Homecoming

The team arrived home safely last night on Northwest Flight 405. We were met by our loved ones at the airport. Even UAF Chancellor Brian Rogers and his wife Sherry Modrow showed up to welcome us back, which was really nice of the two of them. Jenny rushed to catch a flight back to Anchorage - after all of our traveling, she still had one leg to go.

We caught up with our families as we waited for our checked bags. After we had all our things, we said goodbye to one another and stepped out into the darkening Fairbanks night. A temperate 50-degree Interior night never felt so cool before.

I can only hope that every soldier with the 1/25th Stryker Brigade Combat Team has an equally happy homecoming. And I hope that the new soldiers with the 3/2 SBCT coming into Warhorse now work to help the Iraqis of Diyala Province - it's going to take a lot of work by all involved to return the area to its former prosperity.

For those curious what will happen to this blog, there's still quite a bit of material to be posted here, so I expect we'll have new stuff for you for at least a week or so. We'll probably do a couple more pieces for Alaska Dispatch too, so don't tune out quite yet.

It was an amazing month, and I hope you all enjoyed our coverage. It was an honor to be able to bring some of Diyala back home for you.

-Tom Hewitt for the UAF Iraq embed team

Deputy Dogs

Americans are familiar with working dogs. However, for the Iraqi police this is something new.

Soldiers from the 1st Stryker Brigade Canine Unit are helping Iraqi Security Forces train dogs to sniff out trouble.

132.8 Degrees Fahrenheit

Today was the hottest Forward Operating Base Warhorse has experienced this year. The thermometer at the Public Affairs office, our base of operations, pegged the maximum temperature at 132.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Needless to say, nobody here - not even the soldiers - had experienced heat that severe before.

You may be wondering what it feels like to be outside at that temperature. The answer, as best I can approximate it, is that it feels as though you're inside a sauna that doesn't have any walls. The heat pushes its way into everything - your clothes, the water you're carrying, your body armor, the vehicles (which get too hot to touch without gloves)... everything. There's no escape.

It also really makes you understand why it's not a good idea to enter a sauna fully clothed, with body armor and a helmet to boot.

Still, there are ways to deal, and the funny thing is that it's not entirely unlike the way we deal with extreme cold in Alaska. Stay hydrated, dress appropriately, don't go outside unless you have to, and monitor your core temperature very closely. The soldiers of the 1-25th Stryker Brigade have learned these lessons well themselves - every vehicle going outside the wire has a cooler stocked with ice water and Gatorade for those riding inside.

When we get back to Alaska, it's going to be below freezing at night. It will take some getting used to for us, but even more so for the soldiers who, for the past year, have made FOB Warhorse their home.

Army of Sergeants

By B. O'Donoghue

“Talk to the privates,” Col. Burt Thompson said early on, encouraging us to get the full picture on life in and around Warhorse Forward Operating Base.

I have encountered a few privates on missions and other stories we’re covering as embeds with the 1-25th Stryker Brigade Combat Team. But soldiers at Beetle Bailey’s end of the pay grades don’t appear that common among Fort Wainwright’s deployed ranks.

This is confirmed by the brigade’s top NCO, Sgt. Major Gabriel Cervantes. He said it’s a natural consequence of the 1-25th’s overnight formation as a “life-cycle unit” in 2006, and the U.S. Army’s promotion process.

“When they came in, 90 percent of these soldiers were privates. Now all those soldiers who were privates three years ago are sergeants.”

Cervantes expects the brigade will see big turnover this fall as many of those newly-minted sergeants either move on to new Army posts, or elect to get out of the service.

As an established brigade, however, the 1-25th should retain more of a mix in the ranks. “You’ll always have people rotating in and out,” Cervantes said, “but there won’t be such an abundance of NCOs.”