The brigade pulled out of the city a few days ago, having captured at least seven suspected guerrilla leaders, confiscated weapons and ammunition, and persuaded at least some residents to have faith that the Americans are there to help, The News Tribune of Tacoma reported Sunday. The newspaper has a reporter embedded with the Stryker troops.

"Our ability to saturate an area with dismounted soldiers was awesome," said Maj. Adam Rocke, the operations officer with the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment.

Brigade officials said the two-week Operation Arrowhead Blizzard validated many of the concepts from the three years spent developing the Army's first brigade of Stryker combat vehicles at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma. For instance, they showed they could quickly move large numbers of heavily armed infantrymen. A Stryker company is more than twice the size of a typical mechanized infantry company.

They showed that they can handle a mission in a tight urban environment without taking heavy casualties. To date, no brigade soldiers have died since three were killed in a Dec. 8 accident in which two Strykers tumbled into an irrigation canal.

Stryker troops in Samarra captured at least seven so-called "high-value targets" - insurgents on the 4th Infantry Division's list of suspected planners, financiers and organizers in the areas north of Baghdad up to Tikrit.

They detained another 50 or so men for possession of weapons and bomb-making equipment, according to a brigade press release, and discovered at least 26 weapons caches.

Stryker troops hauled away more than 500 mortars, six mortar tubes, 200 155-mm artillery shells, nearly 200 rocket warheads, 53 rocket-propelled grenade launchers with 143 RPGs, 228 AK-47 assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Most of the seized weaponry was later destroyed.

During the mission, the closest the brigade came to taking any casualties was when an improvised bomb went off under a Stryker driven by Spc. Christopher Byers.

Byers was ferrying his squad to a raid in Samarra when a bomb buried in the road blew up beneath his driver's compartment. It demolished the left front wheel and filled the vehicle with dirt and debris, but no one was seriously hurt and the vehicle was still drivable.

"It was like sitting inside a small car with all the windows rolled up, and you fired off a .12-gauge shotgun inside," said Byers' buddy, Spc. Kenneth Rickman. "It rang everybody's bell pretty good."

Byers, 21, of Lewistown, Mont., suffered a concussion and still has a hard time hearing out of his left ear, the one closest to the blast. Back at Camp Pacesetter, medics gave him a shot of Demerol. He said his headache lasted five days. The battalion is recommending him for a Purple Heart.

Now it's haircut, shower and laundry time as the Stryker soldiers refit for their next mission, a move from Camp Pacesetter. It will be their first big relocation since crossing from Kuwait and rolling into north-central Iraq a month ago.

The first units have already headed out. For security reasons, the brigade won't allow reporting on the timing and destinations.