[Vision2020] Shock and Denial (172nd Stryker Bde)

[Tom Hansen]

>From the August 14, 2006 edition of the Army Times -

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‘Shock and denial’
172nd soldiers cope with sudden tour extension, move to Baghdad

By Sean D. Naylor
Army Times Staff writer

BAGHDAD — The extension to the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team’s Iraq 
deployment has sown chaos in the personal lives of many soldiers in the 
brigade’s cavalry squadron and imposed tremendous logistical burdens on the 
unit — problems that could have been avoided, soldiers say, if only the 
Defense Department had given them more warning.

The 172nd deployed to Iraq in August 2005 and was due to return to Fort 
Wainwright, Alaska, early this month. But the Pentagon announced July 27 
that it was extending the 172nd’s deployment for up to 120 days and moving 
the unit to Baghdad to counter worsening violence in the Iraqi capital.

Soldiers in 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, received word of the 
extension July 27 as they were preparing to depart Combat Outpost Rawah in 
central Anbar province, where they had spent most of the previous 12 months. 
The news hit many of them hard.

After a year of harrowing combat missions in which they lost eight 
colleagues in action and every trip outside the wire carried the risk of 
death or dismemberment, 4-14’s soldiers were finally letting down their 
mental guard.

More than 80 of the squadron’s soldiers had already returned to Alaska. Lt. 
Col. Mark Freitag, 4-14’s commander, has asked that all those soldiers be 
returned to Iraq, which requires approval from U.S. Pacific Command.

Many of those still in Iraq were within a day or two of leaving. Stryker 
crews had celebrated their last missions outside the wire.

Then came the news that rather than flying home into the arms of their loved 
ones, they would be heading into the heart of the violence in Baghdad, where 
more than 1,600 people died in July as sectarian violence raged. Some 
soldiers greeted the news with disbelief and tears, others with shrugs.

“We all volunteered, and sometimes these unexpected things happen to us,” 
said 1st Sgt. Roy Stoehr of 4-14’s A Troop.

Not everyone reacted with Hart’s equanimity. Chaplain (Capt.) James Foster 
said he believes the soldiers will be physically and emotionally ready for 
their missions in Baghdad, but he acknowledged that some are still coming to 
grips with the reality that they’ll be in combat for up to another four 
months.

“It’s kind of like a grieving process,” Foster said. “A lot of shock and 
denial, then you kind of get angry. The wives got angry back home. The 
soldiers got angry. Everybody’s going through these phases. Some go through 
them faster than others.”

Marriage woes

The extension might doom the marriages of several soldiers in the squadron, 
according to Foster and other noncommissioned officers.

“Some [marriages] have already been strained to the max, so when you throw 
another straw on the camel’s back, it’s hard for the family members to 
accept,” Foster said. “Some [soldiers] were holding on to come home and 
maybe work things out, and may not take that opportunity now.”

Almost every 4-14 soldier had made plans for the next several months that 
the extension has disrupted. In some cases, the extra months spent in Iraq 
will cost soldiers opportunities they will never be able to get back.

Sgt. Ryan Forney, who works in the 4-14 tactical operations center, was 
excited at the prospect of attending the birth of his first child.

“My wife’s due Oct. 29,” he said. “I was hoping to be able to go back and 
help her with the last couple of months of her pregnancy, seeing as I’d 
missed the first six months.”

His wife has tried to be supportive, but when she heard about the extension, 
“she was pretty angry and upset,” said Forney, who, like all of the 
squadron’s soldiers, was able to take two weeks of rest and recuperation 
leave at home during the deployment.

Numerous financial costs also are involved. Many soldiers and their families 
had bought plane tickets in anticipation of the block leave the brigade had 
scheduled for September. Helping to ensure that money wasn’t wasted is one 
of the tasks of an action cell Fort Wainwright has established to help 172nd 
families with problems related to the extension.

Because the 172nd is the first brigade to go through the Army’s three-year 
unit manning cycle, most of the unit’s soldiers were due to change duty 
stations or leave the Army upon their return. Now many are unsure of whether 
jobs they had lined up in either the Army or the civilian world will be 
waiting for them when they get home.

Smaller complications also will cost soldiers money. “We could list a 
million ways people are getting screwed,” Forney said.

By the time the Pentagon ordered them to extend in Iraq, 4-14’s soldiers had 
mailed most of their personal gear home and given away comfort items such as 
televisions and pillows to soldiers new to Iraq, retaining only uniform 
items and toiletries they would need for their last week in Iraq. Now they 
must buy replacements out of pocket.

Complicating the mission

The Pentagon’s late decision to extend the 172nd has done more than extract 
an emotional and financial toll on individual soldiers. It has also made the 
job of getting ready for whatever missions the brigade will be ordered to 
conduct in Baghdad much harder, 4-14 officers said.

Two days before receiving the extension order, Task Force 4-14 signed over 
12 of its 62 Strykers to “other coalition forces” — a catchphrase for 
special operations forces — and sent four others to 1st Squadron, 14th 
Cavalry. The 172nd is working through the theater supply system to get the 
first 12 replaced but will have to continue without the four given to 1-14, 
Freitag said.

Three days before the order to extend, the squadron had turned its theater 
permanent equipment — the gear that a unit receives upon arriving in theater 
— over to 1-14, the Stryker unit originally tapped to relieve 4-14 in Rawah. 
That included trucks that carry the squadron’s heavy loads, engineering 
equipment used to construct defenses and individual items such as all the 
M14 rifles for the unit’s squad-designated marksmen.

The squadron expects to get most essential items from the list reissued 
before it goes into combat, said Capt. Sean Skrmetta, 4-14 Headquarters and 
Headquarters Troop executive officer.

“But it would have made the process less painful for us” to have had it from 
the start, he said. In the meantime, 4-14 has had to borrow gear from other 
units.

“Where the squadron really got hurt was the supply side,” he said. “All that 
stuff we’d given out, we can’t get it back.”

But few officers or NCOs doubt that when the time comes for 4-14 to roll 
outside the wire and back into combat, it will be ready.

In the first few days after the extension announcement, “the guys were 
pretty down,” Stoehr said. “They were stunned. But by the second day, they 
were picking up and ready to get on with their new mission.”

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil 
and steady dedication of a lifetime."

--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.