Michael Yon on the Stryker

Frequent readers of this blog might know I'm a big fan of the Stryker Combat Vehicle, which is the Army's main ride inside Iraq. Michael Yon reveals why the troops love it:

Back in 2005, when I hardly knew the name “Stryker,” I came
into combat with the 1-24th Infantry Regiment. I believe it was SFC Robert
Bowman who told me that his soldiers so disliked the idea of the Stryker, that
when they finally got Strykers at Fort Lewis, the soldiers tried their best to
break the machines in training. SFC Bowman might refute this, and I’m not sure
he was the man who told me, but Bowman is certainly the man who told me that all
his soldiers were converts even before they finished training.

Those soldiers learned that the human body is not tough
enough to break a Stryker without destroying the people inside, too. The Stryker
is just too tough, too well-designed and too well-built. Before long, many
soldiers began naming their Strykers, though I’ve never heard of anyone naming a
Humvee. Even an up-armored Humvee is just a machine, a necessary carapace. But a
Stryker gets treated like a member of the platoon. Soldiers take extra care of
them.

Read more about what Iraqi's have dubbed "The Ghost" in my article The Stryker's War ( a tale which can also be found in my new Book!).