Thousands of Fort Lewis soldiers have served there; 700 members of a helicopter squadron are stationed in and around the city now.

And of the 176 who have died in Iraq since the war’s beginning, more fell in Mosul – 46 – than anywhere else.

“There definitely is a Mosul link; I cringe when I read what is happening now,” said Maj. Bob Bennett, who spent a year there with Task Force Olympia, the Fort Lewis-based headquarters detachment that led U.S. forces in northern Iraq in 2004.

In recent weeks bombers killed five soldiers from Fort Carson, Colo., in a strike on their Humvee. A suicide bomber killed the police chief. A bomber in a fuel truck Monday killed four Iraqi troops at a checkpoint.

Insurgents are said to have run to Mosul to flee U.S. offensives elsewhere in the country. The city has been dubbed al-Qaida’s last urban stronghold in Iraq, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has promised a “decisive battle” to drive out the insurgents.

At Fort Lewis, Mosul veterans and others with an attachment to the city hope it all doesn’t mean the undoing of years of hard work.

“We have an investment in that place becoming successful,” said Army Capt. Damon Armeni, who was critically wounded there in August 2004 while serving with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

Local units that have served in Mosul, in chronological order, include:

 • The 62nd Medical Brigade, which arrived in April 2003, soon after the city fell to coalition forces. It spent the next several months trying to help rebuild Mosul’s medical infrastructure.

 • Task Force Olympia and the 3rd Brigade, which followed in January 2004. The security situation gradually deteriorated while the Strykers were there.

 • Another Stryker brigade, the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, which succeeded 3rd Brigade in the fall of 2004. Insurgents fleeing Fallujah went to Mosul. Iraqi police ran from their posts in the face of organized insurgent attacks across the city.

The low point came that December, when a suicide bomber infiltrated a chow hall, killing 22 people, including six from Fort Lewis.

 • The 47th Combat Support Hospital, which spent much of 2006 in Mosul. It treated wounded U.S. soldiers as well as Iraqi civilians, many of them children.

 • The 3rd Brigade, which returned for a second tour in mid-2006. By that December, U.S. commanders viewed the city as stable enough to warrant pulling the brigade south to Baghdad.

“We felt the time was right, that Mosul would go on and prosper,” said Lt. Col. Adam Rocke, who served 18 months there in two tours with the 3rd Brigade. “We felt like the coalition and government forces in place were fully capable to take Mosul to the next stage.”

A much smaller U.S. force took over in Mosul. Fort Lewis soldiers said they wouldn’t second-guess the decision; at the time, all eyes were on Baghdad and the surge to impose as much U.S. strength as could be mustered in the capital.

And they said it was inevitable that insurgents driven out of Baghdad, and lately out of Diyala Province, would find their way north where there were fewer U.S. forces to contend with.

“As the level of security has improved in and around Baghdad, opposition forces have been forced to go where the government of Iraq and U.S. forces do not have a high level of control,” said Maj. Brett Clemmer, a former 3rd Brigade company commander.

“I just feel sad for Mosul,” Clemmer said.

A lifelong resident of the city, who left in November 2006 after working as an interpreter for U.S. forces, said Mosul has endured as a cultural and trading center for 3,000 years.

Now living in the Tacoma area with his wife and children, he said he does not believe people from Mosul are leading the insurgency there.

“We are unlucky because we have a bad neighborhood – Syria, Turkey, Iran. It has always been a crossroads for trading,” said the man, who asked not to be identified because he fears for the safety of family members still living in Iraq.

“They have no mercy,” he said of the insurgents.

Post-war migration to Mosul has added to the city’s diverse mix of Kurds, Sunni Arabs, Turkmen, Christians, Yazidis and others. Before the war people in Mosul generally did not dwell on those differences.

“Now you can hardly know who’s your neighbor,” the former interpreter said. “There’s so much confusion.”

Yet he said he remains optimistic that the progress he saw before he left his hometown will resume. “Always there is some hope.”

Norma Melo has paid as high a price as any for security in Mosul. Her husband, Staff Sgt. Julian Melo, was killed in the December 2004 chow hall bombing.

She, too, expresses a mix of sadness but also optimism about the latest news from the city where her husband died.

She established a foundation in his memory that has sent musical instruments to school children and funded music education programs there.

“It breaks my heart to think we’re making such great strides … but it’s like they take three steps forward and wake up in the morning and they’re two steps backward,” said Melo, who lives in Spanaway.

Still, she harbors a hope that one day she will visit Mosul when the war is over. It’s a sentiment expressed by soldiers and others who have been along the Tigris River, or seen the ruins of ancient Nineveh, or the Nebbi Younis mosque where the prophet Jonah is said to be buried.

And Melo said she can’t feel contempt for the people there, despite her loss.

“It wouldn’t honor my husband, and I don’t think it would honor any of the Americans who have lost their lives there,” she said.

“That’s not who we are.”

Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921

The latest Fort Lewis unit to serve in Mosul is also one of the growing post’s newest arrivals.

The 4th Squadron, 6th U.S. Cavalry moved to the Northwest from Fort Polk, La., in August 2005 but was around less than a year before it was sent to Iraq last June.

Since July the squadron has had its OH-58 Kiowa Warrior, UH-60 Black Hawks and Shadow unmanned aerial vehicles flying all across northern Iraq, with the largest concentration based at the Mosul airfield, the squadron commander, Lt. Col. T.J. Jamison, said in an interview Monday.

With about 700 soldiers, the squadron is about twice the size of the Army’s typical aviation squadron. That’s why commanders sent the unit to northern Iraq, where it could also station troops and aircraft in Tal Afar, Kirkuk, Tikrit and at a base near the Syrian border, Jamison said.

The Tikrit-based troop is supporting Stryker units from the Fort Lewis-based 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, in the Diyala River Valley, the commander said.

Pilots are flying nearly as many hours in a month as they would typically fly in a year of training back home, he said.

The squadron’s main focus these days is Mosul. The Kiowas fly in support of convoys and combat operations throughout the city. The Shadows provide overhead reconnaissance for commanders on the ground.

“It’s changed a lot since we got here in June,” Jamison said. “It was actually fairly quiet. Then as the surge began to take hold in Baghdad, as Baghdad began to get better, we’ve seen that insurgent combat force push its way up here.”

In its first three months in Iraq the squadron had 10 engagements with the enemy, but it’s had more than 100 since October. They have fired on people trying to place roadside bombs, ambush U.S. and Iraqi forces, or attack government infrastructure such as communication towers or oil pipelines.

The squadron has lost five soldiers since it arrived: one whose helicopter struck a power cable near Mosul on July 4, and four who died in a UH-60 crash Aug. 22 near Kirkuk. Officials said that crash was due to mechanical failure.

With the increased activity there’s been an increase lately in U.S. and Iraqi forces in Mosul, he said. That, in turn, has led to a decline in engagements over the last week or so, he said.

“We finally have sufficient combat forces to make a long-term impact, a difference around the city,” Jamison said.