Stryker Brigade News

Haifa Street: The day after

Aug-15-2007 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

Wesley Morgan has published another article while embedded with the 1-14 CAV, 3/2 SBCT. Excerpt:

In the morning (Wednesday, August 8), I geared up before first light. We were supposed to roll back to the forward operating base around 0600, but there was a delay: The cameras positioned on the perimeter of the outpost showed very few pilgrims. Apparently the holiday hadn't really started yet – the marchers last night had been Shia from southern Iraq who had arrived early. "Nobody knows when this damn holiday actually starts," Peterson told me in frustration – the terps, apparently both Sunnis, had no idea either.

There was further confusion over a vehicle curfew that was supposed to coincide with the holiday; the Iraqi Army's jundis were enforcing it already, but the Maliki government had declared that it would begin in the evening. In the meantime, I sat around and talked with some of the soldiers from Peterson's security squad over Cocoa Puffs.

Finally, the colonel appeared again and gave the order to mount up. We threw on our armor, walked beyond the sandbags and concrete Jersey barriers to the Strykers, piled in, and were on our way. Because of the delay, we didn't have time to do another foot patrol, so the three Strykers just did a driving tour of the area of operations, with the colonel pointing out different areas and explaining their demographics to me, and returned to the FOB, just in time for a scheduled meeting with three officers from the Taji Counterinsurgency Academy.