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Times UK Reporter Embedded With Strykers in Afghanistan

Mar-16-2010 » Filed Under: 5/2 SBCT

Afghanistan: Dodging the bombs - Times Online

I am embedded with the US troops of Alpha Company, the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, who operate in a Stryker brigade along a 37-mile stretch from combat outposts with names such as Ramrod and Terminator, on the border between Kandahar and Helmand provinces. As their unit’s name indicates, the soldiers patrol the road in Stryker vehicles — armoured troop carriers — acting as part attack force, part highway patrol.

“Our primary role is to secure the route and to provide freedom of movement for the Afghan people,” says First Sergeant Kevin Floyd from Perkasie, Pennsylvania. “This road is vital to the whole country, it’s the only route that runs east-west and everything that moves does so on this route.

“But it’s equally important to the Taliban, who are actively targeting coalition convoys and the Afghan army. They use the road to move weapons and fighters west, and opium east down to Pakistan. When we got here they were placing some massive IEDs [bombs] in the culverts under the road, but we’ve been blocking those with concertina wire, so recently they’ve been placing smaller pressure-plate IEDs on the side of the road.”


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