Stryker Brigade News

The second part of the operation is sending out troops to search out insurgent mortar teams.

“I push out the troop, and we deny the terrain,” explained the West Palm Beach, Fla. native. “We … search any vehicles in those areas, and we will investigate any suspicious activities.”

Back on the FOB, mortar teams continue to fire around the clock to deter attacks on the base and support the Soldiers out in sector.

“We shoot a pretty significant amount,,” Gervais said.

For most of the Soldiers on the mortar teams, this mission is the first chance they have had to fire mortars since arriving in Iraq nearly 10 months ago.

“We don’t get to do this mission in Baghdad, and it’s a nice change of pace to do what we’re actually trained to do,” Gervais said. “When we’re in Baghdad, we just do presence patrols, raids, clearance ops, all that other stuff just like 11Bs (infantrymen) would.”

The Soldiers have established firing points, in case a mission comes down through the fire direction center. Between missions, equipment maintenance and cleaning are performed to ensure everything is working properly and to cut down on the chance of any misfires.

Each fire team is made up of three Soldiers: the gunner, the assistant gunner and the ammo bearer.

While each job is essential, the gunner plays the central role.

“I deal with the elevation, make sure all the levels are right and make sure everything is functional,” explained Spc. Domingo Sanchez, a gunner with Troop C. “The gunner is the main person who makes sure everything is working right and everything is leveled and makes sure the other guys are doing their jobs. So if they’re doing their jobs and I’m doing mine we get the mission done.”

As Sanchez’s ammo bearer, Spc. Anthony Rogers said his main job is to prepare the rounds and get them ready to fire.

“I set the fuses and the time for when they need to burst and the charges for the flight,” Rogers said. Once all the prep work has been done, the process of actually firing the rounds is performed in a matter of seconds.

The mortar teams fire either illumination rounds or high explosive rounds, depending on what each specific mission calls for.

The request for illumination rounds is usually called in from sector at night and according to Resmondo serves two purposes for his troops.

“Once we get eyes on an observer location, we’ll call for illum., initially, just to light up an area and show the enemy that we can do that,” he explained “The second reason is so that we can observe anything that could possibly be out in the open areas.”

This two-front combination of continual mortar fire from the FOB and the Soldiers operating out in the city has seemingly paid off as rocket and mortar attacks on FOB Echo have decreased significantly.

“I think over the last few days we’ve had one rocket attack and it wasn’t very accurate. So it seems to be working,” Gervais said.

Sgt. Jason Chavis, with Troop A, said he believes that the mortar teams have had more of a psychological impact than a physical impact on militia in the area, but noted that the outcome is the same.

“Everybody’s in hiding now,” said Sgt. Jason Chavis, a Pembroke, N.C. native, speaking of the feedback he is hearing from the Soldiers out patrolling Diwaniyah every day. “They said that they’re not coming out and all the shooting and everything else has calmed down.”

As life has improved in the city, it has also improved for the coalition troops based at FOB Echo.