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Coolidge soldier adapting to strain of war

Apr- 7-2004 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

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By DOREEN OBERMEYER, Editor

"I think I was out driving guard that day," he said. The Army Specialist is assigned to the 2nd infantry 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team stationed in Mosul, northern Iraq.

Home for a 17-day furlough, he spoke last week about what it's like to be a soldier in a strange country far from home.

"The kids, they love us, they come up and they wave sometimes and they'll ask us for candy and stuff." He said, for the most part, the Iraqi civilians in Mosul are friendly to the troops stationed there. They understand the coalition military forces are there to help with restructuring the country and to ready Iraqi security forces to take over the job of peacekeeping.

But not everybody is happy they are there.

"You can tell when you go into a hostile part of town because people will just stare at you and kids won't run up to you," he said. Mosul, the city where Saddam Hussein's two sons were killed in July, has been the site of increasing attacks from terrorist and insurgent groups in the last month.


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