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Stryker brigade to return in early fall

Aug- 5-2005 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

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By MIKE BARBER

Alaska group to replace Fort Lewis troops in Iraq

The deployment of nearly 4,000 Army Stryker Brigade troops from Alaska to Iraq this month heralds the beginning of the return of Fort Lewis' Stryker Brigade this fall.

An advance team of 200 soldiers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Forts Richardson and Wainwright in Alaska are in Iraq.

They're laying the groundwork for the rest of the brigade's 3,800 members to deploy this month.

The Alaska unit is replacing Fort Lewis' 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, known more commonly as the nation's second Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

"We expect in the next couple of weeks to start seeing some of the early, early returnees" from Fort Lewis' Stryker Brigade now in Iraq, said Fort Lewis spokesman Joe Piek. ...

The Alaskan brigade will go through a transition with the Fort Lewis Stryker troops, literally cross-training by working and riding side-by-side for several weeks, Piek said.

The Stryker brigades, based in Mosul, have been assigned to operate in northern Iraq.

The return of Fort Lewis' Stryker soldiers will draw down Washington's commitment to the war, at least for a spell.

Since the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003, military bases here have sent to the war zone the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier from Everett with a crew of nearly 5,000, both 4,000-member Stryker units from Fort Lewis and last year 4,000 citizen-soldiers of the state National Guard's 81st Brigade Combat Team.


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