Scott Fontaine covers Fort Lewis, McChord Air Force Base, the Washington National Guard and the veteran community. Fontaine has worked at The News Tribune since 2006. E-mail along story suggestions and tips to scott.fontaine@thenewstribune.com
Or, if you prefer, you can send mail to The News Tribune, PO Box 11000, Tacoma 98411.
Also contributing:
Matt Misterek is the communities and military team leader at The News Tribune and has supervised local military coverage since 2003.
- All
- Military (694)
- "The sound of freedom" (4)
- Afghanistan (39)
- Anything to Sneak In a Footy Reference (6)
- Books (4)
- C-17 (19)
- Coast Guard (2)
- Community (129)
- Events (70)
- Fort Lewis (475)
- 1st Special Forces Group (16)
- 2/75 Rangers (11)
- 3-2 Strykers (47)
- 4-2 Strykers (42)
- 5-2 Strykers (27)
- I Corps (38)
- Madigan Army Medical Center (22)
- Generals (8)
- History (18)
- Iraq (289)
- Joint Base Lewis-McChord (4)
- Marines (3)
- McChord (87)
- Air Expo (5)
- Operation Deep Freeze (9)
- Rodeo (7)
- Media (96)
- National Guard/Reserve (166)
- 81st Brigade Combat Team (117)
- Navy (14)
- People (117)
- Politics (26)
- Ports (5)
- Stryker (56)
- Veterans (61)
- WTF, over? (12)
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| << < | Current | > >> | ||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
- August 2009 (14)
- July 2009 (48)
- June 2009 (66)
- May 2009 (61)
- April 2009 (40)
- March 2009 (29)
- February 2009 (38)
- January 2009 (71)
- December 2008 (56)
- November 2008 (60)
- October 2008 (56)
- September 2008 (21)
- More...
XML Feeds- MrSinister
- preserve
- artman77
- Guest Users: 340
My colleague Christian Hill at the Olympian compiled short profiles of each of the 37 soldiers from the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division who were killed during the brigade's 15-month deployment in Iraq.
The Fort Lewis public affairs office has also posted the award citations for Spc. Rodny Yefune and Cpl. Luke Runyan.
Click here for the speech by 4th Brigade commander Col. Jon Lehr and here for the remarks by Fort Lewis and I Corps commanding general Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby, Jr.
And there's also the script for the ceremony, which includes a blow-by-blow narrative of the brigade's accomplishments over the course of the deployment.
Finally, I don't have a link or a photo just yet, but at Tuesday's ceremony Steilacoom artist Patrick Haskett unveiled a new piece he did for the 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment. It's called "Let 'Em Come," the Rock of the Marne regiment's motto, and depicts a Stryker Mobile Gun System truck preparing to fire while infantrymen take up positions around it.
Haskett said he is arranging to have prints made so that he can give away one to each of the 800 or so soldiers in the battalion.
Katherine Mackin, who is almost 3, was pleasantly unconcerned with all the military pomp going on around her Tuesday as Fort Lewis formally welcomed its latest Stryker brigade to return from the war in Iraq.
The 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division is home after nearly 15 months over there.
Katherine had a little song for the part that mattered most to her.
"My daddy's back," the little girl sang, skipping in Sponge Bob rubber sandals around her mom, Sandy.
"My daddy's ba-a-ack."
Lt. Col. Patrick Mackin, the brigade intelligence officer, and about 4,000 other soldiers were in the ranks Tuesday. The brigade closed the books on its Iraq deployment, reunited with some of its wounded, paid tribute to its 37 fallen and recognized two of its most valiant – one of them posthumously.
It was a mission that began ahead of schedule, when the brigade's departure was moved up a month to April 2007 to be part of the surge of U.S. forces into Baghdad. Over time most of its troops would move up to Diyala Province, a stronghold for insurgent fighters.
