Home » Archives » "Stryker brigade ready for Iraq again"

Stryker brigade ready for Iraq again

Oct-14-2005 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

Link to Full Article
By Michael Gilbert, News Tribune

Soldiers in the Army’s first Stryker brigade are training up for a return to Iraq next year.

By the time they head out in June, they’ll have been home about 20 months – just long enough to rest, handle a few odd jobs at Fort Lewis and get ready for another year in combat.

“We’re back on the warpath,” said the brigade commander, Col. Stephen Townsend.

His troops are spread across Fort Lewis, Yakima Training Center and Umatilla Army Depot for a three-week exercise that features simulations of hazards they’re likely to see in Iraq. There are pretend roadside bombs and ambushes, hidden weapons caches and insurgents with a penchant for kidnapping U.S. soldiers.

The exercise is the last major event for the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division before a mission rehearsal in February at the Army’s National Training Center in the Mojave Desert.

But if needed, the brigade’s 4,000 soldiers are pretty much ready to go now, Townsend said.

They’ve been training in near anonymity compared with the last time.

The brigade spent three years under the microscope as the Army’s first to employ the Stryker armored vehicles and new high-tech communications networks. A parade of congressional and Pentagon VIPs visited Fort Lewis to watch the progress. On their way out in November 2003 they got newly designed uniforms and $20 million worth of individual gear. [...]

Related Article: Less fanfare this time as original Stryker brigade gears up for return to Iraq - Associated Press


Advertisements