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Renewed push to send brigade from Fort Lewis to Iraq early

Jan-11-2007 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT , 4/2 SBCT

MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

An Iraq-bound Stryker brigade will leave Fort Lewis ahead of schedule as part of the “surge” of U.S. forces that President Bush announced in his speech to the nation Wednesday night, a military official said.

The 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division is one of several units that will go early as part of the president’s plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Baghdad and Anbar province.

A military official at the Pentagon confirmed the list of units to McClatchy Newspapers on condition of anonymity. It was to be formally released today.

Meantime, family members of the 4,000 local Stryker troops who are already in Baghdad said they’re bracing for the prospect that the president’s plan will call on their soldiers to work overtime.

The 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division is seven months into its second yearlong tour. Its soldiers were among those engaged in heavy fighting Tuesday along Haifa Street in the heart of the Iraqi capital.

Some family members said they’re now almost resigned to the prospect that their soldiers’ tours will be extended – just like the Alaska-based Stryker brigade that the Fort Lewis troops was sent to replace. [...]

Officials at Fort Lewis said Wednesday that they’d not been notified of any change in the 4th Brigade’s schedule. [...]

Its departure date has been a moving target. This past summer, its officers said they’d be going to Iraq in the summer of 2007 to succeed the 3rd Brigade. In December, they said they’d go in May. Now it’s unclear when they’ll go.

The brigade completed a major exercise last month that saw its units convoying all over South Sound highways and conducting mock checkpoints, raids and firefights in the residential areas at Fort Lewis.

Next it’s scheduled for a mission rehearsal exercise in late February and early March at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., high in the Mojave Desert.

It’s unlikely the Army would cancel the brigade’s last major training event in its preparations for a combat deployment.

Fort Lewis officials likewise said they’ve received no word of an extension for the 3rd Brigade. They said that’s a decision commanders in Iraq would likely make much later in the brigade’s tour.

“So much can change on the ground in Iraq in six months’ time,” said Fort Lewis spokesman Joseph Piek.


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