This page documents events that set the battalion's deployments apart — moments that were historically significant, operationally unique, or that put soldiers in situations no training manual fully prepares you for. Some of these are documented in official records. Some exist primarily in the memories of the men who were there. Where public records exist, they are cited. Where the account comes from veterans directly, that is noted.
This page will grow over time as more accounts are gathered and verified. If you were there for any of these events — or for something not yet on this page — please reach out.
Before the battalion deployed in June 2006, one of its own officers made national news. First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, assigned to the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment as a fire support officer, publicly refused to deploy to Iraq — becoming the first commissioned officer in the United States armed forces to do so.
Watada, who had joined the Army after September 11 out of a desire to serve his country, said that after extensive research he had concluded the Iraq War was illegal and that deploying would make him party to war crimes under the doctrine of command responsibility. He attempted to resign in January 2006, and when that was denied he went public at a press conference in Tacoma in June 2006 — just as the battalion was preparing to ship out.
His unit — the Sykes' Regulars — deployed to Iraq on June 22, 2006. Watada did not get on the plane. The Army charged him with missing movement and conduct unbecoming an officer. His court-martial in February 2007 ended in a mistrial after the military judge ruled that a key legal question — whether orders to deploy to Iraq were lawful — could not be resolved within the military justice system. The Army subsequently discharged him under Other-Than-Honorable conditions in 2009.
His case drew national attention and divided opinion sharply — within the military, within the Japanese American community (Watada was of Japanese descent), and among legal scholars and the public. Actor Sean Penn demonstrated outside Fort Lewis during the court-martial proceedings. The Army prosecutor argued that Watada had abandoned soldiers who had trained alongside him and trusted him. His defense argued he was acting on conscience and law.
For the soldiers of 5-20 Infantry, Watada's refusal was personal. They trained with him. They deployed without him. Whatever each soldier thought of his decision, they carried the weight of the mission he declined. This is part of the battalion's history.
On December 30, 2006, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging at Camp Justice — a joint Iraqi-US military base in Kazimain, a northeastern suburb of Baghdad. The time was approximately 6:00 AM local. He had been convicted of crimes against humanity for the massacre of 148 Shiite men in Dujail in 1982.
The battalion was in the process of transitioning from Mosul to Baghdad throughout December 2006. By the time Saddam was executed, the Sykes' Regulars were in or around Baghdad — at Taji, at small outposts throughout the city, or in transit. They were present for one of the most historically significant moments of the entire Iraq War.
The reaction across Baghdad that day was complicated. In Shiite neighborhoods there was celebration. The broader city was quieter than expected — the US military had worried about violence, and while a bombing struck the mostly Shiite town of Kufa later that day, Baghdad itself was largely calm. For US soldiers on patrol, it was another day in the city — but one they would never forget.
No US representatives were present in the execution chamber. The Iraqi government carried out the execution. But an unofficial mobile phone video of the hanging — which showed Saddam's captors taunting him as the noose was placed — circulated worldwide within hours and caused international controversy. Soldiers throughout Baghdad processed the news the way soldiers always do: they kept working.
On January 23, 2007, a Blackwater USA MD-530F surveillance helicopter was shot down over the Fadhil neighborhood of Baghdad — a predominantly Sunni district in north-central Baghdad. All five men aboard were killed. At least four were later confirmed to have been shot execution-style in the back of the head after surviving the crash. Two Sunni insurgent groups claimed responsibility. The helicopter's wreckage was eventually destroyed by US forces to prevent scavenging.
Bravo Company, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry was already operating in the area that day — on patrol, QRF, cordon, or escort — when reports came in of a downed helicopter in a Baghdad neighborhood. The company moved to the crash site. What followed was a sustained, chaotic firefight that one soldier would later call a "death blossom" — 360 degrees of suppressing fire, with Strykers and Blackwater vehicles forming a perimeter and engaging enemy from every direction simultaneously.
The Blackwater contractors who responded to the scene were operating without inter-vehicle radio communication, coordinating by pulling vehicles alongside each other and yelling across the gap under fire. They went black on .50-caliber ammunition well before the Army soldiers did.
The battalion's medics — including the MEV crew — parked near the bodies of the first contractors found, some of whom were loaded into the medical vehicle at various points. The helicopter itself had come down inside a residential building in a neighborhood. As the dismounted infantry expanded their search and cleared the area, they drew incoming fire and exchanged it for an hour or more.
At one point during the firefight, an RPG or explosion ignited the camouflage netting on top of the MEV. With the battle still ongoing, the senior medic and MEV driver dismounted under fire, found a fire extinguisher, moved to the side of the burning vehicle, and put the fire out — then got back in. The battalion's first sergeant was among those who went to the crash site on foot.
This was, for at least one soldier, the last day he fired his rifle in Iraq. It was a day that has been difficult to talk about in the nearly two decades since — in part because the contractors who died have not been widely remembered or honored, and in part because the day itself was so compressed, reactive, and surreal that recounting it clearly is hard. But it happened. Bravo Company was there.
On November 27, 2006, Air Force Major Troy Gilbert was killed when his F-16CG crashed near Al Karmah — approximately 16 kilometers northeast of Fallujah in western Anbar Province. He had been flying close air support for ground forces when an AH-6 Little Bird helicopter was shot down. The ground forces trying to reach the Little Bird's crew were under attack. Bombs were not an option — the militants were too close to civilians. Gilbert came in fast and low, at 200 feet, strafing with his Gatling gun to protect them. He held the attack a second too long. At 500 miles an hour, his plane hit the ground, bounced 600 yards, and disintegrated in a field.
His actions saved the lives of coalition forces on the ground. The cost was his own life.
US drone footage captured what happened next: al-Qaeda fighters moved to the crash site, removed Gilbert's body, rolled it in a carpet, and took it. By the time US ground forces reached the scene, he was gone. The Air Force searched for years. His remains were not fully recovered until 2016 — a decade after his death — when an Iraqi informant led US forces to a tribal chieftain who had custody of what remained.
Members of the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry were among the ground forces sent to search the crash site and surrounding area in Anbar Province. The details of that mission — what they found, what they searched, what it felt like to look for a man who wasn't there — are part of this battalion's history that has not been fully documented. This entry will be updated as accounts are gathered.
At the end of a nine-hour guard shift in Old Baqubah, Specialist Christopher Waiters — senior medic, Alpha Company, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry — was woken by an explosion. A vehicle-borne IED had just struck a Bradley Fighting Vehicle on a nearby street, engulfing it and its crew in flames. A complex, three-sided ambush immediately followed.
Waiters was in the MEV. The vehicle pulled up to a position roughly 80 meters from the burning Bradley, next to a soccer field, and began taking fire from multiple directions. Waiters engaged two enemy fighters moving toward his position with his M4. Then he did something else.
"I gotta go," he told his crew. They warned him he might not come back. He dropped the ramp and ran.
As Waiters sprinted across the open ground toward the burning vehicle, an insurgent truck came at him through the smoke — his unit's .50-caliber gunner destroyed it. He kept running. By the time he reached the Bradley, he had counted 17 shooters. He climbed onto the vehicle, pried open the driver's hatch, and pulled out the driver — conscious but disoriented, unable to get himself out. He got the driver to safety, then went back for the gunner, whose hand had snaked out of the turret. He treated him on the scene and got him to the MEV.
Then he learned there was still a third soldier inside.
He went back. He climbed into the troop compartment. The vehicle's 25mm ammunition had started cooking off from the heat, forcing him out. He went in again. He found the third soldier — already deceased. He could not leave him there. He made additional attempts to recover the remains. When another medic arrived on scene and took over, Waiters evacuated with the two wounded soldiers.
Two soldiers were saved. One was brought home. Waiters was later asked if he knew who the two survivors were. He said he never found out their names.
The Distinguished Service Cross he received in October 2008 was only the 17th awarded since the start of the Global War on Terror, and the first ever awarded to a Fort Lewis-based soldier. During the ceremony, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army General Peter Chiarelli said: "When our Soldiers patrol the dusty fields of far-off lands and the panicked cry of 'Medic' shatters the air, I know in my heart, I know in my soul, that another Staff Sgt. Waiters is on his way."
Waiters was a Lacey, Washington native who graduated from Timberline High School in 2000. He had survived seven near-misses during the deployment before April 5 — hit in the helmet in Buhriz, nicked in the shoulder on patrol north of Baqubah, a water bottle shot from his face earlier in the deployment, nicked in the wrist in Old Baqubah. He described his actions that day simply: "I was doing what I was trained to do. That's what I was there for."
On the advice of the Baqubah city council, coalition forces launched an operation on April 2, 2007, to clear and secure the central market district of Old Baqubah — one of the city's main commercial hubs. Soldiers of 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry maintained a continuous 24-hour presence in the area for the first four days, searching for insurgents and weapons caches while vendors watched from doorways.
The Regulars planned to maintain a permanent presence in the neighborhood as Iraqi Security Forces established and manned their own checkpoints at market entrances. The intent was to create enough stability for vendors to reopen and shoppers to return — a necessary step if Baqubah was ever going to function again as a city.
Within two days of the operation's start, civilians were coming back outside. "There are less shootings and more security," one Iraqi man told reporters. "It's very good." First Lieutenant Thomas Gaines, 1st Platoon leader, Company A, captured the underlying logic: "It is important we open up the marketplace because in order to win the fight against insurgents, we have to establish a good economy."
This mission is notable because it happened in early April 2007 — weeks before the May 6 IED strike that killed six soldiers, and two months before Operation Arrowhead Ripper began. The battalion was already deep in Baqubah, holding ground and trying to restore normal life, with insufficient forces and no guarantee of reinforcement.
Stryker brigades are not air assault units. They ride into battle on 19-ton wheeled vehicles, not helicopters. But on April 16, 2007, the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment did something no Stryker battalion had ever done: it conducted a battalion-sized air assault.
The objective was Buhritz al-Abarra — a village on the southern and southeastern edge of Baqubah, embedded in dense palm groves cut by irrigation canals. The terrain was what contemporary accounts described as "close quarters jungle warfare more reminiscent of Vietnam than Iraq." Vehicles couldn't get through it. Every approach was a potential ambush. The palm groves and canals gave the enemy perfect cover and concealment, and the ground was laced with deep-buried IEDs that had already destroyed armored vehicles. The only option was to come from the air and go in on foot.
At least Battle Company and elements of Headquarters Company were inserted by helicopter. They cleared the area on foot. CSM Jeffrey Huggins — the battalion's command sergeant major during Baqubah — later described it in the official I Corps Battle Command Training Center documentary on the battle as the "biggest air assault in Stryker history." It was the first time a Stryker battalion had ever conducted an operation of that type and scale.
The April 16 air assault was one of four major clearing operations the battalion conducted during April 2007 under Operation Orange Justice — the operational framework for the fight in Baqubah under the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. The four operations targeted Old Baqubah, Buhriz, Al Abarra, and Tahrir: the key neighborhoods the battalion needed to clear before Operation Arrowhead Ripper could be launched in June.
The battalion was reinforced during this phase by Apache and Bone Companies of the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, and Bronco Troop of the 1-14 Cavalry — making Task Force Regulars a multi-battalion organization fighting what was, by any measure, a brigade-sized battle with battalion-level resources. LTC Bruce Antonia later assessed the outcome simply: "The soldiers and junior leaders on the ground are winning this war. Even at battalion level and up, we can only rely on resourcing subordinate units."
The specific details of the April 16 air assault — the landing zones, the objective layout, the contact made, the casualties — live primarily in the memories of the soldiers who were there and in the I Corps BCTC documentary. If you participated in this mission, your account matters.
On May 27, 2007 — three weeks after the single worst day the battalion had ever seen — soldiers were clearing the village of Chibernat, north of Baqubah, when they discovered an al-Qaeda torture center. Inside, they found seven Iraqi hostages alive and freed them.
This happened during the ongoing pre-Arrowhead Ripper campaign, when the battalion was holding Baqubah largely alone, still absorbing the losses of May 6, and clearing neighborhood by neighborhood. The discovery of the torture center illustrated what al-Qaeda had been doing to the population of Diyala — the coercion, the executions, the fear — and why the people of Baqubah described themselves as "liberated" when the fighting was finally over.
The details of this specific rescue — which company conducted the clearance, what condition the hostages were in, what else was found in the facility — are not fully captured in public records. What is confirmed is that it happened, and that it was one of many moments during this deployment when the battalion's mission was inseparable from the human lives directly at stake.
After the battalion returned from Iraq, the I Corps Battle Command Training Center at Fort Lewis spent months working with veterans to document the Battle of Baqubah in detail — processing after-action interviews, still photographs, and videos shot by soldiers themselves. The result was a 90-minute documentary DVD intended to capture lessons for the counterinsurgency fight and for future Army warfare.
The first showing of the DVD was reserved for the soldiers who had fought in Baqubah. LTC Bruce Antonia, the battalion's commander during the battle, introduced the screening: "Lots of people are studying this battle. You were involved in a hugely important, pivotal battle. Hopefully you'll pull it out in about 20 years, pop it into the DVD player and say 'I was a part of this.'"
Dr. Bill Reeder, chief of leader development at the I Corps Battle Command Training Center, addressed the assembled soldiers before the premiere: "Baqubah was arguably the most significant campaign of the war in Iraq after the initial invasion was completed. You performed superbly for the United States of America. It is our honor to be part of putting this video together."
Staff Sgt. Mike Marker, a Bravo Company squad leader, remembered rolling into Baqubah on the first day and wondering why the kids at a nearby school were holding their ears. A deafening explosion followed seconds later — the beginning of an ambush. The battalion had walked into what military analysts would later assess was at minimum a brigade-sized fight, with no immediate prospect of reinforcement. They held ground for nearly three months before help arrived.
This page documents events that the official record captures imperfectly — or not at all. The battalion's full history lives in the memories of the people who were there. Every entry here is a placeholder for a more complete account that veterans and their families can help build.
If you served with 5/20th Infantry and have information, corrections, or stories to add, please reach out: jakewalsh24@gmail.com