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Stryker soldiers get battlefield, cultural training

Jun- 6-2005 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

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By MARGARET FRIEDENAUER
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

FAIRBANKS - Patrolling an Iraqi village where the residents were wary of U.S. troops, 1st Lt. Jeremiah Ellis approached a group of villagers and, with a few words of Arabic and the help of a translator, started a conversation.

The villagers were impressed with the Stryker Brigade member's Arabic and even more so with his penmanship of the language, which values elaborate and elegant script. He wrote "May your hand be blessed" on the hand of one of the villagers.

"I told them I wanted them to be blessed and have a hand in taking control of their Iraq," Ellis said.

Ellis is practicing walking a fine line in Iraq's culturally complex battlefield. He has a military objective to stabilize the country, but must also bridge a cultural gap so that his peace efforts don't offend his hosts.

The U.S. military has made cultural training for troops nearly as important as firearms and battlefield training. Most military personnel consider the Joint Forces Training Center at Fort Polk in central Louisiana the premier training facility for troops preparing to deploy to Iraq.

Ellis, along with the rest of the 3,800-member 172 Stryker Brigade Combat Team from forts Wainwright and Richardson, spent the month of May at JRTC in preparation for deployment this fall.

The trip to JRTC allowed troops to train in live-fire and force-on-force exercises over a month-long period. Troops spent their last week at JRTC in a microcosm of Iraq that encompasses 18 mock villages spread over several thousand acres, an elaborate charade that includes more than 1,400 role players acting as Iraqi citizens, leaders, insurgents, and media from around the world.

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