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US soldiers relieved to depart Iraq

Like Feltner, the thousands of other US soldiers from the brigade are putting their Iraq war duty behind and looking ahead to returning home to family and friends.

Relaxing at one of several recreational centres at this desert military camp in neighbouring Kuwait, 24-year-old Feltner showed off a special “Irish ring” from his fiancee.

“I just want to give her a huge hug... We plan to get married in July next year,” said Feltner, part of the 4^th Stryker Brigade, 2^nd Infantry Division which completed the withdrawal from Iraq and crossed the border into Kuwait on Thursday last week.

About half of the 4,000-strong brigade has already been flown out to the United States while the remaining troops will be sent home over the next two weeks, said US army spokesman Major Edward McCray.

The United States has pulled tens of thousands of soldiers out of Iraq in recent months, with numbers now below 50,000, less than a third of the peak level in 2007, ahead of a complete pullout in December 2011.

“A lot of emotions and feelings are coming out. I am very happy that it’s over,” Staff Sergeant Michael Pytel of Columbus Junction, Iowa, told AFP as he eagerly awaited his flight back home to his parents.

Camp Virginia, 70 kilometres (45 miles) northwest of Kuwait City, close to the border with Iraq, is among the few remaining US military bases created in Kuwait ahead of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.

The oil-rich emirate served as the launchpad for the invasion of Iraq and a transit point for coalition troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently between 15,000 and 20,000 troops are stationed in the country.

“I am very excited to go back home... I am eager to meet my mother,” 20-year-old Denisha from Navajo Reservation, Arizona, told AFP as she just finished a game of pool.

She said that her unit was stationed “right near Baghdad” and during the one-year deployment she was never involved in any fighting with insurgents.

“No fighting, no attacks. It was quiet,” she said.

Most of the soldiers interviewed by AFP and who were stationed near the Abu Ghraib prison east of Baghdad, one of the most restive areas in the past, said there had been hardly any combat in the past year.

Some said Iraqi troops were the ones taking the fight to the insurgents.

“Most of the time, it was actually the Iraqi forces that were dealing with the day-to-day conflict,” said Captain Derek Noel of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

A company commander, 29-year-old Noel spent the last 15 months in Iraq and was on his second deployment there on top of an assignment in Afghanistan in 2004.

“It’s been a long seven years of this war in Iraq. To be able to be here in the end and to see where things have gone, how things were when I was there last time and how things are now; vastly different to the better,” he said.

He said it was “hard to believe” the change that took place between his first 15-month deployment in 2006-2007 and now. “In this deployment, there was no fighting, close to nothing,” said Noel, who was stationed near Baghdad.

He said he believed the “achievements in Iraq” were “worth the sacrifices, although things were bad for a while.”

More than 4,400 US soldiers and over 300 others from coalition partners were killed and thousands wounded in the seven years since the invasion. An estimated 100,000 Iraqi soldiers and civilians have also been killed and hundreds of thousands wounded.

Washington says it has succeeded in bringing democracy to Iraq after toppling Saddam’s dictatorial regime.

But more than seven years later, Iraq is still far from achieving security and most of its infrastructure, including power, is in shambles. Sectarian tensions and violence are widespread.

And on Wednesday, one day after the US military confirmed a major troop reduction, a series of apparently coordinated car bombs targeting police across Iraq killed 46 people, including women and children.

“I feel like I accomplished a really important thing for the Iraqi people and helping out Iraqi soldiers,” said Sergeant Josh Chiasson from Seattle, Washington, who stayed for five months in Iraq.

Soon-to-be-married Feltner said that towards the end, the attitude of the Iraqi people had changed.

“We actually were able to shake the little kids’ hands, we were able to hand them food,” he said. “The population attitude definitely changed. They became more positive, friendly and optimistic.”