Stryker Brigade News

Dear Friends and Family,

It has been quite some time since I last wrote anything of significance. My creative spirit has been dampened by the poverty and destruction that I face daily. Part of the reason I write now is because it is nearing the end of my time here and I find that I must begin to express myself if I am to be able to make the transition from combat back to the normal world.

The primary factor in this is that last night I attended the memorial service for the sixteenth fallen "Deuce Four" soldier in our ten months in this hell that is Mosul, Iraq. His name was Private First Class Nils Thompson and he had only been in Iraq for four months, because he had completed basic training just this past winter. All of eighteen years old and fresh out of high school, Nils decided that the right thing to do was to serve his country. So, he enlisted as an Army infantryman, a job that he knew almost guaranteed that he would be sent to the front lines within a year, be it Iraq or Afghanistan. Still, he raised his right hand and swore to defend his country against all enemy's. Where do we find such men?

Last week, the day after his nineteenth birthday, Nils was out on patrol with his platoon. He was standing in the back hatch on his Stryker, pulling security while his leader's were in a meeting at an Iraqi police station here in Mosul. Suddenly, and without warning, a single shot rang out and Nils dropped to the floor of the Stryker. The bullet had struck him in the head and he breathed his last before he hit the ground. We are still looking for the shooter and we will get him.

In a Battalion of more than six hundred, I never had the privilege to meet Nils, who was in C company while I am in B company. But at his memorial, all of us that didn't know him learned what a great man and soldier he had become in his few years on this earth. We learned that he was a wonderful friend to his comrades. We also learned that he was a very spiritual man who attended both Protestant and Catholic services weekly. The Chaplin told about how excited he was that he had given a friend a Bible.

Seeing the anguish and sorrow that Nils death brought to his friends, I was reminded of my own grief at the loss of good friends and brothers. Of the fifteen that preceded Nils, three names instantly leap into my mind: Captain Bill Jacobsen, my company commander and workout partner, who was killed on December twenty-first in the chow hall bombing. Specialist Clint Gertson, a dear friend that lived within four doors of me in the barracks for more than two years, who was killed on February nineteenth by a drive-by shooter. First Sargent Mike Bordelon, a true example of a warrior, who's Stryker was hit by a suicide car bomb on April twenty-third and yet he fought for nearly three weeks, through wounds that most thought would be his end within the hour, before succumbing to those injuries.

This is the first death in the Battalion since Specialist Sayles was killed at the beginning of June. On that day, one died, two lost limbs, and ten others suffered assorted injuries. The most memorable of the assorted injuries was a soldier who decided to lay in the prone and pull security while the more seriously injured were being treated. He was found shortly thereafter, passed out due to loss of blood with his weapon still in hand. No one knew until that moment that he had even been injured. Where do we find such men?

We are down to the home stretch, and yet we must always remember that we are at war. [...] I pray that we bring all who remain back home.

All my love,
Dustin

Previous Letters from SSG Holcomb:

A Soldier's Tribute

A Soldier's Letter