Posted on 01/04/2004 5:55:29 AM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
CAMP PACESETTER, Iraq - Spc. Christopher Byers got a 21st birthday "present" he'll never forget: an explosion directly under his backside.
Soldiers with Company A of the Fifth Battalion, 20th Infantry, patrol the town of Samarra, Iraq, on Dec. 23. Their Stryker vehicle is at right.
The Stryker driver was ferrying his squad to a raid in Samarra when a bomb buried in the road blew up beneath his driver's compartment. It demolished the left front wheel and filled the vehicle with dirt and debris, but no one was seriously hurt and the vehicle was still drivable.
"It was like sitting inside a small car with all the windows rolled up, and you fired off a .12-gauge shotgun inside," said Byers' buddy, Spc. Kenneth Rickman. "It rang everybody's bell pretty good."
The run-in with the roadside bomb was as close as the Stryker brigade came to taking casualties during its two-week operation in Samarra. The last Stryker units pulled out of the city a few days ago, leaving it to troops from the 4th Infantry Division.
Brigade officials called Operation Arrowhead Blizzard, their first major operation in Iraq, a success. They said they captured at least seven guerrilla leaders, seized weapons and ammunition, and convinced at least some residents to have faith in U.S. forces rooting out the bad guys and setting up the political and economic recovery of their city.
They said the operation validated many of the concepts from the three years spent developing the Army's first Stryker brigade at Fort Lewis - for instance, that they could quickly move large numbers of heavily armed infantrymen. A Stryker company is more than twice the size of a typical mechanized infantry company.
"Our ability to saturate an area with dismounted soldiers was awesome," said Maj. Adam Rocke, the operations officer with the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment.
Finally, they showed that they can handle a mission in a tight urban environment without taking heavy casualties. To date, no brigade soldiers have died since three were killed in a Dec. 8 accident in which two Strykers tumbled into an irrigation canal.
Now it's haircut, shower and laundry time as the Stryker soldiers refit for their next mission, a move from Camp Pacesetter. It will be their first big relocation since crossing from Kuwait and rolling into north-central Iraq a month ago.
The first units have already headed out. For security reasons, the brigade won't allow reporting on the timing and destinations.
Good thing they weren't in a Humvee
Byers took over as his squad's driver two days before the bomb strike Dec. 20. He said he volunteered to give the other driver a break.
His vehicle was eighth in line in a convoy of about 20 A Company Strykers on the way to a raid about 4:30 p.m. He and Rickman, the vehicle commander, said they were driving through a small ditch in the road when the explosion rocked the front of the vehicle upward.
Rickman said the blast knocked him down from his standing position in the commander's hatch, while the two soldiers standing in the two rear hatches were nearly tossed out of the vehicle.
It took a moment for the thought to sink in: "We just got blown up!"
Realizing he wasn't hurt, he checked on Byers. He saw the driver's hatch open, so he figured he must be all right.
Byers said he had a hell of a headache and couldn't hear. Other than that, he was intact.
"The armor did its job, it really did," he said.
Rickman said they found parts of the wheel rim a block away.
Had Byers been driving a Humvee, the blast would have killed him, said company commander Capt. Mike Shekleton.
Byers suffered a concussion and still has a hard time hearing out of his left ear, the one closest to the blast.
Back at Camp Pacesetter, medics gave him a shot of Demerol. He said his headache lasted five days. The battalion's putting him in for a Purple Heart.
The squad did odd duty here and there over the next six days as they waited for its vehicle to be repaired, but that was only because a part had to be shipped from the United States. Otherwise, soldiers said they could've been back out with their company in a day or two.
Byers' vehicle was the second Stryker to be struck by an IED. The first blast, on Dec. 13, ruptured a fuel line in the engine, igniting a fire that eventually moved to the passenger compartment and set off ammunition and explosives. The vehicle was destroyed. Only the driver was injured, suffering a broken right ankle and foot.
After the most recent blast, OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopters spotted men driving away from the scene in a vehicle and tracked them to a house. The men shot at the helicopters along the way.
Shekleton said he's not sure they're the same men who set off the IED, but they were captured and held for shooting at the helicopters, at least.
Byers said he told his mom back home in Lewistown, Mont., about the attack, but only by e-mail. He couldn't bring himself to break the news to her over the phone.
"She's one of those country moms who really, really loves her son, and she'll freak out over any little thing," he said. "I called her over Christmas, and that's when all the questions and crying came."
A good haul in insurgents, munitions
Stryker troops in Samarra captured at least seven so-called "high-value targets" - insurgents on the 4th Infantry Division's list of suspected planners, financiers and organizers in the areas north of Baghdad up to Tikrit.
Throughout their stay at Pacesetter and during the Samarra operation, the brigade has worked under the command of the 4th I.D. The brigade is officially part of the 2nd Infantry Division.
They detained another 50 or so men for possession of weapons and bomb-making equipment, according to a brigade press release, and discovered at least 26 weapons caches.
Stryker troops hauled away more than 500 mortars, six mortar tubes, 200 155-mm artillery shells, nearly 200 rocket warheads, 53 rocket-propelled grenade launchers with 143 RPGs, 228 AK-47 assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Most of the seized weaponry was later destroyed.
One of the IEDs they seized was fashioned with the warheads from two SA-7 surface-to-air missiles.
"The guy was technically proficient," said Lt. Col. Buck James, the 1-23 commander. "I don't think he meant to make any friends with it."
Soldiers also bulldozed three homes they said were connected to the setting of the IEDs.
High-tech tactical Internet
Stryker soldiers said Samarra also validated the use of the brigade's tactical internet to disseminate instructions and plan operations. Commanders communicated over dashboard computers, known as FBCB2s. Each Stryker vehicle has one.
The system identifies each friendly unit with a blue icon on a computer screen that shows either a map or a satellite image of the area. Each vehicle broadcasts its location by radio and global positioning system with the overall picture updated every few seconds.
Troops in and around Samarra communicated by e-mail and by plotting information on the digital map, such as operational boundaries, convoy routes and target locations.
"You could look on there and see that you were in exactly the right place in a town that didn't have a single traffic signal or street sign that we could see," Shekleton said.
It used to be that each unit would track its position by talking on the radio and by using a paper map.
The Samarra operation revealed just one flaw with the new equipment: The satellite pictures loaded in the FBCB2s didn't always keep up with Iraq's busy construction industry. In some cases, there were new buildings standing where the pictures said there should be a road or open ground.
Operation began with a win
Brigade officials said the tone for the Samarra operation may have been set two days before it was even launched. On Dec. 15, soldiers from the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment killed 11 insurgents who ambushed them while on reconnaissance patrol inside the city.
All told, brigade troops killed 15 enemy fighters, brigade officials said.
Commanders think the results of that first firefight led guerrillas to either leave town or lie low once the Blizzard operation began. Lt. Col. Buck James, the 1-23 commander, said his troops were fired on only sporadically, and never in any organized attack.
Everybody's 'beautiful'
The operation wasn't without its lighter moments. Like the time a platoon from the 1-23's A Company raided a house where all the men had slipped away. The women there called the interpreter over and told him to tell platoon leader Lt. Patrick Callahan that they thought he and his soldiers were beautiful.
It didn't take long for the rest of the battalion to dub Callahan "the Brad Pitt of Iraq."
"It wasn't just Callahan," protested 1st Sgt. Christian Johnson. "She called all of us beautiful."
An attachment to Samarra
If there's one regret, it's that the brigade won't be sticking around to see if the gains soldiers made against the insurgency can take hold in Samarra.
After several days, the locals began to approach the Stryker troops with information about suspected guerrilla leaders and weapons caches, officers said.
One such tip led to one of the 1-23's largest finds: a cache large enough to require three truckloads to haul it all away.
Insurgents in recent months have targeted Iraqis working with the Americans. But Shekleton said it became clear after several days that some people were losing their fear of being seen talking to U.S. troops.
"They said, 'We like it when you're around here. Everything is safe and peaceful,'" he said. "'We wish you'd stay all the time.'"
It's impossible to know for sure what the people of Samarra think, because reporters don't take to the streets without Army soldiers along. But it's evident that some Stryker soldiers developed an attachment for the place.
Maj. Chuck Hodges, the 1-23's executive officer, said he wishes the brigade could stay to follow its combat operations with the kind of civil affairs work that revives local government and sparks economic recovery.
"You'd like to have taken things to their full conclusion," he said.
Michael Gilbert: mjgilbert41@yahoo.com For regular reports on the Stryker brigade, sign up for an e-mail newsletter at www.tribnet.com/registration.
From the editors
Last week, News Tribune reporter Mike Gilbert wrote an item about the various wish list items for soldiers in the Stryker brigade. Since then, the newspaper has been inundated with calls from well-meaning readers who want to fulfill those wishes. Unfortunately, we aren't at liberty to provide an address in Iraq. The Army News Service says on its Web site: "The Department of Defense urges the general public not to send unsolicited mail, care packages or donations to service members deployed unless they are a family member, loved one or personal friend of a troop." The News Tribune regrets any confusion this might have caused.
(Published 12:01AM, January 4th, 2004)
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 | South Carolina | 115.00 |
7 |
16.43 |
201 |
0.57 |
68.50 |
8 |
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Brigade officials called Operation Arrowhead Blizzard, their first major operation in Iraq, a success. They said they captured at least seven guerrilla leaders, seized weapons and ammunition, and convinced at least some residents to have faith in U.S. forces rooting out the bad guys and setting up the political and economic recovery of their city.
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Michael Gilbert's recaps Stryker Brigade's busy, and productive, first weeks in Iraq.
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I'm beginning to see a developing confidence in the Stryker. Hummer's are great vehicles for what they're designed to do, but you can't expect them to provide crew protection - that's what an APC is for.
"You could look on there and see that you were in exactly the right place in a town that didn't have a single traffic signal or street sign that we could see," Shekleton said.
This capability could perhaps have prevented the whole incident in which PFC Lynch was captured (and others were captured or killed) The problem started when they got lost.
It's odd that some folks are so negative about the Stryker for not being as well-armored as a tank, which makes it a "death trap". It's not a tank! It's not intended to be a tank. It's a whole different sort of vehicle, with a different mission. Tanks aren't that efficient at transporting personnel. As this article points out, the troops in the Stryker that was attacked were a whole lot better off than if they'd been in a Humvee. Sounds to me as if the Stryker's doing its intended job. Sorry it didn't withstand that bomb's blast as well as a tank would have. You can't carry the whole Army around in tanks.
Seven, that's one insurgent per remaining wheel of the damaged Stryker--
Ba'ath boys, Ba'ath boys,
Watchoo gonna do?
Watchoo gonna do win dey come for you?
Times seven.
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