3rd BCT Rakkasans take charge near Baghdad

[unhappycamper]

3rd BCT Rakkasans take charge near Baghdad
By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Nov 7, 2007 11:52:00 EST

The 3rd Brigade Combat Team “Rakkasans” of the 101st Airborne Division formally took responsibility of an area southwest of Baghdad, relieving the 2nd BCT, 10th Mountain Division, soldiers who had been there for 15 months.

The 3rd BCT, which is in its fourth deployment to the Central Command area of operations since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, deployed from Fort Campbell, Ky., in September.

On Nov. 1, the day before the transfer-of-authority ceremony at Camp Striker near Baghdad International Airport, 2nd Lt. Tracy L. Alger, 30, became the brigade’s first soldier killed in action on this deployment.

Alger, of New Auburn, Wis., was a quartermaster officer assigned to the Forward Support Company with 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, and was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near her vehicle, according to a statement from Fort Campbell, where she had been assigned less than a year ago.

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During the Commando Brigade’s deployment, 52 soldiers were killed in action and another two — Spc. Alex Jimenez and Pvt. Byron Fouty — are missing and presumed captured as a result of an attack on their unit May 12.

“Commandos, you have fought the good fight, you have kept the faith and never wavered,” Kershaw told his soldiers as the brigade cased its colors at the Nov. 2 ceremony. “You have suffered, bled and yet reached out when others would have struck. But you have been able to see the fruits of your efforts in the faces of the children in South Baghdad, and the lives whom you’ve helped to make better,” Kershaw said in the press release.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/11/army_rakkasanscontrol_071107w/