Troops get dress rehearsal for Iraq

The sound of gunfire drew a crowd of a half-dozen Iraqi women to the streets. They shouted at U.S. troops. The Fort Lewis Stryker soldiers tried to calm the women through an interpreter, but a few continued grabbing at the troops’ equipment.

A soldier fired a warning shot in the air. An Iraqi woman crumpled to the ground. Several Iraqi men joined the protest. Soon five people were detained, their wrists bound. And then a television crew arrived to film the scene.

The final exercise of Monday’s battle simulation had soldiers responding to a sabotage threat at the water-treatment facility on North Fort Lewis.

At that moment, however, the Stryker brigade troops were reminded that even when a unit performs well, a momentary lapse of judgment can have large consequences.

They had made a critical mistake: One of the detainees broke free and ran down the street, away from the treatment plant. A soldier pursued him but couldn’t catch up. So the soldier shot the detainee in the back, just inches above where his hands were bound.

“You can do a great tactical operation, but if the media sees someone shot and others arrested when you’re supposed to be there saving the water facility, then you’ve lost strategically,” said Lt. Col. Charles Hodges, a Stryker battalion commander.

The platoon of about 40 troops from the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division spent Sunday night and most of Monday on the exercise called “Operation Tomahawk Shock.” It was named for the infantry battalion at the center of the action – the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment – known as the Tomahawks.

The entire 3rd Brigade is getting ready to make its third deployment to Iraq next year.

The soldiers of Comanche Company made the most of their chances to react to realistic situations. Their guns fired blank ammunition with lasers recording hits. Role players filled in as Iraqis, both friendly and hostile.

During the sabotage scenario, four soldiers stormed out of their Stryker vehicles and ascended to the top of a tower. They spotted enemy gunmen and radioed in their locations; other soldiers attacked from the flanks.

The Americans stopped an ambush in waiting. They evacuated wounded soldiers. They stopped the attack and captured the chemist plotting the attack.

Hodges, the 1-23 battalion commander, said the exercise was designed to highlight the potential confusion of urban operations and to remind soldiers to stay calm during tense situations.

One of the women acting as an Iraqi protester was instructed to fall if a warning shot was fired to teach that gunfire can immediately escalate a tense situation, Hodges said. The role of U.S. troops has changed since the early days of the war, he added, and training must reflect that.

Earlier Monday, the soldiers had completed a predawn assault on a mock Iraqi village surrounded by a 10-foot concrete wall.

They searched and secured several buildings, captured an insurgent leader and discovered several pieces of evidence – including a cell phone with text messages tipping them off to the imminent attack on the water-treatment facility.

The platoon and several observers from Comanche Company analyzed the soldiers’ performance before they drove across Fort Lewis to the water plant.

“Overall, good job,” said Capt. Klint Kuhlman, the company commander. “You’re winning the game.”

In the post-exercise discussion, battalion commanders stressed that incidents like the detainee shooting could have larger, destabilizing effects. The soldier who took the shot was chewed out by his superiors.

But a water-treatment facility with a view of the Narrows Bridge is a better place to make errors than the streets of Baghdad.

“No matter what you’ll do, you’ll never be perfect,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Alan Bjerke. “Most of the things you did, you did well. You got some good training, made some mistakes and learned from them. That’s what we’re out here to do.”

Scott Fontaine: 253-320-4758

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