From TransFormaTion To CombaT The First stryker brigade at War

Task Force arrOw: An Najaf
The growing violence was not confined to northern Iraq. It was
spreading southward to Baghdad and beyond. There, a number of Iraqi
political groups, both legal and unsanctioned, were seeking to influence
the formation of a new Iraqi provisional government that would
assume power on 30 June. The most threatening of these was a movement
headed by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and located in An
Najaf, some eighty miles south of Baghdad. (See Map 3.) Apparently
coordinating their efforts with insurgents loyal to Saddam Hussein and
seeking to exploit the inexperience of the new American units rotating
into central Iraq, al-Sadr and his followers inaugurated a violent uprising
in late March 2004. Coalition forces soon found themselves battling
Shiite militiamen to the south and east of Baghdad and Sunni Muslims
to the north and west. By early April al-Sadr’s adherents had also begun
to threaten TF olympIa’s logistical pipeline to the south by destroying
several bridges over the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and by attacking
truck convoys moving through Baghdad.
In response, the American command directed the 1st Infantry Division
to send Col. Dana J. H. Pittard’s 3d Brigade Combat Team to An
Najaf. Pittard would employ one of his own mechanized battalions,
and olympIa would furnish him with two more: the 1st Battalion, 14th
Infantry, and a Stryker battalion that had yet to be determined.
Informed of the development, the task force’s commander, General
Ham, expressed concern that the loss of two of the brigade’s five maneuver
battalions would leave him shorthanded at a time when the situation
in Mosul seemed to be heating up. After discussing the matter with
Colonel Rounds, he decided that because its area of operations seemed
less volatile than those of the brigade’s other elements, the Stryker unit
to join Pittard would have to be the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry. After
informing the battalion commander of his new mission, Colonel Rounds
nonetheless specified to Colonel Reed that his unit would have to leave
two rifle companies behind to maintain a presence in its current sector.
Colonel Rounds compensated for this by giving Reed a company apiece
from the 2d Battalion, 3d Infantry, and the 1st Battalion, 23d Infantry.
Reed’s headquarters would provide command and control for the new
composite unit, TF arrow.
Rounds instructed his deputy brigade commander, Lt. Col. Robert
E. Choppa, to assume command of the residual force that would be responsible
for the area vacated by Reed’s battalion. Christened TF sykes,
Choppa’s force included a portion of the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry’s
Headquarters and Headquarters Company; Troop C, 1st Squadron, 14th
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