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Hopes, fears run high for Fort Lewis troops who served in Mosul

Feb-12-2008 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT , 172nd SBCT , 3/2 SBCT

By Mike Gilbert, The News Tribune

Fort Lewis soldiers and their families could be forgiven for feeling uneasy about the news lately out of Mosul. They made a steep investment in whatever security and stability has taken hold in the northern Iraqi city of 1.8 million.

Thousands of Fort Lewis soldiers have served there; 700 members of a helicopter squadron are stationed in and around the city now.

And of the 176 who have died in Iraq since the war’s beginning, more fell in Mosul – 46 – than anywhere else.

“There definitely is a Mosul link; I cringe when I read what is happening now,” said Maj. Bob Bennett, who spent a year there with Task Force Olympia, the Fort Lewis-based headquarters detachment that led U.S. forces in northern Iraq in 2004.

In recent weeks bombers killed five soldiers from Fort Carson, Colo., in a strike on their Humvee. A suicide bomber killed the police chief. A bomber in a fuel truck Monday killed four Iraqi troops at a checkpoint.

Insurgents are said to have run to Mosul to flee U.S. offensives elsewhere in the country. The city has been dubbed al-Qaida’s last urban stronghold in Iraq, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has promised a “decisive battle” to drive out the insurgents.

At Fort Lewis, Mosul veterans and others with an attachment to the city hope it all doesn’t mean the undoing of years of hard work.

“We have an investment in that place becoming successful,” said Army Capt. Damon Armeni, who was critically wounded there in August 2004 while serving with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

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