The unit taking the most fatalities at Kandahar is American

Yet another thing you're unlikely to see in the Canadian media:

FORWARD OPERATING BASE FRONTENAC, Afghanistan — The 21 names inscribed on the white concrete memorial in front of the First Battalion, 17th Infantry headquarters here tell a grim story: the soldiers killed in five months of battling the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.



No battalion in the United States Army in Afghanistan has suffered more fatalities since 9/11 [emphasis added], and the soldiers here at this base about 20 miles north of Kandahar are not even halfway through their yearlong tour...

Here at this base, the soldiers went to Kandahar Province in early August as part of the Fifth Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Second Infantry Division, based at Fort Lewis, Wash. Strykers are eight-wheeled armored troop carriers that have been used extensively in Iraq, but this is the first such unit deployed to Afghanistan...

Operating in the Taliban’s cultural and historical center, battalion commanders knew they would be tested early. Indeed, the battalion encountered 300 enemy contacts — makeshift bombs, mortar attacks, small-arms fire — in its first 100 days, battling in the sparse, open desert of the Shah Wali Kot District, as well as in the dense fruit orchards and vineyards of the Arghandab District.

“They were well entrenched and well supplied,” said Capt. Luke Bushatz, 26, of Marion, Ohio, whose company commander was killed by a roadside bomb three weeks after the soldiers arrived. “We knew we were in for a fight.”

The first casualty was Specialist Troy Tom, 21, who was killed by a homemade bomb on Aug. 18, just days after the battalion arrived. Five more soldiers died in August. In all, 21 soldiers have been killed and more than 40 have been wounded.

“It’s a tough metric, and one that stares you in the face,” said Colonel Neumann, who is from Baker, Mont. But he added that even during the worst summer months, his troops were nonetheless “quick to park their emotions and get back to the task at hand.”

By early November, Colonel Neumann said, the momentum began to change. The battalion effectively choked off many of the insurgents’ supply routes. Some of the combat leaders slipped back into Pakistan to meet with senior Taliban leaders and begin plotting their spring campaign.

Most important, villagers began to feel more confident about the American presence and provided more tips on hidden bombs and weapons caches. But fear of the Taliban still runs deep...

Now, the Stryker battalion is handing off its patrols to a newly arrived unit from the 82nd Airborne Division. Its new mission will be to keep important roads in the south clear for everyday traffic, especially farmers moving their crops to market, an essential step toward improving the region’s economy...