Posted By Kris Sherman on February 5, 2010 at 11:29 am Share this

Twenty-one Army Reserve soldiers from the 971st Transportation Detachment out of Eugene, Ore., will be welcomed home Monday from a year-long deployment to Afghanistan.

Their Welcome Home Warrior-Citizen ceremony will be held in the Old Chapel Building at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Here are excerpts from a news release on the event from the U.S. Army Reserve 311th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), Los Angeles, Calif., Public Affairs Office.

Army Reserve transporters return from Afghanistan today;
welcome home ceremony set for Monday

FORT LEWIS, Wash. – Twenty-one Army Reserve soldiers who coordinated the movement of cargo, including vital supplies and equipment, to frontline troops will be welcomed home Monday, following the unit’s year-long deployment to Afghanistan.

A welcome home ceremony will be conducted Feb. 8 at the Old Chapel, Building T11D47, on North Fort Lewis, 6:00 p.m.

The 971st Transportation Detachment, a Eugene, Ore.-based unit that specializes in movement control, deployed last February. From a forward operating base in Afghanistan, Soldiers of the 971st were responsible for the scheduling, planning and tracking of cargo, personnel and convoy movements.

(more...)

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Posted By Kris Sherman on February 5, 2010 at 11:03 am Share this

About 200 members of the 47th Combat Support Hospital are to return to Joint Base Lewis-McChord from Iraq tonight.

The troops are to be reunited with their families in a ceremony set for 11 p.m. at the Soldiers Field House, according to a news release.

The 47th Combat Support Hospital deployed to Iraq in February 2009. While there, the unit took control of the 1st Forward Surgical Medical Detachment and operated three hospitals near the cities of Tikrit, Mosul and Al Asad, the news release said.

The unit's members provided surgical, medical and other care to military personnel in the northern and western portions of the Iraq theater of operations, the news release said.

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Posted By Stephanie Clark on February 5, 2010 at 7:48 am Share this

A memorial is to be held today at 3 p.m. in the Lewis North Chapel for 5th Stryker Brigade soldier Kyle Wright who was killed January 13 in Afghanistan.

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. - Family, friends, Service members and the Joint Base community will remember a Soldier who died while deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom with a ceremony to be conducted Friday, February 5, at 3 p.m. in the JBLM Lewis North Chapel.

Spc. Kyle J. Wright, 22, of Romeoville, Ill., died Jan. 13 at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered earlier that day when insurgents attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device in Kandahar Province. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

The brigade deployed to Afghanistan in July, 2009.

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Posted By Joe Barrentine on February 3, 2010 at 9:15 am Share this

We visited the I Corps rock band Sunburn when we were in Baghdad. Scott is writing up a story as well, but the video is finished, so I thought I would post it for you. Hope you enjoy!

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Posted By Kate McEntee on February 3, 2010 at 8:52 am Share this

From reporter Stacey Mulick:
A 24-year-old Special Forces soldier from Joint Base Lewis-McChord has been killed in Afghanistan.

Staff Sgt. Rusty H. Christian, of Greeneville, Tenn., died Thursday after enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive, the Department of Defense reported this morning. Three Afghan soldiers also were killed and another U.S. soldier injured, according to a story in The Greeneville Sun.

The attack occurred in the Oruzgan province of Afghanistan.

Christian was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, which is based at Lewis-McChord. He graduated from Greeneville High School in 2004 and enlisted in the Army. He loved service in the Army, friends told the Greeneville Sun.

“He was about as hard-core as you can get when it came to the military,” childhood friend Chris Easterly told The Greeneville Sun. “He was really dedicated.”

Derrick Shannon was best friends with Christian’s brother, Aaron, and watched Christian grow up. The two had a friendly rivalry in recent years because Shannon served in the Marines and Christian in the Army.

Christian, who served a tour in Iraq, was accepted for training as a Special Forces soldier last year and was very excited, Shannon told the newspaper. Shannon said he had talked with Christian about two weeks ago via the Internet while Christian was stationed in Afghanistan.

“He was very proud of what they (his Special Forces unit) were doing over there,” Shannon told the Greeneville newspaper.

Christian’s mother, Donna Ball, told the newspaper he had been in Afghanistan since the first week of January.

Christian was married and had two children, 3-year-old Taylor and Gavin, who turns 1 later this month. Christian will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, D.C., Ball told the newspaper.

Read the Greeneville paper's complete story about Christian here.

Rusty Christian was also featured in a 2007 article in the Stars & Stripes newspaper. Read it here.

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Posted By Matt Misterek on February 2, 2010 at 5:29 pm Share this

The third story in a series about Fort Lewis soldiers in Basra province will print in Wednesday's News Tribune.

You can find the first two stories by clicking here and here.

Reporter Scott Fontaine and photojournalist Joe Barrentine have returned from their six-week embed in Iraq, but they were very prolific and their work will continue to appear in the paper in the next few weeks.

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Posted By Scott Fontaine on February 2, 2010 at 10:57 am Share this

The days of the military’s "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy appear to be coming to an end.

And a familiar face will be spearheading a review into the 16-year-old policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military – but only as long as they keep it a secret. From the New York Times story:

To lead a review of the policy, Mr. Gates appointed a civilian and a military officer: Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon’s top legal counsel, and Gen. Carter F. Ham, the commander of the United States Army in Europe. Pentagon officials said the review could take up to a year.

Ham previously served as deputy commanding general for training and readiness at I Corps. And he deployed to Mosul, Iraq, in December 2003 to lead Task Force Olympia, which oversaw combat operations by two Fort Lewis Stryker brigades (among other units).

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Posted By Matt Misterek on January 28, 2010 at 4:19 pm Share this

Reporter Kris Sherman, who is working on a larger upcoming story about changes at Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base, reports the following:

If your head whipped around on I-5 near DuPont today and you thought, "What was that?" when you passed a sign reading "Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) next 6 exits," it wasn't your traffic-befuddled brain.

It was a brand new highway sign, heralding change at the South Sound’s two big military bases. Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base are merging into one installation Monday.

The first sign of the change went up on northbound I-5 at Milepost 118, state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Kelly Stowe said this afternoon.

It will be followed Monday with an identical sign on southbound I-5 at Milepost 127.59, about 500 feet north of the Highway 512 interchange near what is now the main entrance to McChord Air Force Base, which will now be known as JBLM McChord Field.

The Army post and the Air Force base are merging operations as the result of a 2005 order from the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission. They'll be one of 12 such joint military installations across the nation.

Joining forces is meant to eventually save money and improve standards in support services ranging from security to aircraft fueling to medical and child care, military officials say.

Merging support operations does not alter the mission of either military branch, nor change its basic chain-of-command structure. There will, however, be a new garrison to manage the operations.

The milestone will be marked on Monday with a 10 a.m. ceremony casing the colors of the Army garrison that now runs Fort Lewis and unfurling the new colors of Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

The two 7-feet-tall-by-14-feet-wide freeway signs cost about $10,000 in labor and materials, with the cost to be shared by the Department of Transportation and the Department of Defense, Stowe said.

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Posted By Scott Fontaine on January 26, 2010 at 5:01 pm Share this

Photo by Joe Barrentine/The News Tribune

UPDATE: Per request, here's a slideshow of Joe Barrentine's brilliant work from the past six weeks.

ARMY LIFE SUPPORT AREA, Kuwait – Joe took this photo of rusty bullets while riding in a Humvee with soldiers from Fort Lewis’ 17th Fires Brigade. As we prepare to leave the Middle East after more than six weeks, I think this photo represents the Iraq war, circa 2010: The potential for great violence abounds, but the country has quieted.

Joe and I visited two Stryker brigades, an intelligence brigade, an artillery brigade and I Corps during our time in Iraq, and without question we witnessed a different war than others from The News Tribune who have previously embedded. Soldiers place premiums on meeting with local leaders. Troops need to discuss infrastructure projects with the same expertise as battle tactics. The 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division has dedicated an entire battalion to supporting the State Department-led Provincial Reconstruction Team. American soldiers sit in the operations center of Iraqi units, and Iraqi soldiers sit in American TOCs. And on the few offensive operations local soldiers still plan, Iraqi soldiers are involved throughout.

All that leads to that box of bullets rusting away. Most soldiers I talked to hadn’t shot once since they arrived, save for days at the range. Many are bored and say they’d rather be in Afghanistan. Others are like Staff Sgt. Brandon Bersey, a Spokane native with 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment.

"Some guys don’t like this, don’t like doing this kind of work," he said, "but I think we are able to do this because of the job we did before. I’ve been here three times before this one, and I want to see how it ends."

That ending is far from certain. Insurgents remain capable of great acts of violence that serve as a reminder of Iraq’s volatility. Elections are looming; the politicking before and the selection of ministers after it will almost certainly bring more blood. And all this comes amid the American military’s plan to withdraw down to 50,000 troops by Aug. 31.

Joe and I went to Iraq because our newspaper believes this is still an important story. About 115,000 American troops (and countless contractors) remain in the country, and the war effort costs billions annually. The country’s long-term stability or chaos can bleed into its neighboring countries.

The sacrifice of 12,000 Fort Lewis troops will continue into summertime. These are important months ahead – for the soldiers, their families, the United States and the Middle East. And even though our embed has ended, The News Tribune will continue to cover the war.

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Posted By Scott Fontaine on January 24, 2010 at 10:56 am Share this

BAGHDAD – Maybe the Iraqis will finally get the hint.

American troops across the country – including plenty from Fort Lewis – have criticized Iraqi soldiers and policemen for using the ADE-651, a modern-day divining rod whose makers claim can detect pretty much anything deemed illicit, like guns, bombs, counterfeit money and even ivory. Oh, and it works underground, underwater, from an airplane going overhead and through walls.

The Iraqi government has reportedly spent $85 million on the devices, which don’t even use batteries. It’s mockingly called the magic wand and the wigglestick. As one platoon leader ranted to me: "Who the hell would ever think this thing works?"

Apparently the British government doesn’t. It banned the export of the device to Iraq adn Afghanistan, saying the devices are such a crock that they could cause harm to British or friendly forces.

And the director of the company that sells them was arrested Saturday on suspicion of fraud by misrepresentation. The BBC decided to purchase one and put it to the test:

Sidney Alford, a leading explosives expert who advises all branches of the military, told Newsnight the sale of the ADE-651 was "absolutely immoral."

"It could result in people being killed in the dozens, if not hundreds," he said.

Like another one of these incidents.

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