Our web guy says these are the Top 10 FOB Tacoma posts of 2007. Thanks for reading, and here’s hoping you stick with us in 2008.
1. The Stryker “math problem”
2. Dragoon Raiders have arrived
3. Welcome home
4. Arrowhead Ripper update
5. A tough week for the 2-3 Infantry
6. Some last words from their friends
7. More Arrowhead Ripper
8. A change at 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry
9. One of the last surviving
But it’s Dec. 31, time for taking stock of the year that was, and few matters are as vital as … Goal of the Year.
Lionel Messi’s Maradona-like dash for Barcelona was one for the ages, but as a citizen and patriot I have only one choice: Benny Feilhaber’s winner for us against Mexico in the Gold Cup final.
We’ll resume regular programming shortly.
Happy New Year.
… sorting out that growth plan the Army announced announced earlier this month, you might have better luck looking it over at your own pace at the Grow the Army web site.
It includes pdfs showing Army growth in each state and overseas location, including this one for Washington.
On closer inspection, nearly a third of the growth at Lewis — 555 soldiers — will come in the form of additional troops for the three local Stryker brigades.
The Los Angeles Times has a heartbreaking story about a soldier who many at Fort Lewis will remember from her time here with the 62nd Medical Brigade.
Lt. Gen. Bill Caldwell writes in response to Monday’s story about the after action review for I Corps in the just-completed Yama Sakura exercise in Japan.
…Mike,
Thanks for your interest in the Battle Command Training Program in yesterday’s article, "Troops Successful in Japan." The Battle Command Training Program, or BCTP, is an important element of the Combined Arms Center’s continued support for our Army as the proponent for leader development.
Tens of thousands of troops from the U.S. and our vital international partners deployed around the globe all have something in common
Kudos to Dave the Heartless Libertarian for correctly identifying* the 10 patches posted in our Yama Sakura Name the Patch contest. No. 2 was the only gimme, he says. The rest took some googling.
The answers:
Japan’s nice but with the holidays approaching, the I Corps folks from Fort Lewis were more than ready to head for home Monday after Yama Sakura. Most were there a couple weeks.
For what it’s worth, a slice of Army life on the trip home: Movement control chartered several buses and trucks to get the hundreds of exercise participants and all their gear from Camp Sendai to Nariita International Airport. Offhand I’d put it at about a 140-mile trip.
Whether it went smoothly depends on your definition of military precision. First, the bus departures were moved
…
Lt. Tomoaki Iishiba is something of a celebrity among the Japanese troops he’s working with here in Sendai.
A policeman’s son who grew up in Tokyo, he left his native country in 1993 and moved to the United States to pursue his dream of becoming a soldier.
He wrote a book about his experiences in Afghanistan as an infantryman in the 82nd Airborne Division. It speaks directly to the kind of guys he’s working with now as an I Corps intelligence liaison to Japan’s Northeastern Army at Yama Sakura.
Some of them come up to him "two or three times a day" and ask for his autograph, he said.
Iishiba said his book, "A Japanese Lieutenant from the 82nd Airborne," appeals to Japan’s young soldiers who, like him, feel stymied by its pacifist constitution.
In deploying to Afghanistan to fight his adopted nation’s enemies, he did what his former countrymen cannot.