One of Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s Stryker brigades is headed to southern Afghanistan for a yearlong deployment while hundreds of its soldiers remain behind.
A small crowd braved the cold and driving rain at the installation Tuesday to bid farewell to the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division for the fourth time in eight years.
It’s the first time a Stryker brigade based at Lewis-McChord has deployed to combat without its full force. An estimated 2,500 soldiers will deploy immediately, the brigade’s Maj. Jonathan Rittenberg said. The brigade has about 4,200 soldiers at full strength.
Soldiers cased the colors of the brigade headquarters and three of its infantry units during the deployment ceremony. Soldiers stood at attention around a memorial that honors the unit’s fallen from its three prior deployments to Iraq.
The brigade’s remaining infantry battalion, the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, is scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan early next year.
Its two other units – the 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery and 296th Brigade Support Battalion – will continue to train at Lewis-McChord, but the Army has yet to announce whether they will deploy.
Col. Charles Webster Jr., the brigade’s commander, said ground commanders didn’t need a full brigade as the drawdown of U.S. forces continues and Afghan security personnel “are able to take on more of the fight.”
Webster said he’s spoken with Lewis-McChord’s top Army officer, Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, who deployed to the country with Lewis-McChord’s I Corps in July as the war’s deputy commander. Webster said Scaparrotti emphasized how much better the Afghan forces have become over the last couple of years.
“We deploy now to Afghanistan with an amazing opportunity to fulfill the promise not to just do another tour, not to just maintain a status quo but to finish the fight, to bring the chapter of this saga to a satisfying close,” Webster said during Tuesday’s ceremony.
Webster said the brigade’s two units not scheduled to deploy at this time could join the brigade at a later date or could be attached to a different unit someplace else.
Maj. Gen. Lloyd Miles, Lewis-McChord’s commanding general, said the brigade’s soldiers “will work shoulder to shoulder with your Afghan brothers to help secure the Afghan people and enable them to do the job without our assistance so that someday we can finally come home.”
That day is approaching. The brigade leaves as the nation is winding down its commitment to Afghanistan more than a decade after the U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban regime following 9/11. President Obama announced in June that the U.S. would begin to withdraw its forces and the Afghan people would take over security by 2014. Thousands of U.S. troops could remain past that date in non-combat roles under a long-term security pact the two nations are negotiating.
The brigade would be one of the last to serve a year in Afghanistan as the Army announced this summer it would start sending soldiers on nine-month combat deployments starting in January. Deploying 3rd Brigade soldiers will be able to have Thanksgiving dinner with their families but won’t be around for Christmas. They will return home in time for the holidays next year.
Data from the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan, showed a 12 percent drop in enemy-initiated attacks from June to August in southern Afghanistan compared to the same period in 2010. However, the Taliban continues to plan and execute attacks to create unrest to the area; two NATO service members were killed in separate attacks Monday.
Tamara Beach is apprehensive as her husband, Michael, a staff sergeant with an infantry battalion, prepares for his third deployment. His prior two tours were with other units.
“I never thought I’d say, ‘I wish he would go back to Iraq’ but at this point that’s what I’m saying. ... Just all the activity that is going on in the area they’re going to is making me a little bit nervous,” said Beach, who attended the ceremony with the couple’s 3-week-old daughter, Ciara, and 6-year-old daughter, Ariana.
The 3rd Brigade was the first Stryker brigade to go to war with the marque eight-wheeled armored vehicles it helped develop when it served its first tour in Iraq in 2003-04. The Army now fields eight such units.
During the 3rd Brigade’s first deployment to Afghanistan, it will be the first Stryker brigade to deploy to combat without those vehicles. Instead, the soldiers will drive a mix of armored vehicles that are already in Afghanistan, such as the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) and its all-terrain variety, the M-ATV.
Christian Hill: 253-274-7390
christian.hill@thenewstribune.com
Twitter: @TNTchill
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