Home » Archives » "Iraqi ‘Crazy Faucher’ brings gusto to service"

Iraqi ‘Crazy Faucher’ brings gusto to service

Oct-13-2006 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

SEAN COCKERHAM; The News Tribune

MOSUL, IRAQ – The Fort Lewis soldiers were all shaking their heads and marveling over it.

“It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” muttered privates, sergeants and officers alike.

They were talking about legendary Iraqi Maj. Faucher. It’s pronounced Focker, as in the Ben Stiller movie “Meet the Fockers.” Fort Lewis soldiers call him “Crazy Faucher.”

Crazy Faucher’s latest exploit came earlier this week. He crawled down a dark Mosul street and dismantled a deadly improvised explosive device with nothing but his bare hands.

Faucher is an extreme example. But as the Tacoma-based Stryker brigade soldiers are discovering, the Iraqi army does things a lot different than U.S. forces.

The American strategy to start withdrawing from Iraq is to hand over security responsibility to the Iraqis. Fort Lewis troops in Mosul spend a lot of time on the effort.

Two of them live with Faucher’s battalion, eating, sleeping and risking their lives with the Iraqis. One of them, Sgt. Ralph Flores, said it’s pointless to judge the Iraqi army, which the coalition disbanded in 2003 after the fall of Saddam, according to U.S. military standards.

“We’re 200 years old, these guys are just getting stood up,” said the 35-year-old Flores, who lives on post when he’s back at Fort Lewis.

The Stryker brigade soldiers said it’s not important whether the Iraqis do it like the Americans. What matters is that they do it well enough to work, and that they do it themselves.


Advertisements