Stryker brigade homecoming
The first wave of Stryker soldiers returned to families Thursday at Fort Lewis, with many more reunions due over the next few weeks as the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division closes its grueling combat tour of nearly 15 months in Iraq.
Once all 4,000 of the brigade’s troops arrive, Fort Lewis for the first time will have all three of its Stryker brigades at home.
Not even car trouble was going to stop Elizabeth Gipe from making it for the occasion from her home in Caldwell, Idaho.
“It started overheating and leaking oil around Ellensburg,” Gipe said Thursday at Soldiers Field House at Fort Lewis. “It was about 9:30, 10 o’clock last night, and we couldn’t get a mechanic.
“So we just did a lot of praying and kept going, and we made it all the way.”
She’ll have time to worry about the car later.
For now, she’s just overjoyed to be welcoming home her husband, Staff Sgt. Kenneth Gipe, from his third deployment to Iraq.
Hundreds of spouses, parents, kids and friends packed the field house to greet their soldiers. Many family members, like Gipe, traveled long distances on short notice to be there.
Tina Beach had a rough idea when her son, Pfc. Richard Wolf Jr., would be back, so she gambled and made reservations a couple of weeks ago to fly here from Indiana. Fortunately, the Army’s set-in-quicksand redeployment plans didn’t move Wolf’s return.
Beach fought unsuccessfully to hold back the tears as her son hugged and kissed his baby girl, 1-year-old Melody.
“I’m just so relieved that he’s back, and excited for him that he gets to see his daughter again,” Beach said.
Spc. Roger His Bad Horse was welcomed by his extended family, a dozen of whom had traveled in from the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Lame Deer, Mont.
His wife, Tempe, and aunts Rose Wallace and Althea Gleason said they would have hitchhiked to make it.
“You do what it takes to get there,” Gleason said.
And you do what it takes to get through the many months of worry, they said.
“We just had to have faith,” Tempe His Bad Horse said. “Strong faith.”
Packing up and going somewhere on short notice is kind of like how the 4th Brigade left Fort Lewis – a month ahead of schedule last April to be part of the “surge” of U.S. forces into Baghdad.
All 4,000 or so members of the Stryker brigade are expected to be home in the next three weeks. The brigade’s big redeployment ceremony is scheduled for July 1, post officials said.
The brigade lost 37 soldiers during the deployment. It operated in Baghdad, in Taji, north of the capital, and later across Diyala province.
His Bad Horse, like most of the soldiers who returned home Thursday, is with the 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, which spent the first half of the deployment in Taji, about 10 miles north of Baghdad. The battalion was later sent north to work out of Contingency Operating Base Speicher, near Tikrit.
He said the first half of the deployment was more difficult than the later months. The early homesickness and the pace of operations were hard.
The brigade suffered its heaviest losses early – 27 soldiers died in the first five months of the tour. But it lost only four soldiers since the beginning of this year, a sign of the inroads it was making in establishing security.
The brigade worked in Baqouba to restore security, public life and the economy in the shattered city that al-Qaida in Iraq once proclaimed to be the capital of its new Islamic republic.
Their predecessors from Fort Lewis, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, led a major offensive to retake Baqouba in the spring and summer of 2007. The 4th Brigade followed with operations in the towns and cities surrounding the provincial capital.
The brigade led Operation Raider Harvest in January into the so-called “breadbasket” of farming towns and villages along the Diyala River Valley.
“Your unit has given the people of Iraq hope for the future,” the commander, Col. Jon Lehr, said in a recorded statement that was played Thursday before the troops marched into the field house. Lehr is still in Iraq.
Once the soldiers arrived, the I Corps chief of staff, Col. Mike Okita, kept his welcome-home remarks brief.
“Fourteen months-plus is a long time,” he said.
The people yelled back, “Amen!”
“Thanks for a job well done,” Okita told the soldiers. “America’s Corps. Dismissed!”
And with that, the kids, moms, dads, husbands, wives and friends poured from the bleachers to mob their soldiers on the gym floor.
The brigade in November was ordered to more than double its area of operations to include all of Diyala after the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division pulled out and headed home to Fort Hood, Texas.
Lehr said the area is roughly the size of the state of Maryland.
The brigade said it killed more than 500 insurgents, cleared more than 2,200 improvised bombs and recovered more than 550 weapons caches.
The U.S. military in Iraq said the 4th Brigade reduced violence in Diyala by 70 percent, trained and supported more than 17,300 Iraqi police, and helped the provincial government restart two of three big electrical generator farms in Baqouba.
“The 4th Stryker Brigade was instrumental in securing the environment to provide the provincial government the time and space needed to rebuild and govern,” Brig. Gen. Daniel Allyn, chief of staff of the Multi-National Corps – Iraq, said in a military news release.
And now they’re coming home.
Dana Goldsmith held a sign that said, “Spc. Goldsmith. Hope you slept on the plane … not tonight!”
Her husband, Spc. Matthew Goldsmith, was home on mid-tour leave just after their son, Joey, was born in October. Previously he served an 18-month tour with the National Guard.
His wife said he’s been gone for two of their three years of married life.
“I am so, so ready to have him back,” she said.
Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921
blogs.thenewstribune.com/military
WHO’S STILL IN IRAQ?
Fort Lewis’ footprint in Iraq is shrinking. After the return of other, smaller units scheduled to come home in the next several weeks, about 2,600 of the post’s troops will remain in Iraq, including:
• 14th Engineer Battalion
• 51st Signal Battalion
• 555th Engineer Brigade headquarters
• 42nd Military Police Brigade headquarters
• 4th Squadron, 6th U.S. Cavalry
• 62nd Medical Brigade headquarters
• 295th Quartermaster Company
• 504th Military Police Battalion
• 54th and 170th Military Police companies
• 514th, 547th, 551st and 673rd Medical companies
• 9th Finance Company and detachments
