ARMORED WARFARE: Stryker Vehicles in Iraq

After four months in Iraq, the Stryker brigade up in Mosul lost its first Stryker armored vehicle to an RPG attack on March 28th. Two RPGs were fired at the vehicle and one got past the Slat Armor. The vehicle caught fire and was destroyed. None of the crew were hurt. Only the driver was aboard, and he got out. The rest of the crew (an infantry squad) were on foot patrol at the time. About half a dozen RPG rounds have previously been fired at the brigades 309 Strykers, only causing minor damage. Two Strykers were damaged when hit by a roadside bomb. Only one soldier was injured. Three Stryker crewmen were killed, back in December, when a Stryker rolled over when part of the dirt embankment underneath it collapsed.

The troops like the Stryker, mainly because it's faster than the M-2 Bradley tracked armored infantry vehicle that many of the troops had used earlier in their careers. The Stryker has a smoother ride and it is quiet. This has proved to be a significant advantage when going on raids, or just patrolling. The road wheels and metal pads of a tracked armored vehicle make a lot more noise. The Iraqis are unnerved by silent Strykers sneaking up on them.

Being a new combat vehicle, the Stryker has come under a lot of criticism. But so far, the troops using it are enthusiastic. That is also largely due to the fact that the Stryker is a new vehicle and has a lot of new stuff in it. The vehicle has a .50 caliber (12.7mm) machine-gun that can be fired from inside the vehicle via an automated mechanism and video cameras on the outside of the vehicle. The driver also has a video camera, which provides the driver with more protection (although a narrower view of what's up ahead) when the vehicle is under fire, or in hazardous country.

The Strykers are also equipped with the new FBCB2 "battlefield Internet." This means each vehicle has a computer, and is linked to all the other via satellite. This gives unit commanders a much better sense of where everyone is, especially at night. This stuff, in a less complete form, was used during the 2003 march on Baghdad, and worked well. The more complete FBCB2 has more bells and whistles and the troops seem to like it.

The Stryker brigade is stationed up north, around Mosul. This city has a large Sunni Arab population, a lot of Saddam loyalists, but not as much violence as there is further south in the "Sunni Triangle." About a dozen Strykers have suffered serious damage so far, including several that were totaled. But casualties have not been high, and the troops still have that rush from being the first kids on the block with a new toy. The Stryker has not failed miserably as some critics predicted, and the Stryker troopers are constantly developing new ways to use vehicle. But a full assessment won't be possible until the Stryker brigade completes its one year tour in the Fall, and an after-action report is written.

With the Strykers in Iraq: Reflections

MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

Ahmed Younnis is a tribal leader in Muhallabiyah, a farming town west of Mosul in northern Iraq.

The old man was among our hosts one day when I went with some U.S. soldiers to visit the local police station. They put out a fabulous spread of veal, rice and flat bread, pickled peppers and cucumbers, sweet tea and soda pop.

Younnis chafed at what he perceived to be the Western media's message that Muslims are bad, and that Iraqis only want to kill Americans.

"We are Muslims. We are Arabs. We are Iraqis," he said as he plopped another chunk of veal on my plate. "We are happy to be here with you, peacefully together without problems."

Go back home to America, he said, and tell them "what you have seen with your eyes and heard with your ears."

Sorting it out: a work in progress

After spending six of the past 12 months with U.S. troops, mostly in Iraq, you'd think I'd have the "what-was-it-like?" response all worked out, able to vary the length like a talk-show pro.

But my editors have assigned me to write a story wrapping up my trip with the Army's first Stryker brigade, and it's hard to know where to begin and how to compress 16 weeks in a war zone into fewer than 3,000 words.

I'm definitely not lacking material: I rode in ground convoys and helicopters, walked country roads and city streets, visited hospitals, went to refugee camps, ran down the ramp with Stryker soldiers on combat missions and met countless fascinating and inspiring people.

On Christmas, my dinner was interrupted by a mortar attack, which became a regular occurrence. I took up smoking on the ridiculous notion that it calmed my nervousness about being blown up by a mortar or rocket as I walked to my hooch in the dark.

I must've been saving up a lifetime's allotment of luck for these two trips to Iraq. I heard plenty of shooting but as near as I can tell was never shot at. I rode almost daily in all kinds of military vehicles and yet managed to avoid the roadside bombs and grenade attacks that have taken a toll on American troops.

But I cannot say I completely covered the war in Iraq and its aftermath. I didn't move about the country on my own. I was embedded with the Army and saw the story mostly from the viewpoint of the Fort Lewis soldiers I traveled with.

That's an important perspective - for many readers back home, probably the most important one - but it's still just one side of the story.

If all of this serves as a kind of rambling disclaimer, it's because I'm still struggling to find a theme. As coalition forces prepare to turn control over to the Iraqis in less than three months, I can't say whether northern Iraq is more ready for sovereignty than anywhere else - or whether it's ready at all.

But I can heed the advice of Ahmed Younnis by sharing some of what I saw and heard.

Mosul, before and after

On my first trip to Iraq, I convoyed in late April from Kuwait all the way up to Mosul with the headquarters from the Fort Lewis-based 62nd Medical Brigade. I stayed there until early June.

The second time, I was embedded with the 5,000-some members of the Stryker brigade in mid-November. We spent a month near Samarra and then moved north to Mosul on Jan. 12. I came home to Tacoma the first week of March.

Mosul this time didn't look startlingly different. There wasn't much war damage to clean up, as the city wasn't heavily bombed or shelled. Mostly it was a matter of picking up after the looters who ravaged the place after Saddam pulled his troops out in mid-April a year ago.

The city of about 2 million looked like you'd expect after $55 million worth of small projects and jobs programs, mostly money seized from the old regime and reinjected into the local economy under the direction of the 101st Airborne Division.

Iraq's second- or third-largest city - size depends on whom you ask, kind of like the Tacoma-vs.-Spokane census debate - is busier than it was. People in Mosul seem to be building homes or adding on to them. The markets are bustling. The local government has begun to function - the police, courts, city hall, schools and utilities.

Cell phone service just started. There are few lines at the gas stations anymore; people used to wait all day.

The big difference is that attacks on U.S. forces were unusual in April and May last year. Now they happen all the time.

Before Stryker troops arrived in Mosul they'd seen all the media accounts of the work the 101st had done in the north. The reports suggested Mosul was further down the road to recovery than the rest of the country, and that returning sovereignty to the Iraqis would be easier there than in Baghdad or in the areas north and west of the capital.

All of that might still be true. But the Stryker guys were surprised at the level of enemy activity, particularly on the east side of Mosul patrolled by the brigade's 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment.

"We're getting shot at every day," Maj. Jim Markert, the battalion's executive officer, said a couple weeks after arriving in the city. "If this keeps up, it's going to be a long, hard year."

Through February I saw no evidence that things were slowing down. And recent news out of Mosul - last weekend's assassination attempt on an Iraqi minister, the killing of two foreign security guards and a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a Stryker vehicle - suggests it hasn't calmed down since I left.

So far, though, the brigade has been fortunate. Only one soldier has been killed due to hostile action. Nine others have died in accidents.

Riverside luxury, Army style

Of the dozen Stryker bases in northern Iraq, Combat Outpost Blickenstaff is the coolest. T

he soldiers at Blick live in open-room barracks instead of the one- and two-man cargo container-style "hooches" at other camps. And the food is field-kitchen fare instead of the "fancy" chow served up in the Kellogg, Brown & Root mess halls. The power comes and goes.

But COP Blick, as they call it, sits along the Tigris River. The wetlands teem with urban wildlife. And while there is what Lt. Col. William "Buck" James calls "the nightly spasm of violence" - when the Kurdish pesh merga security men next door open up on some target or another - the place is almost never attacked.

On many nights, there is no spasm, just the chorus of frogs in the reeds. They get louder when U.S. helicopters pass overhead, and fall silent at the approach of a cat on the prowl.

It's a great place to smoke a cigar and talk with a battalion commander about the progress they're making.

"The markets are open. Commerce is happening. Kids are going to school. There's power, sewage and water," said James, whose 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, patrols the western half of the city.

"This is a stable and secure environment," he said.

He's not the only one who told me he thinks a lot of the daily violence will diminish as the American presence recedes. But a lot of it will remain - ancient fights that started long before the war and will carry on long after the Americans are gone. Arab vs. Kurd. Sunni vs. Shia. Tribe vs. tribe.

James put it this way: "If I'm from the James tribe and I'm the police commander and you're from the Gilbert tribe and you're a criminal, I know that when I go and arrest you I will be incurring the wrath of the Gilbert tribe. ... We don't really have anything like that in the United States."

The Iraqi sense of the common good means what's good for tribe, not country, he said.

"You go out and talk to these mukhtars in the better-off neighborhoods, and they say, 'You're pumping money and resources into these other places, why aren't you doing that for us?'" James said. "And you tell them, 'It's because you already have nice places and a good school.'

"But they still think that if you're doing it for these other guys, you should be doing it for them, too."

Betting on the children

From Blick, James' men walk several patrols every day through the oldest, densest neighborhoods of Mosul. Most locals who aren't openly friendly are at least neutral, although Staff Sgt. James Grondin, a squad leader, said there are some neighborhoods where the kids might throw rocks and the men give soldiers the cold, hard eye.

"They're not necessarily happy that we're here, but they realize we're providing some peace and stability," James says of most of his unit's inner-city neighbors. "They tolerate us."

James also has a standing order: Always, always, always be friendly and respectful with the women, and make nice with the kids.

"The children are the future, and the women raise the children," he said.

Comic relief - and rockets

Mosul is a little off the beaten path, so the soldiers there don't get the same USO and morale-building help as their comrades in Baghdad or Tikrit. They don't get the singers and cheerleaders. But they do OK.

A group of standup comics passed through in mid-February.

Warren B. Hall told the troops they've got it better than folks back home would think. The chow is good, he said, "and that video store is off the hook. I saw a movie in there that doesn't come out until tomorrow."

It's true; Iraqi bootleggers were selling DVDs of "The Return of the King" even as the movie was opening in theaters back home.

A little later, Hall's routine was interrupted by an explosion - and it sounded close. Turns out it was a rocket strike on palace grounds, about 200 yards away.

Hall lay flat on the cold marble floor. "I'm doing this next joke lying down," he said.

Then, again, BOOM!

At that, most of the soldiers headed for the door, inexplicably leaving the relative safety of the concrete building. They trickled back in a few minutes later.

"Now where was I when you all so rudely ran out on me?" Hall asked, continuing his shtick.

A change in the mood

I ran into Uday Aloka one day at the palace. He was an interpreter for the 62nd Medical Brigade when I was in Mosul last spring; he's still in medical school but now works for the Titan Corp. translating documents for the Americans.

He reminded me that on my first visit, he had said two-thirds of the people in Mosul were glad to have the Americans around. Of the remaining third, half didn't care and the remaining half despised the U.S. presence.

"Now it's the opposite," he said as we ate lunch one day at the Mosul palace chow hall. "Most people say they are against the Americans. ... At the university, when they hear that U.S. Army soldiers have been killed, they say to each other, 'Did you hear the news?' and they congratulate each other."

Uday attributed this change to the ignorance of his countrymen. He said many are willing to believe the worst about the Americans - that they're in Iraq to suppress Islam, or steal Iraq's oil and other natural resources.

But I also met many young Iraqis, some of them university students, who impressed me with their courage, hustle and smarts. Some work as translators and at $450 a month are well-paid by Iraqi standards. In them, the Americans forces are getting their money's worth.

Nashwan Hassan Ahmed, 21, translates Arabic into perfect U.S. Army slang, right down to the "Roger." Majid Salem al Halawachi, 27, has an advanced degree in physics but rides the Mosul countryside with the brigade's artillery battalion.

When I learned of three interpreters who were shot to death on their way to work one morning, I asked if they were anyone I'd met - including the sharp 19-year-old woman who works as a battalion commander's regular translator. I was told not to worry about her; she packs a gun and is too tough, too smart to go down that way.

Roaa al Bakry, 21, is another Mosul woman hardened by the war but fighting on. Gunmen killed her brother and father - an outspoken newspaper editor - at their home in October, and she's trying to carry on his work to deliver the truth, "whatever it takes."

She's fighting what appears to be indifference and sexism among the new municipal authorities in Mosul. She stood up at a press conference and charged that they won't allow her to apply for the $5,000 small-business loans they're giving to other editors and publishers in the city's fledgling free media.

"I am not afraid from anyone; everyone will die in his own day, not before, not after. This is my belief," she said. "Dying will not scare me to shut up."

Soccer: an international language

There's a cafe on the Mosul palace grounds where the local proprietor serves Iraqi meals and $2-an-hour Internet access. It's in a building that must have been some sort of banquet or party place; there's a huge empty swimming pool and pool house just outside. Soldiers and others who live and work at the palace often linger there late into the evening.

On weekend nights, some of the waiters and cooks break to watch soccer matches from Spain on Al Jazeera's sports channel. Despite the language barrier, Arabic- and English-speaking fans manage to debate the qualities of Real Madrid and Barcelona, teaching each other soccer words in the others' language.

I came to be known as "Hakem," the Arabic word for referee, after I told my soccer buddies that I call matches back home in America.

One of the waiters, Ahmed, brings tea and offers a cigarette. He asks if I will ever come back to Iraq.

"Maybe some day," I said.

Ahmed nodded and smiled. I could tell he was skeptical about my answer as if thinking, 'Why would anyone want to come back here?'

"Iraq bullshit," he said, condemning his homeland as he continued to sweep the cold marble floor.

A few minutes later he asks, "What this in English, 'bullshit?'"

I put my fingers to the sides of my head like horns, and said, "Moooo."

"Ah," says Ahmed, laughing again. Then he repeats, "Iraq bullshit."

Proud of progress - for now

Dr. Rami Michel is an English-speaking microbiologist and the coalition's liaison to the Iraqi ministry of health for Nineveh Province. A native Muslawi, he has worked with the Americans since the early days of the war, starting out as a translator.

His wife is a dentist. They are Christians, with a 2 1/2-year-old son and another child on the way.

Michel is proud of the progress the coalition and Iraqis have made in restoring the province's public health system. In most ways, it is better than it was before the war: free health care in clean, fully functioning hospitals staffed by paid doctors and nurses, just for starters.

One would expect Michel to keep growing in stature in Mosul. He's been at it since the beginning of the new Iraq, and he has a depth of experience working to connect Iraqis and Americans.

But his wife's sister lives in Australia, and he has cousins in San Diego and Detroit. If he had the chance, he'd move tomorrow.

"It's not a matter of money," he said. "It's very difficult to travel, to get a visa these days."

But would he feel bad about leaving his home at such a critical time - when he, personally, could play a large part in building a better future here?

"Wherever I work I will try to make things better," he says.

And that doesn't have to be Mosul.

"The place that gives you safety, that gives you the chance to work, the place for your kids to go to school, you will work to make this place better."

Some unfinished business

It didn't occur to me until late in my second trip that I should try to find Amina Asaad Majid.

The 11-year-old girl had been caught in a crossfire between U.S. Marines and regime gunmen not long after American troops arrived in the city. A bullet had bruised her spinal cord, leaving her paralyzed from the chest down.

The folks from the 62nd Medical had begun rehabilitative therapy and arranged for Amina to go for advanced care in the United Arab Emirates. Last I'd heard she had recovered to the point that she could walk again.

One day in late February, I was on a foot patrol with some Stryker infantrymen when we passed the hospital where nine months earlier we'd come for Amina.

It was a little tidier than I remember. But I was disappointed that I didn't recognize any of the men sitting around the office. It looked as if we had interrupted a meeting, although it was hard to tell - the Iraqi bosses' offices I ever visited were typically full of men sitting around smoking, chatting and drinking tea.

The hospital director was patient but not enthusiastic as I recounted the story and explained my hope that I might reach Amina's family.

His English got better the more I persisted, but the soldiers were waiting outside, and I didn't have much time. He agreed to check his records, and I left.

Over the next several days I got swamped with last-minute stuff before it was time to leave Mosul and head home. I regret now that I never got around to following up on Amina.

It was just one piece of personal unfinished business in a country that has plenty of its own to resolve.

Four months, as it turns out, was an awfully long time to be away from home. But it was hardly enough to get beneath the surface of what's happening in post-war Iraq.

Average Stryker brigade day: shootings, mayhem

A day's chronicle of insurgent attacks, deaths of innocents

A policeman killed, three dead in a drive-by attack, a boy wounded in a shootout, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and weapons recovered by local authorities.

If any of it happened in Tacoma, it would be front-page news. But it was all part of typical day for U.S. forces in northern Iraq.

The following is from the Stryker brigade's "significant acts" log of Feb. 23, a day that was only a little busier than most:

6:30 a.m.: Soldiers from the brigade's 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry, conduct a "cordon & knock" mission in the village of Al Murina in search of a man. His wife tells the troops he's been arrested with his brother and is in coalition custody in Mosul.

7:50 a.m.: Soldiers from the brigade's 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry, find a bullet-riddled car not far from their base along the Tigris River in downtown Mosul. Inside are five interpreters who work for the battalion, all with gunshot wounds. Two are dead already, and a third will die later in the hospital. The survivors say they were on their way to work when three Iraqi men pulled up next to them and opened fire.

9:28 a.m.: Coalition Provisional Authority representatives report that Mayor Naji of Hammam al Allil failed to show up for a scheduled meeting in Mosul. It's reported that Lt. Col. Karl Reed, the 5-20 commander, is working to resolve some of the issues that apparently led the mayor to skip out.

11:30 a.m.: Intelligence reports are passed along to the brigade that an associate of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a Saddam Hussein crony and the most-wanted member of his regime still at large, is staying at a Mosul hotel. Elements from the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry go to look for him. They confirm he's staying at the hotel but find he's out. They wait in his room, then detain him when he returns.

12:10 p.m.: An insurgent throws a hand grenade at a 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry patrol in the town of Biaj. No one is hurt, and no equipment is damaged, but the assailant gets away.

12:35 p.m.: Soldiers from the 1-23 and an ordnance disposal squad collect an unexploded 57mm anti-aircraft round found just outside the brigade's Forward Operating Base Marez near Mosul Airfield.

2:38 p.m.: Two insurgents shoot at a 5-20 patrol near Hammam al Allil. A Stryker sniper shoots the two men, who observers say were helped away. Soldiers find a trail of blood but no bodies. Later they stop two Iraqi men on a motorcycle for questioning, then release them.

In the shooting a 6-year-old boy, Mohammad Jamal Abd, is struck in the leg by shrapnel or a ricochet. Battalion medics treat the child and arrange to pay the boy's father to compensate for the injury. The father offers the soldiers additional information about the insurgents "under more discreet conditions."

3 p.m.: The 1-14 reports the day's haul from its program for locals to turn in weapons and ammunition: 214 hand grenades, 500 60-mm mortar rounds, 88 rocket-propelled grenade rounds and two RPG launchers, four rifles, 200 14.5-mm machine-gun rounds and 35 artillery rounds of various sizes.

3 p.m.: Military police working as part of Task Force Olympia report that an Iraqi policeman, Bashar Nouri Malhal, was shot to death at a restaurant on the east side of Mosul.

3:45 p.m.: 1-14 troopers find a black box wired to a 155-mm artillery round along the road between Sinjar and Biaj. An ordnance disposal team worked at the scene until dark; Iraqi police guarded the site until the bomb squad could return in the morning to destroy the device.

4 p.m.: Civil affairs soldiers report finding unexploded munitions at the Jabar rubber factory near a refugee camp northwest of Mosul. Soldiers from the brigade's 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery determine it's just a bag in the middle of the street.

4 p.m.: Insurgents in a white Volkswagen Passat fire on Iraqi Facilities Protection Service guards on a highway leading east out of Mosul. The FPS guards return fire. No guards are hit, and there's no evidence that the drive-by shooters were struck either, but a bystander, Saef Arif Essem, is killed. Iraqi police were to investigate.

5:30 p.m.: An Iraqi man who says he's an intelligence source for Task Force Olympia shows up at the front gate of the 5-20's base in Qayyarah with a SA-7 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile, saying he bought it at the direction of his handlers.

9:08 p.m.: Stryker and Iraqi Civil Defense Corps soldiers in a guard tower at Mosul Airfield spot two men with weapons "moving tactically" about 150 yards out. The tower guards open fire and see the men flee into a nearby building. Albanian special forces troops go to the building but don't find the men.

10:29 p.m.: 5-20 troops conduct a "cordon & knock" mission at a home southeast of Mosul and seize 600 AK-47 rounds from two men there. For protection, Iraqis are permitted to keep one AK-47 and 90 rounds in their homes.

1-14 troops also pass along that Iraqi civil defense soldiers reported a drive-by shooting earlier in the day at an ammunition storage facility south of Mosul. Two men pulled up on a motorcycle and opened fire, then got into a car and drove away. There were no injuries.

11:30 p.m.: Troops from the 1-23 conduct a "cordon & search" mission at two houses in west Mosul; they're after two brothers thought to be behind insurgent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. Family members say the men moved out some time ago.

12:30 a.m.: Troops from the 5-20 conduct a "cordon & knock" mission at a home in Hammam al Allil in search of two men; they weren't there.

Stryker brigade soldiers attract crowds of children in Mosul's neighborhoods - putting them in touch, the soldiers say, with Iraq's future.

April 04, 2004

The homefront

War in Iraq is up close and personal for resort president and family

By Rusty Marks

STAFF WRITER

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS — Teddy Kleisner has always been fascinated with the military.

Family photos show a smiling young man peering out from under a green Army helmet, small hands clutching a toy rifle. Even then, Teddy wore camouflage, his battle dress sporting an Army Ranger patch.

“He would get up at 5 in the morning and do maneuvers in the woods,” Karen Kleisner, Teddy’s mother, remembers.

Today Teddy Kleisner, 28, is a battle captain with the 3rd Brigade of the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division in Iraq. Known as the Stryker Brigade — for the Stryker armored cars the unit rides into battle — it is an elite military force stationed in Mosul in northern Iraq.

Like a maestro conducting an orchestra, Kleisner’s job is to pay attention to a mass of computer screens, electronic maps and radio networks and relay orders to troops in the field. It is Kleisner’s job to make sure the soldiers get where they need to be, when they need to be there.

Not long ago, the Stryker Brigade took over combat and security duties around Mosul from the Army’s 101st Airborne Division. Though Kleisner’s job is vital to the Stryker Brigade’s operations, “I’m kind of tied to my desk here,” he said in a telephone interview from Mosul. “I’d rather be on the line with my soldiers.”

Kleisner was born in Savannah, Ga., but spent much of his childhood wandering the woods of Greenbrier and Monroe counties with his father, Ted Kleisner, president and CEO of The Greenbrier resort. Hunting in the mountains gave the young Kleisner a grounding in marksmanship and fieldcraft he would later turn into a career.

For Ted Kleisner, those hunting trips were family time. “For him, it was more about the strategy of being on the mountain,” recalls Ted Kleisner, 59. “It was finding the signs that the buck has been around and following the tracks.

“Once Teddy had a deer in his sights it would be dragged off the mountain.”

Third in a family line of hotel executives, Ted Kleisner thought his son might follow in his footsteps. While in high school, the younger Kleisner announced his intentions to join the military, which came as a bit of a surprise.

The move was not without family precedent, though. Johann Kleisner, Ted’s grandfather and Teddy’s great-grandfather, served in the Austrian army before and during World War I, rising to the rank of captain. And Ted Kleisner served as a drill instructor in the States during the Vietnam War.

Teddy’s mother also has military ancestry. “My dad was in World War II, and my mother was a WAC,” Karen Kleisner said.

War with whom?

Once the decision was made, Teddy Kleisner dove into the military headfirst.

He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1997 and went on to airborne training and to Ranger school, where he would eventually be an instructor. Kleisner spent seven months in Kosovo with the 101st Airborne Division and was nearly sent to Afghanistan. Kleisner was assigned to the Stryker Brigade in September.

Military careers can be tough on families. “When we dropped Teddy off at West Point was the worst day of my life,” Karen Kleisner said. “It’s not like dropping them off at college. Then at graduation, you see him in his dress greens and then you know that it’s for real.”

Teddy’s wife, Susan, knows just how real things have become. The couple met by chance at The Greenbrier in 1998, when Kleisner was home for leave and Susan, then a law student, happened to be visiting with a friend.

“After we met that first weekend, I never thought I’d see her again,” Teddy Kleisner said. The two were engaged in 2000, just in time for Kleisner to be sent to Kosovo.

The rapid deployment was something of a shock to Susan, who had no military background in her family and grew up in Wisconsin, far from any military base.

“When I fell in love with Teddy, I thought, ‘We’re not going to war,’” she remembers. “‘Who could we possibly be going to war with?’”

“It was real tough on her,” Teddy Kleisner said. “But it was also a test of the relationship. I had no doubt that we’d be a good Army team after that.”

Teddy and Susan were married in October 2001. When Teddy received word he’d be going to Iraq, Susan decided to move in with Teddy’s parents, who live in a rustic timber-frame home on the grounds of The Greenbrier.

“I thought it would be better to be around my family and friends here,” she said.

The phone call

When the Stryker Brigade was first deployed the unit was stationed in Kuwait. At first, communication was spotty, and families relied on the Army for information.

There was a touchy moment when, shortly after being deployed, a Stryker vehicle overturned and three soldiers were killed. No one knew if Teddy had been hurt.

“We went to sleep at night thinking that if we just went through the night without a phone call everything would be all right,” Karen Kleisner said. One morning, around 5 a.m., the phone rang.

“I work in a 24-hour business, and I’ve never had a call late at night that was good news,” Ted Kleisner said. The call turned out to be from the Army’s family support network, assuring the Kleisners that Teddy was fine.

Once the unit reached Mosul, communications improved. Kleisner now has regular access to e-mail and a telephone. Ted and Karen Kleisner credit the Stryker Brigade’s commanders with recognizing how important it is for families to be able to talk to each other.

“Communication is everything,” Karen Kleisner said. “You look forward to every call, and thank God when it comes. At first, you hate to even leave home because you’re afraid you’re going to miss a call.”

Even with regular word from her husband, the separation is still difficult, said Susan Kleisner. “It’s harder than you can imagine. You just do it one day at a time and don’t think too much about the future.”

Teddy Kleisner said media reports about low morale among soldiers in Iraq are not accurate, at least not from his vantage point with the Stryker Brigade. And most Iraqis don’t hate Americans, he said.

“You don’t see this in the news,” he said. “But when you see 10 Iraqis and wave, nine will wave back and smile.”

American officials may be struggling to explain exactly what the United States is trying to do in Iraq, but for Kleisner it can seem fairly straightforward.

“We will make Iraq into a place where it is safe for kids to go to school and grow up,” he wrote in a letter to a cousin in December. “Their lives are getting better every day.” To contact staff writer Rusty Marks, use e-mail or call 348-1215.

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