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172nd Stryker Brigade tour extended

Jul-27-2006 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

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By Sean D. Naylor

In a reaction to worsening violence in Baghdad, the Defense Department is extending the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team’s tour in Iraq for up to 120 days.

The move is a blow to morale of the unit’s soldiers and their families back home at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, but it is an acknowledgment that the brigade’s experience and combat savvy are badly needed in the Iraqi capital.

The 172nd has spent the past year headquartered in Mosul, and had already begun its redeployment to Alaska when word came of the redeployment to Baghdad. The move to extend the brigade was leaked by Pentagon officials to the Associated Press and confirmed by officers in Iraq.

The decision throws into turmoil plans that the brigade’s approximately 4,000 soldiers had made for their return.

“How is the spouse going to tell the kids that Dad isn’t going to be there for the first day of school?” said one senior enlisted member.

Weddings and vacations must now be postponed. Some soldiers who were due to move to new assignments elsewhere upon their return to Alaska will find that the Army isn’t willing to wait for them to get back from their extended deployment, and the job they had their heart set on will go to someone else.

Officers said it was unclear whether soldiers whose families had booked vacations in anticipation of their return would be entitled to a refund for money spent on plane tickets. “That’s going to be a challenge,” a battalion-level commander said.

The blow to morale was compounded by the fact that many 172nd soldiers and their families learned of the extension via news reports from the U.S., rather than through command channels.

“I’ve got reports that some wives found out before I even knew, and that’s just the reality of the story being leaked to the press,” the battalion-level commander told his troops.

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