Stryker Brigade News

It’s a wartime mission to make the roads safer for Stryker brigade supply convoys and infantry soldiers who need to move freely around Nineveh Province.

Combat engineers from Fort Lewis sweep nightly for cavities where bombs might hide; another team based out of Germany comes along later and plugs some of the holes with concrete. [...]

Up ahead, soldiers spot a hole in the road covered by a green sack, a sign of possible mischief. Sgt. Jason Harris brings the Buffalo up broadside to the hole, and Spc. Jackie Pickren extends the machine’s 30-foot hydraulic arm. He scrapes the surface with a rake that’s attached to the end of the arm. Then he flips the tool over and jabs at the loose dirt and gravel with a pick.

“We call it proofing the hole,” explains Spc. Ben Sherman, a soldier in the back of the Stryker that scouts ahead of the Buffalo. [...]

The 73rd Engineers operate under the cloak of darkness, with no smiling Iraqi children around to offer thumbs-ups and waves. They work behind the scenes, where they don’t get the infantryman’s glory of racking up captured or killed enemy fighters.

But Sgt. Jesse Grandinetti, the sergeant of 1st Platoon, says that’s OK with him.

“I think everybody respects everybody equally in this brigade,” Grandinetti says, riding in the Buffalo as it roamed western Mosul early Thursday. “We do the best we can clearing the road for them so they can come out here and take down the high-value targets. We basically make the road safe.” [...]

Insurgents have figured out that one small hole in the roadway will get progressively bigger – and hold progressively larger and more powerful explosives – if they keep detonating IEDs in the same spot, said Lt. Ernest Urquieta, the 73rd’s executive officer. [...]

In one week, the platoon filled 15 holes for the scouts of the 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, the Stryker unit responsible for patrolling the Tal Afar region, said the engineers’ Capt. Michael Votca. [...]

“The pothole repair mission not only denies the enemy use of a place to hide an IED, but it also repairs the infrastructure of Iraq,” Votca said.

Meanwhile, the soldiers of the 73rd continue to handle the nightly street sweeps. In addition to the Buffalo, each platoon has three of the engineer-variant Strykers. They can be fitted with a heavy-duty plow for pushing aside garbage, animal carcasses or anything else that might conceal an explosive.

Because Mosul is crosshatched with so many busy roads traveled by Strykers every day, the engineers must work quickly and have learned to distinguish a real threat from a phantom.

“The tricky thing is, you could be out here all night long and 90 percent of what you’d be looking at is trash,” Grandinetti says. “You wouldn’t be able to clear a single route.”

Even on their slow nights, these soldiers don’t work anything close to banker’s hours. But you’re not likely to hear them complain about it as the days grow hotter and the moonlit nights feel cooler.