The second deployment of the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment began in June 2006 and ultimately stretched to 15 months — three more than originally planned. The battalion was part of the 3d Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2d Infantry Division, known as the Arrowhead Brigade, which was the first Stryker Brigade to have served in Iraq and the first to return for a second tour.
The deployment covered seven Iraqi provinces and eleven cities, stretching from the Syrian border in Ninevah Province south to Baghdad, Najaf, Diwaniyah, and finally to Baqubah in Diyala Province. It was the battalion's deadliest deployment. Thirteen soldiers were killed in action; one officer died of wounds four months after being shot. Nearly every soldier who deployed came home wounded in some way.
The Arrowhead Brigade's final campaign — the Battle of Baqubah — has been described by military historians as arguably the most significant campaign of the Iraq War after the initial invasion. The battalion walked into that fight with no warning and held ground for weeks before reinforcements arrived.
The brigade arrived in theater on June 28, 2006. The 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry — Sykes' Regulars — deployed to Mosul and northern Iraq's Ninevah Province, replacing the 172d Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Wainwright, Alaska. Beginning on August 5, 2006, the battalion conducted multiple combat operations and worked alongside the Ninevah Provincial Government and Iraqi Security Forces for over five months.
The mission in northern Iraq was to increase the strength and cooperation between the Iraqi Army and Police, helping bring security and stability to Ninevah Province from the Syrian border through Tal Afar and Mosul City to Qayyarah. The battalion fired illumination rounds over the old city of Mosul to deny the enemy freedom of movement at night, conducted cordon and search operations, and maintained a constant presence across a battle space larger than the state of Massachusetts.
In December 2006, the brigade handed over a more secure Ninevah Province to the 4th Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. By then, the Iraqis were clearly in the lead for securing Mosul and Ninevah Province — a significant shift from conditions the year before.
The work in Mosul was not only combat. Soldiers from the battalion conducted daily presence patrols through the city's neighborhoods, building relationships with residents alongside the security mission. Company A commander Captain Matt James was photographed talking with a young Iraqi boy on the streets of Mosul during Operation Passage on August 20, 2006 — a moment that captured the dual nature of everything the battalion was asked to do.
In December 2006, the Arrowhead Brigade marched more than 250 miles south to Baghdad and became the 1st Cavalry Division's strike force — the first time since the Korean War that the 2d and 3d Brigades of the 2d Infantry Division fought together in combat. Until June 2007, the brigade conducted more than 11 brigade-size, 15 battalion-size, and 48 company-size offensive operations across Baghdad — clearing or disrupting approximately 75% of the capital city.
The 5-20 Infantry's sister battalions bore much of the heaviest fighting during this phase. But the Regulars supported and reinforced across Baghdad's most contested districts, and the battalion's soldiers were present for some of the most significant engagements of the war.
There was no holiday from the mission. On Christmas Day 2006, soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment took a brief rest while patrolling the Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad during Operation Tomahawk Strike — one of many operations that continued without pause through the holiday season. For the soldiers of the Arrowhead Brigade, December 25 was another patrol day.
The 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Tomahawks executed Operation Tomahawk Strike 11, clearing Haifa Street in the Karkh neighborhood of central Baghdad. What was planned as a combined clearing operation with Iraqi Security Forces escalated into an eight-hour firefight against well-armed and well-supplied insurgents. During this engagement, coalition forces fired the first guided multiple launch rocket system (GMLRS) round ever used in the city of Baghdad. The Tomahawks killed an estimated 50 insurgents and detained 21 more.
When a US AH-64 Apache helicopter was shot down near Najaf on January 28, 2007, the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Patriots were dispatched to secure the crash site. They arrived to find a large, heavily armed enemy force — later identified as a fanatical militia threatening the Shia pilgrimage — entrenched in prepared defensive positions around the village of Zarqa.
Over the next 36 hours, the Patriots engaged the enemy with direct fires, 120mm mortars, attack aviation, and Air Force close air support — the largest expenditure of ordnance since the 2003 invasion. By morning, more than 250 enemy fighters had been killed and over 400 captured. The Patriots then immediately transitioned to providing medical care and humanitarian assistance to some 300 women and children who had been in the town. No fewer than 60 Patriot Soldiers were decorated for valor.
On March 22, 2007, the 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment — the Warhorse Squadron — launched Operation Black Eagle. The squadron marched approximately 170 kilometers south from forward operating base Kalsu to Diwaniyah and went straight into the attack against a militia stronghold in the center of the city. All Task Force elements were immediately in contact as they approached their objectives, with the enemy fighting back using small arms, improvised explosive devices, and rocket-propelled grenades.
Despite the complex enemy attacks, the Warhorse Squadron killed approximately 20 insurgents, wounded dozens more, and captured 36 enemy fighters. The squadron's performance on the opening day broke the enemy's will to fight. The Regulars of 5-20 Infantry were subsequently moved to Baqubah in Diyala Province to continue the brigade's expansion into new areas of operation.
Between February and April 2007, the Arrowhead Brigade conducted offensive operations across East Rashid, Shaab/Ur, Rusafa, and the Mansour Districts. Operations Arrowhead Strike 9, 10, and 11 were among the most successful clearance missions the brigade conducted in Baghdad. Arrowhead Strike 9 on April 10, 2007 was a large clearing operation in the Mansour Security District, conducted in partnership with Iraqi Security Forces and the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. Arrowhead Strike 10 continued clearing through East Rashid, where soldiers assisted residents navigating flooded streets. Strikes 9, 10, and 11 together drove down sectarian violence across Mansour and east and west Rashid.
The brigade's mission in Baghdad was never purely combat. On April 18, 2007, soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment and Company A, 492nd Civil Affairs Battalion helped set up a swing set in a schoolyard during the reopening of the Boob Al Sham Girls Secondary School in Boob Al Sham, Iraq. Renovations to the school had included repaired roofs, repainted walls, new restrooms, fans, chalkboards, water fountains, and light fixtures. On that same week, soldiers were also helping residents in Baghdad's Mansour district with everyday needs — one soldier photographed delivering a teddy bear to an Iraqi child whose father, a former police officer, had been killed earlier that year.
In northeast Baghdad, soldiers from the 296th Brigade Support Battalion dismantled three Soviet-era SA-2 rocket launchers in the Ur neighborhood — launchers that had been in place since the 2003 ground invasion. These moments of reconstruction and human connection existed alongside the combat, often on the same day.
In March 2007, the Multi-National Corps-Iraq Commander called upon the Arrowhead Brigade to send a battalion to Baqubah in Diyala Province — designated by al-Qaeda as the capital of their self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq. Task Force 5-20 Infantry was that battalion.
The Regulars marched to Baqubah and were immediately met with the most intense fighting they had seen in their previous ten months of combat. They arrived at FOB Warhorse under the operational control of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, fighting under the framework known as Operation Orange Justice. Within 24 hours they were in a sustained gunfight; a soldier was killed by an IED on day two. Task Force Regulars was reinforced with Apache and Bone Companies of the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment and Bronco Troop of 1-14 Cavalry — a battalion-level force fighting what was, by any measure, a brigade-level battle. They held that ground alone for nearly three months while waiting for the rest of the brigade to arrive.
The terrain in Baqubah's southern neighborhoods was unlike anything the battalion had trained for in the Pacific Northwest. The palm groves and irrigation canals of Buhriz and Al Abarra were described in contemporaneous accounts as "close quarters jungle warfare more reminiscent of Vietnam than Iraq." Dense vegetation, flooded canals, booby-trapped houses, and deep-buried IEDs made vehicle movement in some areas nearly impossible. The battalion adapted.
In April 2007, Task Force Regulars conducted four major clearing operations: Old Baqubah, Buhriz, Al Abarra, and Tahrir. These operations cleared the key neighborhoods that would make Operation Arrowhead Ripper possible two months later. The April 16, 2007 air assault into Buhritz al-Abarra — described by CSM Jeffrey Huggins as the "biggest air assault in Stryker history" and the first battalion-sized air assault ever conducted by a Stryker unit — was part of this sequence. In the first weeks, over 170 enemy fighters were killed and significant weapons caches were captured or destroyed. The cost was severe: 20 US soldiers killed and 124 wounded during this phase, with 83 Regulars cited for valor.
On May 23, 2007 — just over two weeks after the six soldiers were killed by the May 6 IED — soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, Company B, 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment were searching for three missing American soldiers: SPC Alex Jimenez, PV2 Joseph Anzack, and PV2 Bryon Fouty. The three had been taken during an ambush south of Baqubah. Operation Commando Razor was the search mission. It was the kind of mission that asked soldiers, still grieving their own losses, to go back into the same terrain looking for their brothers.
Throughout the deployment, the brigade maintained a Division Rapid Response Force trained to respond to downed aircraft — inserting quickly into hostile areas to secure crash sites and protect pilots. Specialist Thomas Quinn, a soldier with Battery C, 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment, was one of many soldiers trained for this mission. At Camp Taji, soldiers regularly rehearsed the procedures required to rapidly insert into a downed aircraft area, secure the site, and rescue the crew — a capability that had already been called on during the Battle of Najaf in January.
In June 2007, the Arrowhead Brigade launched its final campaign. The 3-2 SBCT Headquarters and the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Tomahawks marched 57 kilometers northeast to Baqubah to link up with the Regulars of 5-20 Infantry and 1st Squadron, 12th Cavalry Regiment. The operation was placed under the operational control of the 25th Infantry Division's Multi-National Division-North, and was named "Arrowhead Ripper" in reference to Operation Ripper, a Korean War offensive in 1950–51.
The assault began on June 19, 2007 against a well-prepared enemy force numbering over 500. The first ten days involved systematic clearing of western Baqubah. The brigade expended the largest quantity of precision munitions since the 2003 ground war — 48 precision bombs from fixed-wing platforms, 57 GMLRS rockets, and 4 Excalibur artillery rounds. An 18th Engineer Company Stryker detonating a Mine Clearing Line Charge (MICLIC) became one of the defining images of the operation.
Over two months of fighting, an estimated 160 enemy fighters were killed or wounded — including the al-Qaeda emir of Baqubah — and 420 detained, including two high-value targets. Coalition forces found and reduced 201 deep-buried and other IEDs, including 41 houses rigged with explosives, several al-Qaeda caliphate buildings, a courthouse, a jail, a torture house, three aid stations, and hundreds of pounds of homemade explosives.
Almost before the last shots were fired, the brigade shifted from combat to reconstruction. Working with the Baqubah city government, the 5th Iraqi Army Division, and the Diyala Provincial Police, the Arrowhead Brigade restarted the public food distribution network (offline for ten months), repaired water main breaks across the city, replaced electrical lines and transformers, repaired sewer mains, reopened government fuel stations, and restarted the Muradiyah flour mill — which had not produced flour in over a year. The brigade did all of this with remarkably little collateral damage or civilian casualties. In the words of many Baqubah residents, they and their city had been liberated.
From June 28, 2006 to September 26, 2007, the soldiers of the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment and the Arrowhead Stryker Brigade fought and won in almost every corner of Iraq — from the Syrian border in Ninevah Province through Tal Afar, Mosul, Qayyarah, Lake Thar Thar, Taji, Baghdad, Baqubah, Najaf, Diwaniyah, and Karbala.
The brigade drove 638,151 miles, delivered 629,000 kilograms of rice and flour to the citizens of Baqubah, and treated more than 11,200 soldiers. Fifty-six warrior-heroes assigned or attached to Task Force Arrowhead paid the ultimate price. Nearly 700 were wounded.
The battalion returned to Fort Lewis in the fall of 2007. They had been gone 15 months. They had done everything asked of them and more.