WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- Two brigades of the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division are heading back to Iraq in mid-2005, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.
The 1st A.D. out of Wiesbaden, Germany, returned the last of its soldiers from Iraq only last summer. Its soldiers were among the 20,000 that were held three-months beyond their year-long tour of duty in Baghdad last year because of deteriorating security. Some of the soldiers had already returned to their base and families in Germany when they were told to head back to Iraq for at least 90 extra days.
More than 1 million service members have pulled at least one combat duty tour in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001, and a third of them have had at least two tours already.
There are around 150,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq, a boost of around 12,000 over the previous level in advance of the Jan. 30 election. It is the largest number of U.S. troops in Iraq at once so far, and is bigger than the force that conducted the initial invasion in March 2003.
