Stryker Brigade News

Ryan Krumblis has all the look and sound of a war veteran. Getting shot at is all in a normal day.

"Generally, it's a small rate of fire. Nothing too substantial," he says.

But when you see the photos and hear the stories, it's hard to believe Ryan's just been in Iraq since August -- in the army a bit over a year. He's a radio-telephone-operator, and takes photos to document his life working in the third largest city in Iraq.

"Mosul used to be old Nineveh, so there's a lot of history there," he says, though there's little time for sightseeing. There are so many streets, and Ryan and his buddies of the First Platoon Regulators, Charlie Company of the 172nd Strike Brigade patrol each one. In their mission, there are no front lines.

"We're generally on sector 12 to 18 hours a day and we have a platoon covering a sector 24 hours."

It means stopping cars, searching homes, and being shot at a lot. Life and death are a step or an instant apart, like last October.

"As we were loading up [in a vehicle], we had a white four door sedan pull around the rear of our security, and when he did, he opened up with an RPK, which is a fully automatic machine gun. When this happened, he put about 30 rounds in the back of our vehicle. Seven of them that we know of actually came into our vehicle. We had one of our riflemen hit in the back of the next. Fortunately, he was wearing his interceptor body armor and it was deflected," Ryan says.

"It's very loud. It's very confusing. Because on the streets, it's hard to hear where it's coming from because it's echoing on the buildings around you."