Regiment says goodbye to Iraqi friends

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3rd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry (Stryker) Regiment soldier Staff Sgt. John Christopher Mills Jr. shares a joke with Iraqi teenagers in southern Baghdad on Tuesday.


Regiment says goodbye to Iraqi friends
By Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, December 8, 2007

BAGHDAD — Less than three months after they arrived, soldiers from 3rd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry (Stryker) Regiment said goodbye Tuesday to dozens of Iraqi friends on the streets of southern Baghdad.

The unit, which is needed elsewhere in Iraq, fought bloody battles to free the Hadar neighborhood of insurgents who terrorized locals and used the area as a base for attacks in the Iraqi capital.

The 4th Platoon, Company H leader, 1st Lt. Jonathan Borders, 25, of Kailua, Hawaii, visited several families that his unit had special relationships with, reassuring them that Strykers from 2nd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry will continue to patrol their streets.

In one poverty-stricken household, a single father cared for four sons and a daughter while eking out a living as a generator repairman in the local market.

The 4th Platoon soldiers stepped in when a bully was taunting one of the children, who has a hunchback. They soon found out that the family was short of food and money, so the young soldiers chipped in $100 to buy the kids their first new clothes in a year, Borders said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50809