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Stryker vehicles leave for California ahead of troops

Jun- 5-2008 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

Click through for a number of photos as well.

By Chris Freiberg, Daily News Miner

When Lt. Nicolas Duimet was transferred to Fort Wainwright this time last year, he knew it meant a deployment to Iraq was imminent.

But the first visible sign of the deployment of the 1st Brigade 25th Infantry Stryker Brigade Combat Team has become more apparent to the rest of Fairbanks this week as thousands of tons of Army vehicles have been loaded onto rails, eventually destined for the desert sands of Iraq.

While Duimet isn’t looking forward to the always present dangers in Iraq, he still understands the importance of the brigade’s mission when it heads to the Mideast this fall.

“I’m looking forward to going over there and helping to keep the sons and daughters of America safe,” he said.

But before the 1-25th deploys to Iraq, they will first train for a month at the National Training Center in California’s Mojave Desert. The temperature regularly reaches 120 degrees in the desert in July, and the NTC features a small village of several hundred Iraqi and Arab actors to enhance the realism of the training.

“It’s essentially the best possible environment it could be without actually going over there,” Duimet said. [...]

Related:

Train carrying Army equipment derails in Anchorage - Associated Press


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