Posted on 02/17/2004 4:21:06 PM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
MOSUL, Iraq - A Stryker brigade soldier was killed and another wounded Monday when their Humvee struck a roadside bomb, brigade officials said.
The incident near Tall Afar, about 35 miles west of Mosul, marked the first death of a Stryker soldier as a result of hostile action since the Fort Lewis brigade arrived in Iraq nearly three months ago. Eight others have been killed in accidents.
The attack was one of two roadside bombings carried out against Stryker troops Monday. In the other, about 9:45 a.m. near a village southeast of Mosul, the explosion caused no injuries and minor damage to a Stryker vehicle. Soldiers chased and captured four men suspected of setting off the device.
The fatal bombing occurred about 5:15 p.m. as a convoy was returning to the 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment's headquarters at Forward Operating Base Fulda, about six miles south of Tall Afar, officials said.
The squadron has units spread out all over the far northwest of the country, covering the Syrian border and the cities of Sinjar, Rabiyah and Tall Afar.
The convoy of two Humvees and three trucks had traveled to Mosul Airfield to deliver the squadron's first batch of soldiers on their way home for 20 days of mid-tour leave. The vehicles were returning to Fulda with mail and supplies, brigade officials said.
Rescuers drove the two injured soldiers to Fulda and then flew the more seriously injured of the two to an Army combat support hospital at the airfield.
One soldier died on the way, said Lt. Col. Joseph Piek, spokesman for the Fort Lewis-based Task Force Olympia, the headquarters for coalition forces in northern Iraq.
The other was treated at Fulda for a shrapnel wound to his arm, officials said.
The vehicle sustained three blown tires and shrapnel damage to the body.
In the earlier attack, insurgents set off the improvised explosive device, or IED, as a convoy of Strykers from the brigade's C/52 Infantry anti-tank company passed by Amarkan, a village about 18 miles southeast of Mosul.
The company is assigned to provide security and assist local officials with rebuilding projects throughout an area southeast of the city. The sector, with several predominately Christian villages and towns, has been largely free of attacks on U.S. forces.
When soldiers stopped to assess the damage from the explosion, they spotted what looked to be a second IED. It was an initiating device with an antenna and a second artillery shell, although they weren't rigged together to explode, according to reports to the brigade headquarters.
That's also when they saw four men in a Volkswagen attempting to drive away from the area. Soldiers wanted to stop them for questioning, since most IEDs are set off by remote control by persons watching nearby, usually within a few hundred yards.
Insurgents use cell phones, garage-door openers, toy car controllers and any other devices that emit an electronic signal to set off their bombs when the target vehicle passes by.
Soldiers in Strykers chased the Volkswagen, and when it wouldn't stop, they fired warning shots. And when it still didn't stop, they put at least one round through the vehicle's rear window.
None of the men inside was struck, but they stopped and were detained, brigade officials said.
The explosion caused minor damage to the Stryker's drive shaft and an antenna on the roof, but the crew was able to drive the vehicle back to Mosul, officials said.
Late Sunday, soldiers from the brigade's 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment captured three men believed to have fired a volley of rocket-propelled grenades at an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps checkpoint near Qayyarah, about 35 miles south of Mosul.
One of the Iraqi soldiers suffered a shrapnel wound to the upper right thigh in the attack, which occurred about 8:20 p.m., according to reports to brigade headquarters.
A platoon from 5-20's B Company was less than a mile away and, arriving on the scene, detained the three men as they tried to drive away. One had burns on his clothing and smelled like smoke, perhaps from the back blast that occurs during the firing of a RPG.
Soldiers administered a field test called a shooter identification kit, which can confirm whether a person has recently fired a weapon. The results were positive for two of the three, and all were taken into custody, brigade officials said.
Monday's attacks bear out that roadside bombs remain the most persistent threat to Stryker brigade troops in the north. With daily sweeps of major thoroughfares, the brigade finds most of them in the city before they can be set off against coalition forces.
On one major route between the presidential palace at the north end of town and the Mosul Airfield at the south, soldiers from the brigade's 18th Engineer Company have found nine roadside bombs in the past 30 days, including one Saturday, said brigade engineer Maj. Heath Roscoe.
One detonated Feb. 6 behind a convoy near the northernmost bridge over the Tigris, with no damage to vehicles or injury to troops.
A U.S. bomb team with a robot disarmed one along a major north-south route on the west side of town Feb. 10, and an Iraqi ordnance disposal squad disarmed three more that evening.
American military police and Iraqi police found a cache of bomb-making materials at a house not far away the next day, including some seven pounds of TNT, according to brigade reports.
Coalition forces disarmed two more on Wednesday, one in southeast Mosul and the other near the Qayyarah office where coalition and local officials work on rebuilding projects.
Michael Gilbert: mjgilbert41@yahoo.com
MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune
MOSUL, Iraq - It was the very last thing Lt. Walter Hicks expected to encounter in Iraq: Snow.
It came down - heavily at times - across northern Iraq Sunday, mixed with freezing rain so that Hicks and the other soldiers on his convoy north of the city froze their you-know-whats off.
"When we left Mosul it was just like when it snows back at Lewis, all drizzly and mixed with rain," Hicks said. "But as we drove farther north, it kept getting snowier and snowier."
He estimates there was an inch to an inch-and-a-half on the ground at Badush, where he and others from A Battery, 1st Battalion of the 37th Field Artillery Regiment went Sunday to check on a contractor destroying ordnance at an ammunition storage point.
It's about a 20-mile drive north of Mosul - fluffier snowier all the way up, slushier and wetter all the way back.
Locals say it snows every three or four years in Mosul, but quite a bit each year in the higher elevations north of the city. Heading north, it's a long steady climb to the mountains and the border with Turkey.
It didn't help matters that Hicks' humvee gun truck has no back doors and a gaping hole in the roof where the gunner, Spc. Daniel Beltran, has to sit the whole ride.
Worse yet, there's no heater.
And even worse than that, Hicks said a soldier who shall remain nameless (that would be Spc. Dison Luzama, the rear gunner) managed to clobber him with a gigantic snowball. Right in the back.
But Hicks, Luzama, Beltran and the humvee driver, Spc. Gary Thomas, aren't complaining too much.
Come the heat of July, they'll be dreaming of Sunday's snowstorm.
Michael Gilbert: mjgilbert41@yahoo.com
(Published 12:01AM, February 16th, 2004)
Lt. Walter Hicks and Spc. Daniel Beltran of the 37th Field Artillery Regiment were soaked to the bone after a snowy, rainy 40-mile round trip in an open Humvee.
"Dear Lord,
Lest I continue
My complacent way
Help me remember
Somewhere out there
A man died for me today
--As long as there be war
I then must
Ask and answer
Am I worth dying for?"
Private Mail to be added to or removed from the GNFI (or Pro-Coalition) ping list.
Too bad the round wasn't from a MK-19.
Worse yet, there's no heater.
And even worse than that, Hicks said a soldier who shall remain nameless (that would be Spc. Dison Luzama, the rear gunner) managed to clobber him with a gigantic snowball. Right in the back.
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Thanks for adding the snow story.
Touching follow-up.
How do IEDs hold up under slush?
Y Roadside Bomb Kills One U.S. Soldier in Iraq ~ Task Force Olympia Soldiers, Tall afar ~ AP | 2/17/04
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A soldier from Lena has died while serving in Iraq.
Private First Class Nichole Frye, 19, died after an explosive device hit her convoy in Baquoba. That's a town about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. It's been the site of numerous attacks against U.S. troops.
Pfc. Frye was assigned to Company A of the 415th Civil Affairs Battalion based in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
She is the tenth Wisconsin soldier to die in Iraq.
Jason Allen is in her hometown of Lena. Tonight on Action 2 News at Ten, people share their memories of Nichole Frye.
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