Fort Lewis's 4,000 member 5th Stryker Brigade, the post's newest and which had never been deployed, left for Afghanistan last month, becoming the first Stryker brigade ever to serve there.
Four thousand more soldiers from the 4th Stryker Brigade are preparing to leave in September for Iraq for their second tour, and some observers predict it will be the last American brigade sent there.
Meanwhile, the 3rd Stryker Brigade last week began readying for its third tour of duty to Iraq, casing its colors last Friday as it mobilized to leave.
The deployments will leave the 30,000-soldier post at about half its Army population this year. Other smaller units from the post also are expected to deploy to war zones this year.
With the drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq, the missions are expected to change. The News Tribune talks about some of the changes in its FOB Tacoma blog, and caught up with a 3rd Stryker Brigade soldier, Staff Sgt. Jason Hill, who is preparing for his third trip to Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Defense Department's public relations folks released some videos of the 5th Stryker soldiers landing at Kandahar July 13.
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