WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About 300 U.S. soldiers who just weeks ago returned home to Alaska after a year in Iraq are being ordered back to try to help bolster security in Baghdad, the U.S. Army said on Monday.
The soldiers are part of the 3,900-strong 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Wainwright in Alaska. Facing rising sectarian violence in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on July 27 ordered the unit to remain in Iraq for up to four months past its scheduled departure.
That order provoked anger and disappointment among some of the soldiers' families in Alaska. It also made clear that any significant reduction in the 135,000-strong U.S. force in Iraq was unlikely in the immediate future.
The brigade was so far along in the process of flowing out of Iraq after its yearlong tour that 378 soldiers had returned home to Alaska and about 300 had arrived in Kuwait en route home, the Army said.
All of the soldiers who had reached Kuwait were sent back to Iraq, the Army said. Now, 301 of the 378 who made it to Alaska will be sent back to Iraq in roughly a week, with the remainder allowed to remain home, said Maj. Gen. Charles Jacoby, head of Army forces in Alaska.
``Of course, this comes as a huge disappointment to the families and perhaps a greater disappointment to kids that were really expecting dads and moms home,'' Jacoby told reporters.
But Jacoby said the brigade, which uses the Stryker wheeled armored vehicle, needed the soldiers, mainly infantrymen, back in Iraq to ``reassemble a proven team.''
``From a tactical and military standpoint, this makes all the sense in the world,'' Jacoby said.
Most of the soldiers returned to Alaska three weeks ago but some have been back for as long as five weeks, said Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon.
Mary Cheney, a soldier's wife who gave birth to her fourth child just weeks ago, said at a briefing in Alaska arranged by the Army: ``Am I happy about him being gone? No. But I accept what he's doing.''
Pentagon policy is for Army units to serve 12-month tours in Iraq and Marine Corps units to serve seven-month tours. Army soldiers kept longer than one year in Iraq get an extra $1,000 in pay per month, the Army said.
The 172nd had operated primarily in the Mosul area in relatively calm northern Iraq, but is being shifted into Baghdad, the site of unrelenting violence despite attempts at a security crackdown by U.S. and Iraqi government forces.
The brigade now is due to return to Alaska starting in late November through early January, officials said.
After some troops and families complained earlier in the war about lack of predictability in the length of tours in Iraq, the Pentagon instituted the rules on deployment duration. This was intended to reduce emotional stress for troops serving in a hostile and unpredictable environment.