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 veterans of World War I
10. Another installment from Matt Green

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.

=> Read more!

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 – their commanders and staffs have been trained by BCTP. In most cases, this training serves as their final test before they lead troops into battle.

The mission of BCTP is to lead the training of coalition, sister service, and Army commanders and their staffs, covering the broad spectrum of operations from high-intensity war training to low-intensity stability-building missions. BCTP uses real life situational training and computer-driven simulation to replicate the current (daily) operational environment. At the same time, its battle-tested cadre provides instruction and shares lessons learned through BCTP’s Battle Command and Counterinsurgency Seminars. The ultimate goal is to develop current, relevant, campaign-quality, joint and expeditionary battle command instincts and skills.

Now, more than ever, the complexities of the 21st century battlefield require highly trained commanders to effectively lead America’s sons and daughters. The Battle Command Training Program plays an essential role in that process.

Best,
Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell, IV
Commanding General
Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth

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:

=> Read more!

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 up three hours because supposedly the Japanese government employees who work at U.S. military bases in Japan were going to strike. So buses that were going to leave at 7 a.m. Japan time instead were rescheduled to 4 a.m., and the ones to leave at 8 a.m. were moved up to 5 a.m.

As it turned out the workers didn't strike. But that's OK, because the buses didn't leave on time either.

After long lines and some confusion over where the bags were supposed to go, and which bus you were supposed to be on, and assorted other issues, 37 of us were on Bus No. 6 by 5 a.m.

We would sit there, with the engine idling, and sit there. And sit there. And sit there.

Perhaps it was the early hour, or the snug and cozy circumstances, or the carbon monoxide, but it all proved too much for one officer who shall be known only as "Spaceman."

His head fell back against the head rest, his mouth dropped open, and for the better part of the next hour he snored like thunder – blubbering, wheezing, cartoon-quality snoring. (At least as bad as this guy, this guy and this guy.)

The thing is, as annoying as it was, and as miserable and bitchy as everyone was just on general principles, nobody nudged Spaceman, or pinched his nose, or shot video of him for posting on YouTube, or anything. Such nice people. Clearly this was not the infantry.

Instead they swapped stories of other Charlie Foxtrot bag-and-drag operations.

Meantime, we noticed that the next bus over, the Air Force bus, had like 10 guys on it, with all their stuff stashed in the cargo hold underneath, instead of piled on the trucks with the great unwashed Army bags. Air Force. I bet nobody on their bus was snoring, either.

Finally, just after 6 a.m., the buses roll.

We head out through Sendai, a city of 1 million, past the pachinko parlors and the curbside vending machines that all have Tommy Lee Jones' picture on them, with the word BOSS in all capital letters like that, and eventually make it out onto the toll highway.

The countryside is beautiful. There's snow on the mountains. Here and there, Spaceman stops snoring. And in six short hours, we pull in at Nariita.

Life is good.

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.

=> Read more!

In the Army everyone walks around with something like their resume on their chest and their sleeves.

You've got your name tape, your rank, various awards and past assignments, all right there at a glance.

On their left shoulder they wear their unit's patch, identifying the company they work for, so to speak. And on their right shoulder, they wear the patch of the unit they've been to combat with.

Used to be that you didn't see a combat patch every day, but obviously that has changed.

Anyway, there are patches and then there are patches. Everybody knows the big ones -- the Screaming Eagle of the 101st Airborne Division, the Ivy of the 4th Infantry Division, the Indian Head of the 2nd Infantry Division.

But there are plenty of the more out-of-the-way patches among the I Corps soldiers working at Yama Sakura.

So here goes: Be the first to correctly name all the patches shown here and win ... well, give me a second to figure that out. Bragging rights alone would be enough for anybody, but we'll see if we can come up with some tangible token for your achievement.

1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10

The exercise is taking place in Camp Sendai, a former U.S. Army post that today is the headquarters of Japan's Northeastern Army. The camp looks to be about twice the size of the University of Washington's Tacoma campus, right in the middle of the city of 1 million.

YS has taken over the camp's baseball field and running track, covering it with a warren of tents that each houses a different section of the command. The whole lot is surrounded by wire and you have to show a pass to get in and out at the one access point.

Tents, yes, but they're not exactly roughing it. They're all hooked up to these blast furnace heaters that keep the insides nice and toasty against the weather outside. (It was clear and mild in the 40s Tuesday, but it's supposed to snow today.)

"Bilat" -- say Buy Lat -- is kind of the buzzword inside the wire. It's shorthand for "Japanese and Americans working together." So you've got the "Bilateral Logistics Coordination Cell," and the "Bilateral Airspace and Aviation Operations Coordination Cell," and four others like that.

"Bilat" is not to be confused with "Joint," as in the JTOC, or Joint Tactical Operations Center, which means "American military branches working together." Although this is mainly an Army gig the Marines have a sizable contingent here as does the Air Force. Haven't seen any sailors. Perhaps they're smart and stayed in Hawaii. (No knock there on the gracious hosts here; it's just, Hawaii vs the north Pacific, in December. You make the call.)

That's another point in all this: The force here that I Corps/Fort Lewis boss Lt. Gen. Charles Jacoby is leading -- the Joint Forces Land Component Command (say Jay-flick) -- answers to a Joint Task Force based at the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. The JFLCC runs the fight on the ground, the JTF has the ships, the airplanes, the missiles and all the other stuff from the wider theater.

Anyway, all these tents feed information into, and take their assignments out of, the CUOPS tent, which is Army for "current operations." It's where they monitor all the incoming and outgoing information about the fight, and where they brief the commander once in the morning and once at night.

The North Eastern Army has its own command post, with separate tents for its staff sections -- operations, intelligence, personnel, medical and so on. The Northeastern Army commander, and Jacoby's counterpart, is Lt. Gen. Hiso Munakata.

Jet lag kicking in. More later.

Plenty of National Guard and reservists over here for Yama Sakura, which stands to reason as I Corps is comprised of I forget how many reserve component units, but a lot, scattered all over the United States.

Not least of those here for the exercise is Sgt. Maj. Bob Parr of the Washington National Guard, who reminds everyone he sees that Thursday marks the Guard's 371st anniversary.

The Army has a ball to celebrate its birthday, and the Marine Corps has practically turned its birthday into a national holiday.

Parr said he'll settle for a sneaky briefing slide at just the right moment to remind his active-duty comrades that he's a member of "America's first army."

UPDATE: There's cake!

This just in from the Washington National Guard: They'll be serving FREE birthday cake to passers by between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Thursday (that's today here, tomorrow where you're at) at their storefront locations across the state, including Lacey, Lakewood, Puyallup and Seattle.

... in Japan, where the I Corps headquarters from Fort Lewis is working the annual Yama Sakura command post exercise with their counterparts from the Japan Defense Force.

In case you're scoring at home, that's 10 hours by air on United Air Lines, across the international dateline en route, and then another three hours by train from Nariita International Airport via Tokyo.

Everything's very quiet here -- even the little automated voices that tell you to be careful (at least that's what I think they're saying) on the moving sidewalk at the airport. Back home those would be blaring, I'm sure thanks to an insurance company or a litigator of some kind. But I digress.

Time here is 17 hours plus PST. That means it's already tomorrow.

This year's exercise is the 53rd annual. Each year YS puts one of Japan's Army groups in close with the I Corps commander and staff from Fort Lewis to run a war game based on the defense of the Japanese homeland.

If you're thinking, 'Right, what chance is there that anybody's going to invade the Japanese homeland?" you're correct, it does seem a bit of a stretch. But under the Japan's pacifist constitution, which greatly restrains the nation's military forces, that's really the only scenario they can fight.

More on that, and the exercise particulars, in later posts.

Meantime, the exercise is also serving as a test for the new I Corps commander, Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby, and his staff. It's supposed to put them all through the stresses and struggles that would come in managing all the moving parts of a joint U.S.-Japan task force in major combat operations.

There's a squad of retired general officers here from the Army's Battle Command Training Program to watch and offer feedback -- including a guy who should know a thing or two about Yama Sakura.

Former Fort Lewis commanding general James T. Hill is here for his sixth running of the exercise, he said. He was in the hot seat for three while he was the I Corps commander from 1999-2002.

He got a fourth star and became the U.S. Southern Command boss in Miami -- the last Fort Lewis CG to be promoted to general -- before retiring in 2004. He has come back to Japan to coach his successors at Yama Sakura each year since then.

En route to Yama Sakura at Camp Sendai, north of Tokyo, for I Corps' annual command post exercise with the Japanese army. The scenario: ground defense of the island nation.

Here's hoping it goes a little better than this:

But seriously folks. Watch for posts and stories this week.

Got this via the Letters to the Editor. I'm no real estate or finance whiz but figure maybe there's somebody out there in the vast reading audience who might have a helpful suggestion.

A Fort Lewis soldier, SGT E-5 type, just back from Iraq writes to say that while he was gone, the adjustable rate mortgage on his North End home in Tacoma went from $850 to $1,350. He's also got a home equity line of credit that he used to renovate the house, with a payment of $650.

Through his hard work he has doubled the value of the home, but thanks to the ARM spike, now he can't afford the monthly payments. He is trying to refinance with an FHA Secure loan, but the one lender he's been able to work with "keeps throwing up roadblocks," he says.

Getting behind on the bills. Wife is pregnant with their third child. Their two boys "really love our house and I take pride in the fact that it is the house I never had growing up.

"I don't know what you can do, but I thought you would be able to at least advise me. My only other option is to declare bankruptcy or chapter 13."

Anybody have any ideas for this 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division soldier?

UPDATE: Some good comments and suggestions. Thanks. Air Force Times this week has a story about service members and veterans caught up in the subprime mess.

Just wondering: the Army's lifecycle approach to stationing, which allowed more soldiers to stay at one post for longer stretches of time, kicked in at just about the same time the subprime mortgage trend was reaching full bloom. The timing was right for soldiers looking to buy a home in an area where they knew they'd be living for the next four or five years. Now, because of that coincidence, are more soldiers at risk in the subprime mortgage mess?

The Bangor News has a story today about the Maine soldier killed Friday in Baqouba.

Emery

Fort Lewis officials said Emery was posthumously promoted to sergeant.

The post also issued a clarification: He did not deploy to Iraq in July – that was the headquarters detachment of the 504th Military Police Battalion. Emery went to Iraq in November with his 571st Military Police Company and set up in Baqouba. That would have had him in one of the toughest places in Iraq before, during and after the worst of it there – as his fellow soldiers from the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division can attest.

The Bangor story also reported that he'd suffered a concussion in a March bombing and that he'd been hit by bullet fragments in another incident.

Wednesday's memorial ceremony at Fort Lewis for Pfc. Marius L. Ferrero, Cpl. Jason T. Lee and Cpl. Christopher J. Nelson will be held at 11 a.m. instead of 1:30 p.m. as previously announced.

The ceremony will be held in the Evergreen Chapel.

Persons without Department of Defense identification can get on post for the service by going to the visitor center at the main gate. Present driver's license, vehicle registration and proof of insurance to get a visitor pass.

The 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment wants you to know that a training exercise Tuesday through Dec. 14 may result in a little more racket than usual in the immediate vicinity of Fort Lewis.

They'll "use training ammunition and other training devices to make the exercise as realistic as possible" at Lewis and at Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada. Helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and Air Force special ops aircraft will be in on the gig.

Says the Rangers press release: "There will be periods of increased air traffic to include low-flying aircraft, both helicopters and airplanes, during hours of darkness. Increased air traffic and noise may be associated with a large airborne operation involving the Rangers as well as training activities that does not include the Rangers but involves the 160th SOAR and U.S. AFSOC conducting nape-of-the-earth flights (flying low to the ground) and aerial refueling.

"This is routine training conducted periodically to maintain a high level of readiness for the military personnel involved. Every measure to reduce the amount of noise associated with the training will be taken."