days," James tells his company commanders. "Watch out for the IEDs, the RPGs from the rooftops. I believe they may try to get bold.

"Things may step up a little bit today, so stay on your toes. Good hunting."

Rusty ordnance and an imam

That day, Capt. Robert Robinson's Blackhawk Company of the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment is on its third trip into town, this time to clear a couple dozen buildings in the southeast sector.

About two-thirds of their way through, they have found nothing but "dry holes," meaning not much of interest. Then they get orders to peel off and go to a house where several young men have been acting suspiciously on the roof and in the street out front.

It takes a few minutes for all 180 soldiers to return to their Strykers and get on their way. And there is confusion: The map grid the reconnaissance guys gave them doesn't jibe with their description of the house's location.

The Strykers haul butt around the dusty, garbage-strewn streets while Samarrans on the local version of Saturday watch from the roadside.

After several minutes, the troops reach the house. All the bad guys are apparently gone. Only Ali Ibrahim Latif and his wife and three daughters are there.

Blackhawk soldiers find an empty box of 25 mm ammunition, old artillery fuses and a mortar, two rusty AK-47 barrels and more than $500 in U.S. dollars.

Latif says the military hardware belonged to his son, an Iraqi soldier now dead. As for the money, ever since the fall of Saddam Hussein the government has paid him in dollars.

And then the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment's tactical human intelligence team - Staff Sgt. Abe Kauffman, who speaks Arabic, and intelligence collector Spc. Rachel Payne - learn that he's an imam at a nearby mosque.

Payne wants to know what he tells his congregation about Americans.

"That the Americans are good, that they shouldn't fight," Kauffman says, interpreting the imam's reply.

In the end the soldiers cut the plastic flexicuffs off Latif's wrists. He'd already stuffed his coat pocket full of his heart medicine, figuring he was going to be taken away.

But Lt. Col. James didn't want to stir up the trouble he'd have if he hauled away an imam.

Latif's daughters are delighted and quickly bring out a couple dozen warm Pepsis for the soldiers, served with a smile and many thank-yous.

An AK-47 in every home

Across the street from the imam's place, a half-dozen little kids and their mothers are in tears, quietly sobbing, as the Stryker soldiers make their way through their two-story house.

Sgt. Bud Garcia is frustrated he can't find anything in his little Department of Defense Iraqi phrasebook that means don't worry, calm down, it'll be alright.

So he offers the kids Charms candies.

Meantime, his buddies searching the home find a single AK-47 assault rifle - it seems like everybody's got one here - and bring it down for likely seizure.

But the cab driver who lives there pleads with Kauffman and Payne to let him keep it. There are so many criminals in this town, he says - "Ali Baba," is what the Iraqis say - that he needs the weapon to protect his children.

Soldiers search the house and the car. There is a motorcycle in the driveway. The guerrillas attacking Americans often ride motorcycles.

But Robinson, the Blackhawk commander, thinks the guy's story checks. He gives him back the AK. The man promises he's no trouble.

By now the kids are all smiling and giggling. The soldiers leave.

Friendly fire ever-present

The Stryker brigade is probably better equipped than any other unit in the Army to prevent death by friendly fire. The onboard computer screen on Robinson's Stryker is awash in little blue dots on a digital map of Samarra, each one indicating a friendly vehicle.

Between the Stryker brigade on the east side of town, and the 4th Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team on the west, there are a couple thousand troops in the city at one time.

But no computer system, no high-speed radio network can eliminate the confusion that comes in the heat of the moment. The 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment has one of those close calls in the first night of the raid.

Two Blackhawk platoons hold down blocking positions while a third searches buildings. Suddenly a man in a pickup pulls out of an alley between the two platoons and tries to drive past one of them.

The soldiers open fire, knocking out the vehicle and wounding the driver.

But the other platoon thinks they're being shot at, as does the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment's Comanche Company, which is convoying out of town on a nearby road.

Suddenly the night is ablaze with tracer rounds.

In just a few seconds the cooler heads realize what's going on and scream "Cease fire!" over the radio.

Soldiers will spend the next several hours laughing nervously about the episode.

"We are so lucky we didn't just kill somebody right now," Robinson said.

Sleeping five to a Stryker

Between their two missions Wednesday and the next on Thursday, Blackhawk Company spends the night parked around an agricultural outbuilding a mile or so outside town.

The Strykers button up. Those who have room sleep inside; those who don't sleep on top of the vehicles or on the ground nearby. Soldiers take turns pulling security.

Fog rolls in overnight and covers everything with a wet sheen, but it doesn't get very cold.

Inside Robinson's Stryker, there's room for five to sleep fairly comfortably: Pfc. Matthew Dick in his driver's hatch, Robinson sprawled across the gunner's and commander's seat, vehicle commander Sgt. Luis Santiago and 6-foot-4-inch, 270-pound Spc. Mark Webber sharing the long bench along the right bulkhead, and a visiting reporter on the smaller bench in the middle of the vehicle.

The Sheraton Tacoma it isn't. But it's warm and dry.

At dawn they get up and get ready for another day's work, learning they'll make another run in at 9 a.m.

"Some personal hygiene time. Then some coffee time. Then some get-the-bad-guys time," Santiago says, running through his morning's to-do list.

"Then in a year, some go-home time," he continues, thinking a little more long-term. "And then some lovin' time.

"I tell you, man, there's going to be a lot of babies when we get back."

News Tribune staff writer Michael Gilbert is embedded with the Stryker brigade in Iraq. Reach him at mjgilbert41@yahoo.com.

SIDEBAR: Troops keep 'steel' out of circulation

Some other moments from the Stryker brigade's first couple of days and nights of Operation Arrowhead Blizzard in Samarra:

•1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment's Comanche Company came across five men who claimed to be Iraqi police officers, each toting an AK-47 with two 30-round magazines. Only one had an ID card, and it was expired, and the serial number didn't match the one on the weapon like it's supposed to. All were detained.

•Troops from the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment raided a hardware store Wednesday in the northeast part of town, where they seized more than 200 AK-47 assault rifles and detained five men.

•The 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Squadron detained several drivers who tried to evade traffic control points at all nine major roads into and out of Samarra. They shot and injured an unknown number, said Lt. Col. Joseph Piek, the brigade public-affairs officer.

•Comanche Company on Wednesday evening was watching a couple of men who appeared to be putting something in the ground, possibly a roadside bomb. When troops approached the men, they ran. The soldiers fired on them but missed, and weren't able to catch them despite the help of OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopters over the next hour or so.

•Brigade engineers spent all day Thursday digging around in the old quarry just outside Samarra where the 1-23rd had set up its forward tactical operations center. They got a report that some 500 mortar rounds were buried somewhere. By afternoon, the sappers had found 71.

The 1-23rd commander, Lt. Col. Buck James, was well-pleased.

"That's less steel that we'll have to catch later," he said.

Stryker base camp hit by rockets

MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

NEAR DULUIYAH, Iraq - Guerrillas fired about a dozen rockets into the Stryker base camp early Sunday, the first time the camp has been attacked since the brigade began arriving 2 1/2 weeks ago.

The 107 mm rockets struck no closer than 400 yards to any occupied structure, and no one was injured.

But the 12:30 a.m. attack sent sleeping soldiers hustling for the earthen bunkers outside their tents.

Iraqi insurgents regularly mortar other U.S. bases in this region; many around the Stryker camp have been saying it was only a matter of time before they struck near them.

"That was a wake-up call for a lot of these guys last night, that's for sure," said 1st Sgt. Gene O'Day of the brigade headquarters company.

The brigade's counter-battery radar identified a point about 2 1/2 miles south of the camp from where the rockets were fired. A battery from the 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery responded with 155 mm howitzer fire, which apparently sent the attackers fleeing.

Capt. Vincent Bellisario, the headquarters company commander, took the base's quick reaction force out to the scene in pursuit of the attackers. He said it appeared the artillery landed within 50 to 100 yards of the insurgents.

Crews also fired on the location with .50-caliber machine guns, sending arcs of red tracer rounds flying through the night sky.

There was no sign that anyone had been hit, he said.

Instead, Bellisario and his patrol at first light found another 19 of the rockets, all armed with improvised fuses shoved into the base of the round. They were all leaning against earthen berms so that when ignited, they would fly in the direction of the camp.

He said he believes the artillery fire stopped the guerrillas from firing the rest of the rockets.

Because of the crude method of aiming the rockets, it would've been a fluke if they'd have hit anything. Tents, motor pools and work areas are spread out in clusters that are hundreds of yards apart from each other on this sprawling former Iraqi air base.

Still, incoming artillery is incoming artillery.

"It's low-tech, it's ineffective, there were no injuries, no casualties," said Lt. Col. Joseph Piek, the brigade spokesman, "but it has caused us to continue to be very aware of our our surroundings" and refine the base defenses.

"It shows they're still willing to fight," he said.

Michael Gilbert: mjgilbert41@yahoo.com

(Published 12:01AM, December 22nd, 2003)

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