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Support soldiers' actions sometimes invisible, always indispensible

Jan-20-2006 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

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By MARGARET FRIEDENAUER, Staff Writer

MOSUL, Iraq--The darkened city appeared dormant after curfew Monday night. No people on the streets, shops closed, sheep huddled and sleeping, entire neighborhoods swathed in blackness from sporadic power outages. No vehicles on the road.

None, except for a convoy of armored U.S. Army vehicles hustling through the city. The big-rigs, flatbeds and Humvees weaved through town, accompanied by escorts to protect their cargo of tires, a Stryker engine, mail and a variety of other supplies coveted and needed by soldiers at bases situated around Mosul.

Like the newspaper delivery boy and the milkman, these support soldiers' efforts are hidden behind the scenes, sometimes by the cover of night. Each infantry soldier among more than 3,000 in the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team needs a plethora of equipment and services to keep him in the fight. Each likely has seven others and one civilian contractor working to support him, said Lt. Col. William Keyes, commander of the 172nd Brigade Support Battalion headquartered at Forward Operating Base Marez.

Soldiers with this battalion, BSB for short, support several bases around Mosul's perimeter, in outlying rural areas and as far away as Rawah, near the Syrian border. Repairing Strykers. Refueling Humvees. Ordering paperclips. Distributing ammunition. Organizing convoys. At the root of all they do is the success of a soldier's mission; success that, sometimes, just means coming home alive.

"It's the brigade commander saying he wants blueberry muffins in Rawah," Capt. Kevin Pelletier said, referring the remote combat outpost near the Syrian border.

And sometimes it's the soldier in the same Stryker, who is wounded and in need of immediate care under battle conditions, as experienced by Spc. Fernando Mendoza, 23, a medic who said his November experience in Rawah still haunts him.


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