Search for soldiers goes on

MOSUL, Iraq - Three Stryker brigade soldiers and at least two Iraqi policemen remain unaccounted for today after a tragic sequence of events Sunday along the Tigris River.

The search will continue today for a Stryker soldier lost when the Iraqi police boat he was aboard capsized and for two pilots attached to the brigade whose helicopter crashed while they were looking for the missing soldier.

Later Sunday, a policeman was killed and another wounded, most likely by Stryker troops who opened fire on a truck near the helicopter crash site, according to brigade reports Monday. The Stryker soldiers had been drawn into a shootout between the police truck and another vehicle at a traffic circle.

The incident reports describe a chaotic afternoon and evening along the river that runs through the center of this city of 1.8 million.

They also detail the efforts of one Stryker soldier who put into the river in a second boat to pluck two of his buddies from the water and save the life of their Iraqi interpreter. Army spokesmen in Mosul earlier incorrectly reported the interpreter had died.

The missing soldier from the capsized boat was identified as Staff Sgt. Christopher Bunda, a squad leader in the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment. The pilots were identified as Lt. Adam Mooney, 28, and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Patrick Dorf, 32, both from the 3rd Squadron, 17th Aviation Regiment based in Fort Drum, N.Y.

The boat and helicopter accidents add to a list of water-related tragedies that have befallen the Fort Lewis-based brigade since it arrived in Iraq nearly two months ago. Three soldiers were killed Dec. 8 when two Stryker vehicles plunged from a collapsed embankment and landed upside down in an irrigation canal.

Soldiers from the Stryker brigade were watching two islands in the river Sunday afternoon in an effort to catch insurgents who've been firing mortar rounds on U.S. positions in the city.

According to reports, Bunda asked a local ferry operator if he'd give his troops a ride out to the northern of the two islands. After getting the OK from his platoon leader, Bunda and the squad rode the ferry out for a look. They didn't find anything and returned to the shore.

A little later, four Iraqi policemen approached in a small motorboat and asked Bunda if he wanted to take his men to the southern of the two islands for a look there.

The battalion's report of the incident said it's in question whether the squad leader got permission from his command. He and two other soldiers, Sgt. Ryan Richards and Cpl. Clinton Anderson, and their interpreter headed out with the four policemen.

They tried to land on either side of the island but couldn't, so Bunda told the police to take them back to the shore of the mainland, according to the report.

Instead, they headed toward the north island, passing beneath the ferry cable and another line stretched low enough across the river that soldiers had to crouch to pass.

When Bunda realized the police were taking him the wrong way, he told them to turn and head back to shore, as he said before. But as they were changing directions the boat ran out of gas and began to drift back toward the cables, according to the report.

They passed back under the first cable. They were going to use the second cable to pull themselves to the shore, until the interpreter warned them it was a high-voltage power line.

The soldiers and policemen avoided the line, but the boat caught on it and flipped over, spilling the three soldiers, interpreter and four policemen into the water about 5:15 p.m.

Richards, the interpreter and one policeman managed to hang onto the boat. Anderson sank to the bottom before he could remove his heavy flack vest, drop his weapon and swim back to the surface to the boat.

He tried to swim to the shore but realized the current was too swift and that he couldn't make it safely.

The report doesn't make clear what happened to Bunda or the other three Iraqi policemen after the boat capsized.

It was about that time that Pfc. Jeffery Newberry got another Iraqi policeman to take him out on another boat. They got to Anderson and pulled him on board, then headed for the capsized boat.

Richards, hanging on, told them he'd be OK, so they pulled in the interpreter and the policeman, both of whom were unconscious, not breathing and without a pulse, according to the report.

Newberry administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation to the interpreter while Anderson began working on the policeman.

The Iraqi officer on board steered the boat to Richards - still with the capsized boat - pulled him on board and headed for the shore.

By the time they got there, Newberry had revived the interpreter. They left him and the officer on the shore and headed back into the river to search for Bunda.

As darkness fell, they returned to shore to get flashlights and another interpreter to help them give better directions to the Iraqi policemen piloting the boat.

They searched the river while two companies from the Stryker brigade and soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division looked along the shore.

Meantime, a OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter that had arrived a little after 6 p.m. to help in the search apparently clipped wires across the river and crashed about two miles south of the capsize site at 6:37 p.m.

Soldiers from the Stryker brigade and the 101st arrived a moment later and began to search for the pilots. They were joined a little less than hour later by four more helicopters and four Navy jets to provide air cover.

The search and rescue team arrived from Baghdad about 9:40 p.m., and shortly before 11 p.m., soldiers found one of the pilot's helmets in some vegetation at the river's edge.

The helicopter was eventually pulled from the river and trucked to a logistical support area near the Mosul Airfield.

Commanders searched the river until late Sunday and returned at 7 a.m. Monday. Brigade officials said troops would return this morning to continue to look for the missing.

The shootings involving the Stryker troops and Iraqi police occurred a little before 10:40 p.m. Sunday. Stryker soldiers had set up a blocking position at a traffic circle east of the crash site when two vehicles approached the circle at high speed - a silver Opel followed by a pickup.

Three soldiers on foot said they heard several shots fired and saw muzzle flashes and thought the passengers in the cars were shooting at them, so they returned fire.

The Opel sped past, but the truck stopped in the traffic circle. A third vehicle pulled up behind the pickup, dragged something or someone from the truck and sped off.

Soldiers checked the truck and found two AK-47 automatic rifles, blood smears in the bed and numerous bullet holes in the rear and side. The report said one Iraqi officer was killed and another wounded, though no bodies were found inside the truck.

Not long after that, Iraqi police arrived and through their interpreter said their officers had been in a shootout with the silver Opel as they headed toward the traffic circle.

The battalion incident report said the police truck had no lights or other police markings.

Officials said it's likely the policeman was killed by fire from the Stryker soldiers. But investigators haven't ruled out that they might have been shot by the suspects they were chasing.

Capt. Sarah Soja, the brigade's staff attorney, said 101st commander Maj. Gen. David Petraeus likely would soon appoint an officer to head an investigation into the shootings.

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

For regular reports on the brigade, sign up for an e-mail newsletter at www.tribnet.com/registration.

U.S. troops and a helicopter search along the Tigris River at Mosul on Monday for a soldier and two pilots missing after another helicopter crashed Sunday while searching for victims of a river patrol boat that had capsized.

Three soldiers missing

MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

MOSUL, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces were searching for a Stryker brigade soldier and two helicopter pilots missing late Sunday after two apparent accidents along the Tigris River.

The missing American soldier was one of four brigade soldiers and several Iraqis aboard a boat that capsized in the river about 5:15 p.m. local time, officials said.

The two helicopter pilots were searching for the soldier when their OH-58 Kiowa Warrior crashed a little over an hour later about two miles to the south. The downed helicopter was partially submerged in the Tigris, officials said.

Two Iraqi police officers and one local interpreter were killed when the boat capsized, and other Iraqis might also be missing, said Maj. Trey Cate, spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division.

The missing soldier is from the Fort Lewis-based brigade's 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment.

The pilots are from the 3rd Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Drum, N.Y., which provides aviation support for the Stryker brigade in its mission in Iraq.

Cate said authorities weren't sure how many Iraqi police were on the boat.

Cate and the Stryker brigade spokesman, Lt. Col. Joseph Piek, said they had no information about the causes of either incident. Cate said there were no reports that either the boat or the helicopter had come under fire.

They said they had no information about the type of boat or why the soldiers and police were aboard the vessel.

It might have been an effort to find insurgents using the river to move weapons and mortar teams into position for attacks on coalition bases in Mosul.

Two 101st soldiers were injured Friday afternoon in a mortar attack on the coalition base at the Mosul airfield. Officials believe the rounds might have been fired from just onshore along the Tigris, which flows a mile or so east of the airfield.

The 101st is in the process of handing over responsibility for Mosul and the rest of northern Iraq to a Fort Lewis-based headquarters element, the Stryker brigade and Iraqi security forces.

Cate said 101st and Stryker brigade troops were searching along the river late Sunday on the ground and in the air, along with Iraqi security and fire crews.

The boat capsized in a stretch of the muddy river that forms a backward S southwest of brigade headquarters at Saddam Hussein's former presidential palace complex north of the city center.

Three other 2nd Battalion soldiers aboard made it safely to shore.

The helicopter went down on the east bank of the Tigris just across from the populous old part of Mosul. When rescuers reached the helicopter, they found no one onboard, officials said.

Another squadron helicopter crashed shortly after takeoff Friday evening near its base at Qayyarah, about an hour south of Mosul, killing the two pilots.

One flier was from the 3-17th, the other from the 101st's 2nd Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment.

The Army identified them Sunday as Chief Warrant Officers Michael T. Blaise of Tennessee and Brian D. Hazelgrove of Alabama, both 29.

Michael Gilbert: mjgilbert41@yahoo.com

(Published 12:01AM, January 26th, 2004)

Build an army, build a nation

MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

MOSUL, Iraq - It was inspection day at the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps barracks, and 1st Sgt. Eugene O'Day did not have high expectations.

The last time he was through, the place was a mess - "just nasty" is how the Stryker brigade soldier put it, with dirt and trash all over. And this time didn't start out well when O'Day found a melting ice cream bar in the first locker he checked.

But by the time he was done walking through a dozen or so 16-by-20-foot hooches - each the cramped living quarters for 12 Iraqi soldiers - he was impressed.

"Floors clean. Wall lockers clean," he told the troops through an interpreter. "We're starting to get to standard now."

Granted, it's not the standard O'Day demanded of his recruits back when he was a drill sergeant at Fort Benning, Ga. But it was good enough that he didn't have to follow through on his promise of the week before to cancel four-day passes.

O'Day and other Stryker brigade soldiers at the former presidential palace compound in Mosul have a lot riding on the defense corps. The Iraqi troops man the guard towers and provide security within the base.

Eventually, the Fort Lewis soldiers will train their Iraqi counterparts to conduct mounted and foot patrols outside the base, as more experienced defense corps teams already do elsewhere in Mosul.

Overall, the brigade is inheriting from the 101st Airborne Division a force of about 4,400 defense corps troops across northern Iraq, along with another 15,000 police officers, security guards, corrections officers and border patrolmen.

And beginning in the next month or so, Stryker soldiers in Tall Afar, west of Mosul, will help Iraqis set up a brigade in the nation's new army. Coalition advisers have already created four infantry battalions elsewhere in Iraq, with another 23 to follow over the next few years, officials said.

The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is working to build forces that will protect the nation's new government against enemies inside and outside its borders.

"We are developing forces which are under political control, accountable to the nation, and defensive in capability and intent," Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, commander of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team, said at a briefing last week in Baghdad.

Eaton headed the Army transformation program at Fort Lewis in 2000 and 2001.

"Our vision is to man, train and equip nine infantry brigades, a small coastal defense force, and the beginning of an aviation element to establish the foundation of the Iraqi army run by Iraqis," he said.

The defense corps for now serves as a kind of Iraqi national guard that at some point might merge or be assumed into the new Iraqi army, officials said.

There are two companies, totaling about 250 defense corps soldiers, stationed at the Mosul palace. Three Stryker noncommissioned officers from the brigade's headquarters company - Sgt. 1st Class Devon Roy, Staff Sgt. David Cook and Sgt. David Williams - have been assigned to help their Iraqi counterparts train their troops.

The three do physical training with the Iraqis each day, act as mentors to the Iraqi NCOs, and try to pass along the U.S. Army's way of doing things in hope of instilling professionalism in the Iraqi troops.

One thing holding them back is a lack of running shoes, Roy and Williams said. They're thinking of writing home to see if anyone has any ideas for scrounging up a hundred pairs or so for their new soldiers.

Many of the men who join the defense corps used to be in the Iraqi army. There were some 110,000 troops put out of work in northern Iraq last summer when the coalition dissolved the old army.

But some have no military experience. Some at the palace are clearly too old or in poor health. Typically, they move on, Roy said.

They come to the brigade after attending a three-week basic training course and being vetted for Baath Party associations. Basic training subjects include human rights, military values, commands in English, and Arabic literacy.

Across northern Iraq, of 4,500 who applied, 4,300 were hired and nearly 4,000 trained.

About 2,900 were on the defense corps books last week. Eaton, in his briefing in Baghdad, said he figures a 25 percent dropout rate is about right.

At the palace, 34 soldiers quit last week after their first payday, 31 of them from the newer of the two companies.

The soldiers complain the starting pay of $70 a month for privates isn't enough, although it's a good deal more than the $3 a month draftees made in the old Iraqi army.

Enlisted pay ranges up to $140 for sergeant majors. Officers start at $125 and top out at $250 a month for a brigade commander.

Teachers make about the same as soldiers. Police pay is about $120 a month, officials said.

All the Iraqis, from the company's top sergeant, Sgt. Maj. Yousif Kaboo Saadon, to enlisted men like Pvt. Imad Jamal, say the money is the major issue.

"We are always at the ready, we don't care," Saadon said of the risk of attack by insurgents, especially because recently they've come after Iraqis as often as Americans. "But they should pay us more money."

Saadon, 29, has a wife and four children in Dohuk. He's a Kurd, and said he began soldiering as a pesh merga fighter in 1989.

Jamal, a 19-year-old Arab from Mosul, joined to earn money to support his parents and his developmentally disabled younger brother. Some of his buddies quit after receiving their first pay last week; Jamal is sticking it out.

"If our salaries are improved and our rights are protected, we will stay," he said, in English he learned from working around U.S. troops in Mosul the past 10 months. He figures $200 a month would be a good salary.

"We are risking ourselves to bring bread for our family," he said.

Defense corps units are built to be ethnically diverse like the country, with Kurds, Arabs, Yazidi, Turkmen and Christians.

"All different groups are working to defend their country and then to make a living," Saadon said. He said they all get along "like brothers."

Roy said he's observed that to be usually the case. There is some ethnic tension, but it's subtle. To put all soldiers' minds at ease, he said, U.S. mentors and defense corps officers agreed to bring in an Arab sergeant major as well.

That's no knock on Saadon, Roy said.

"Sgt. Maj. Saadon is the glue," he said. "He's what's holding them together."

Eaton said if the U.S. military could racially integrate in the 1940s and '50s, the Iraqi military can work as a multiethnic organization today.

Saadon had his men ready when O'Day, Roy's boss as the headquarters company first sergeant, rolled through for inspection on Thursday.

The barracks are spare. There are six bunkbeds, some still awaiting mattresses. Each soldier gets a 36-by-18-inch wall locker, with a U.S.-provided hygiene kit.

He said the troops responded to inspection the same way the recruits did when he was a drill sergeant at Fort Benning. After he'd inspect for one or two items in one barracks room - towel folded and stored properly, boots neatly under the bed - those items would be in perfect order when he arrived at the next barracks.

The soldier grapevine works fast.

Two guys did get caught with their jackets stuffed under their mattresses - soldiers can't just stuff things under their mattress.

As O'Day was leaving, he noticed Saadon with the two offending troopers locked up in thigh-burning duck-walk position.

"He's smokin' those guys," the first sergeant said. "They won't do that again."

The 101st began, and the Stryker brigade will continue, a professional leadership development course for promising soldiers they spot in the ranks.

Brigade commander Col. Mike Rounds has met with defense corps leaders in the region as well as the chiefs of the other security services.

"These guys may have been on the fringe of being our enemy," and at that time didn't show an appetite for the fight, he said.

"But they all have an appetite for building their country. They're on track for that," Rounds said. "They take great pride in what they're doing and in their country."

Roy said some of the soldiers who were part of the old Iraqi army think they should retain the rank and status they had before, but the new leaders and their U.S. advisers tell them this is an entirely new enterprise.

Some quit. Some accept that if they do a good job and tough it out, they'll move up in rank, responsibility and pay.

They've got a good example in Roy. The 28-year-old Vancouver Island native has been promoted seven times in his 9 1/2 years in the Army.

His regular job in the brigade is the NCO in charge of the air defense artillery section. Obviously, there is little need for the three-soldier section's services, so they've been put in charge of training the Iraqis.

That's fine with Roy. He joined the brigade in August after a stint with the U.S. Army Space Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

"This is without a doubt the most honorable thing I've done in the military," Roy said. "We're building the country from the ground up, and to have a real hands-on role is great."

"These men will be the basis on which the Iraqi army will be built," he said. "To work with them, to train them - it's a great experience.

Michael Gilbert: mjgilbert41@yahoo.com

(Published 12:01AM, January 26th, 2004)

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