Stryker Brigade News

The sheiks and mukhtars later decided to hold a smaller event here to see how people took to the idea.

“It was really a good idea, but it would be a lot tougher to do in Mosul,” said 2nd Battalion, 8th Field Artillery Regiment Command Sgt. Major Victor Martinez.

His unit is part of 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (SBCT), and is responsible for Qayyarah, a town of about 10,000 people, about 60 miles south of Mosul.

Terrorists continue to target Mosul, a sprawling city of 2.5 million people, in bombing attacks.

“The governor felt like if we did this in Mosul, and it wasn’t successful, it might turn the momentum” of recent successes that included the capture of Madhi Ahmed Moussa, a man coalition forces believe to be one of the most powerful terrorist cell leaders in northern Iraq, said 2-8 commander Lt. Col. Brad Becker.

Becker’s unit was on hand to support the event, but Iraqi army forces provided the bulk of visible security.

“I wanted to be completely in the background,” Becker said. “This was their idea, their plan and their march.”

Much of Becker’s work to ensure the success of the event began hours ahead of the mid-morning march.

The night before, Becker, Martinez and about a dozen soldiers rolled out of Forward Operating Base Q-West in four up-armored Humvees to find out what local leaders knew about a botched enemy bombing in the area.

“They had two 152mm rounds — big ones — buried in the road” between the tiny villages of Cheila and Huriya, Becker said.

The improvised explosive device detonated by accident on the morning of July 3, about 15 minutes after Brig. Gen. Ali Atalah, commander of the 1st Iraqi Army Battalion here, had left a nearby traffic control point.

No one was hurt in the explosion, but the incident was a sharp contrast to the peaceful stretch of several months here in the rural section of the Tigris River Valley.