I wanted to post an unedited version of the Iraq war timeline that I put together for our fifth anniversary coverage in Wednesday's paper. Newshole being what it is, only so much of it got in.

I apologize that the entries are not sprinkled with links; had I thought of this sooner, I'd have done that.

• January 2003: The buildup begins. About 1,200 soldiers from Fort Lewis get the word they are bound for the Middle East. Hundreds more National Guard and reservists also begin mobilizing to deploy, or replace soon-to-be deployed service members at Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base. A Coast Guard port security unit from Tacoma is also called up for duty in the Persian Gulf.

• Early February: The Army loads the 62nd Medical Brigade and the 555th Engineer Brigade's trucks, Humvees and helicopters aboard cargo ships at the Port of Tacoma. No protesters are there – that will change with later load-outs and returns.

• Early March: While some troops wait at Fort Lewis, others get the word to go quick, including the truckdrivers of the 513th Transportation Company and the combat engineers of the 864th Engineer Battalion. The 47th Combat Support Hospital opens in Kuwait. The 40th Transportation Company arrives to haul gas for the invasion forces.

• March 19: The war begins. Units from the 864th break the berm at the Iraq-Kuwait border to make way for the 3rd Infantry Division's lead elements.

[More:]

• March 26: McChord wing commander Col. Bob Allardice and several air crews from the base drop paratroopers – including airborne medics from Fort Lewis – into northern Iraq to open a northern front.

• April 9: Baghdad falls to coalition forces.

• Late April: Fort Lewis' largest units in Iraq set up shop after convoying north from Kuwait – the 62nd Medical in Mosul, the 555th Engineers in Tikrit.

• June 6, 2003: Sgt. Travis L. Burkhardt, 26, of the 170th Military Police Company, is killed in a vehicle accident in Baghdad. He is the first Fort Lewis soldier to die in the war.

• September 2003: The 81st Brigade Combat Team of the Washington National Guard is placed on alert. In a few weeks, the alert becomes a mobilization – the largest Washington guard callup since World War II.

• November 2003: The 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division leaves Fort Lewis for Iraq. This is the first combat test for the Army’s first Stryker brigade, four years in the making at Fort Lewis.

• Dec. 8, 2003: The Stryker brigade suffers its first losses. Two of the namesake tumble into a canal after a dirt trail collapses beneath them in Duluiyah, near Samarra, killing three soldiers.

• January 2004: Task Force Olympia, a headquarters element of about 100 soldiers from Fort Lewis led by Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, and the Stryker brigade go to Mosul and take over operations across northern Iraq.

• Feb. 22, 2004: An insurgent throws a grenade at Ham’s convoy in Mosul, but no one is seriously hurt in the attack.

• March 2004: After five months of training, the 81st Brigade goes first to Kuwait, then into Iraq. Much of the brigade rolls north in April, just as cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia launches a major uprising across southern Iraq.

• April 2004: To counter the uprising that threatens major supply routes, Stryker units are sent south from Mosul to run convoy security and to fight Shia militia from Baghdad to Najaf.

• Aug. 4, 2004: Insurgents attack Stryker troops and Iraqi police across Mosul; soldier-blogger Colby Buzzell’s “Men In Black” account of the fighting gets wide readership on the Internet, and is later published in his book, “My War: Killing Time in Iraq.”

• Sept. 3, 2004: A military panel sentences Washington Guardsmen Ryan Anderson to life in prison for attempting to pass secrets to al Qaida as his fellow 81st Brigade soldiers prepared to fight in Iraq.

• Sept. 4, 2004: 3rd Brigade units fight off hundreds of insurgents to rescue a pair of downed pilots whose Kiowa helicopter was shot down over Tal Afar. In the next two weeks, the brigade leads a major sweep against insurgent forces that have taken hold in the city 45 miles west of Mosul.

• October 2004: The 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division leaves Fort Lewis to replace the 3rd Brigade in Mosul. As the two Fort Lewis Stryker brigades make the switch, the insurgency intensifies.

• November 2004: Insurgent fighters who escaped the U.S. offensive in Fallujah stage attacks across Mosul, at one point causing most of the city’s Iraqi police officers to flee their posts.

• November 2004: State Department of Veterans Affairs and state, local and federal agencies, along with veterans organizations, vow to make sure returning veterans get help and benefits. “We’re not going to be giving them the bureaucratic brushoff,” says state veterans director John Lee.

• Dec. 12, 2004: A suicide bomber somehow makes his way into the busy chow hall at the main U.S. base in Mosul and detonates himself, killing 22 people – including six from Fort Lewis. It remains one of the war’s worst attacks on U.S. forces.

• Dec. 29, 2004: Insurgents run a truck packed with explosives at a Stryker brigade outpost along a major route in Mosul, but Pfc. Oscar Sanchez opens fire on the truck, causing it to detonate before it can reach the building. Sanchez is the only soldier killed in what would be hours of fighting for which he and 10 others would be decorated for valor.

• December 2004-January 2005: An armor task force from 81st Brigade Combat Team moves north from Balad and Baghdad to help 1st Brigade and Task Force Olympia fight insurgents in advance of the pending Iraqi elections.

• Jan. 30, 2005: After three months of sometimes heavy fighting, U.S. troops in Mosul maintain order and Iraqis there join millions across the country to vote in the “purple thumb” elections. “This was not at all the day I expected,” Ham said, “but pretty close to the day I secretly wished for.”

• February 2005: Fort Lewis welcomes home Ham and Task Force Olympia after more than a year of running U.S. operations in northern Iraq.

• March 2005: The Washington Guard’s 81st Brigade Combat Team returns home after a year in Iraq. Most served in Baghdad or at Balad – a U.S. base dubbed “Mortaritaville” for its near nightly rocket and mortar attacks.

• April 2005: Washington Post reports numerous improvements needed in Stryker vehicles, according to an Army lessons learned report. Soldiers and officers defend the vehicle’s performance.
“It has saved hundreds of my soldiers’ lives,” then-Col. Robert Brown, the 1st Brigade commander, would later tell Pentagon reporters.

• April 2005: Opponents of the war stage the Eyes Wide Open exhibit – 1,400 pairs of combat boots symbolizing U.S. losses up to that point – at the University of Washington Tacoma.

• Spring and summer 2005: 1st Brigade troops steadily work away at the insurgency in Mosul, turning some attention to civil projects, such as reopening a community pool near Mosul Airfield.

• June 2005: Stryker cavalry unit rolls 250 miles to hunt for insurgent hideouts in the remote western Iraqi desert.

• September 2005: 1st Brigade returns to Fort Lewis, but only briefly: within a few months its 3,800 soldiers will move to a new home station in Germany. But two more Stryker brigades will take its place at Fort Lewis.

• October 2005: Another wave of hundreds of Fort Lewis troops leave for second trips to Iraq. The 555th Engineer Brigade returns to Tikrit, the 44th Corps Support Battalion sends units to Balad, Talil, Taji and Al Taqqadum, and the 47th Combat Support Hospital goes to Tikrit and Mosul.

• November 5, 2005: Actor Bruce Willis parties with the 1st Brigade’s “Deuce Four” infantry battalion at its welcome-home ball at the Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center.

• December 2005: The Army’s first fleet of Stryker vehicles undergo a $69 million reset at Fort Lewis after 24 months in Iraq.

• April 2006: Berkeley Avenue overcrossing at Interstate 5, between Fort Lewis and Camp Murray, scene of numerous pro-troops rallies, is rechristened “Freedom Bridge.”

•May 2006: Anti-war activists demonstrate at the Port of Olympia to protest the load-out of 3rd Brigade’s Strykers and vehicles ahead of its return trip to Iraq. Police arrest dozens. Protesters will later rally at another Stryker brigade’s load-out at the Port of Tacoma in March 2007, and at the return of 3rd Brigade’s equipment to Olympia in October 2007.

• June 7, 2006: Groups opposed to the war in Iraq rally around Lt. Ehren Watada, who tells a Tacoma news conference that he won’t deploy with 3rd Brigade because he believes the war is illegal. A February 2007 court-martial ends in mistrial; a second court-martial is stayed while U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle weighs Watada’s claims of double jeopardy.

• June-July 2006: 3rd Brigade returns to Iraq and familiar territory – Mosul – although two of its battalions are split off and set up shop in Baghdad.

• Dec. 4, 2006: Interstate 5 motorists get up-close Stryker experience as Fort Lewis’ 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division goes on a training drive to I-405 and back. No reported accidents, lots of honked horns and V-for-victory signs – and one set of exposed female breasts.

• December 2006: All of 3rd Brigade moves down to Baghdad to serve as U.S. commanders’ strike force around the capital.

• Jan. 10, 2007: President Bush announces the surge. 4th Brigade learns it is to leave for Iraq a month earlier than planned, and without a mission rehearsal exercise at the Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif.

• Jan. 18, 2007: Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, the boss at Fort Lewis, gets a tougher assignment – training the Iraqi security forces.

• Jan. 20-21: Watada supporters from around the nation gather at the Evergreen State College Tacoma campus for a two day “Citizens Hearing on the Legality of the U.S. Actions in Iraq.” Their intent is to air the issues about the war that Watada wouldn’t be able to raise in his court-martial, set to begin Feb. 5.

• Jan. 23, 2007: The government must do more to prepare soldiers for the emotional toll of combat, and to help them with those burdens when they return home, the 1st Brigade’s newly retired command sergeant major, Thomas Adams, tells the Department of Defense Mental Health Task Force. His call is echoed by many who speak before at a task force meeting in Tacoma.

• January 2007: 3rd Brigade soldiers wage tough, block-by-block fighting with insurgents over control of Haifa Street neighborhood in Baghdad.

• Jan. 28, 2007: A company from 3rd Brigade’s 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment is ordered to move quickly from Iskandiriyah to Najaf – 60 miles – where a U.S. helicopter is down. Over the next 24 hours it fights hundreds of dug-in, heavily armed fighters who officials said planned to attack a religious gathering.

• February 2007: The Army sends 1,300 trainers and contractors from Fort Polk, La., to Fort Lewis to give the 4th Brigade one last workout before it joins the surge in Iraq.

• Feb. 18, 2007: Reporting of scandalous conditions for wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center leads to inquiries about care for injured service members nationwide. Soldiers in “medical hold” at Madigan Army Medical Center complain of mistreatment by their unit leaders, confusion and delays over their care, and frustration over the process to assess the extent of their medical disabilities.

• March 2007: Fort Lewis and Madigan leaders launch a number of changes to address soldiers’ complaints. In the coming months, as part of the Army-wide response, wounded soldiers will be moved to newly refurbished barracks nearer to post services and assigned to “Warrior Transition Units” to help manage their care.

• March 12, 2007: 4th Brigade has its deployment ceremony at Fort Lewis, and over the next few weeks will fly out for its mission in Iraq.

• March 13, 2007: After months patrolling some of Baghdad’s worst neighborhoods, a battalion from 3rd Brigade is ordered north to something worse – Diyala province – the insurgents’ proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq. On the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment’s first day there, they lost a soldier, Cpl. Brian Chevalier, and 10 more in the weeks to come. “They always say the next place we’re going is the worst – the most violent – and it never turns out to be the case,” said Sgt. William Rose. “They really meant it this time.”

• April 11: Bitter news for Fort Lewis. The Army extends combat tours from 12 to 15 months.

• April-May 2007: With 4th Brigade’s arrival in Iraq, Fort Lewis now has 10,000 soldiers in Iraq, more than at any time in the war.

• May 6, 2007: A deep-buried bomb in Baqouba kills six soldiers and a news photographer, the worst single attack on a Stryker. The bomb is one of many that the 5-20 troops have encountered in Baqouba and surrounding Diyala province.

• May 2007: 4th Brigade takes up position in Taji, north of Baghdad, and sends some units up to Diyala.

• May 2007: Over the month, 20 Fort Lewis soldiers die in Iraq. Another 17 will fall in June, by far the post’s worst months of the war.

• Late May: Deputy commander Brig. Gen. William Troy announces Fort Lewis will soon begin holding monthly memorial ceremonies for its fallen soldiers, instead of on an individual, unit-by-unit bases. “As much as we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with the number of soldiers we now have in harm’s way, our losses will preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies,” Troy writes. The decision is unpopular with many at Fort Lewis; the incoming commander, Lt. Gen. Charles Jacoby, suspends the move, and after further review, rescind’s the change.

• June 18, 2007: 3rd Brigade launches a major offensive in Diyala – ”Arrowhead Ripper” – against an estimated 300-500 Sunni insurgents in Baqouba. They encounter more deep-buried bombs and booby-trapped houses, but some of the fighters slip away.

• July 10, 2007: Capt. Scott Smiley, blinded in 2005 by a suicide bomber in Mosul while with 1st Brigade, summits Mount Rainier with the assistance of a climbing guide.

• Sept. 4, 2007: The first party of returning 3rd Brigade soldiers is welcomed at Fort Lewis. Ten-year-old Kevin Halvorson, waiting for his father, Staff Sgt. Roy Halvorson, asked his mother, “I’m not dreaming, am I?”

• October 2007: 4th Brigade is ordered to double its area of operations and by December take over responsibility for all of Diyala province.

• Oct. 18, 2007: The Washington Guard’s 81st Brigade is alerted for mobilization to Iraq next August – just 31/2 years after it last returned from Iraq.

• October-November: The Army tests all 3,800 returning 3rd Brigade soldiers for signs of mild traumatic brain injury in an effort to find those suffering from what has been called the “signature wound of the Iraq war.” Its the first brigade to undergo wholesale mTBI exams on its return from the war zone. Some 400 soldiers are referred for followup visits at Madigan Army Medical Center.

• September-November: Reduction in violence in Iraq is evident in the fortunes of Fort Lewis units, which go 52 days without a fatal casualty.

• January 2008: 4th Brigade leads another offensive in Diyala province, “Raider Harvest,” into remote areas of the Diyala River Valley where insurgent fighters are thought to be holed up. As elsewhere, they encounter bombs and booby traps, and find that many fighters have fled.

• March 2008: As the fifth anniversary arrives, Fort Lewis looks a few months ahead to when nearly all its units will be home from the war. At the Washington National Guard, meantime, they’re preparing 3,400 citizen-soldiers for another trip to Iraq.