American Soldiers' Letters, Magazine War CoverageJune 17, 2007 3:32 am
"Soldiers’ videos and photos show how obscene games and simulated violent acts became part of everyday life and led to a culture of abuse in Iraq’s detention facilities."
Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, Operation Iraqi Freedom, American Soldiers' Letters, Religious War, Magazine War CoverageAugust 1, 2006 7:18 pm
Runaway Raft on the Tigris (via Harper’s).
I’ve been going through Andrew Carroll’s two anthologies of war letters recently, trying to decide which letters to except and add to the archive here. Having just read Ken Silverstein’s feature in the newest Harper’s on the rise of Shi’a Iraqi death squads, this letter stood out. A Marine writes to his priest back home a month after Shock and Awe:
Lieut. General Sir Stanley Maude issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of Baghdad on March 19, 1917, after the city finally fell to the British-Indian forces and just over a week after their ceremonial entrance into Baghdad (depicted in the photograph in the header). The proclamation began:Father Bob,
With religious banners flying, truckload after truckload of cheering Iraqis pass our position. After decades of religious oppression, the Shi’a muslims are now free to worship as they wish. Old men have tears of joy and the younger generation try to thank us the best they can in their broken English. "Thank You America" and "Mr. Bush… good" are about all the Marines can understand, but the sight of the liberated people is an incredible gift to all of us on this most wonderful Easter.
Andrew Carroll, editor, Behind the Lines, (New York: 2006) p. 211.
Our military operations have as their object the defeat of the enemy, and the driving of him from these territories. In order to complete this task, I am charged with absolute and supreme control of all regions in which British troops operate; but our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.And included the following:
Many noble Arabs have perished in the cause of Arab freedom, at the hands of those alien rulers, the Turks, who oppressed them. It is the determination of the Government of Great Britain and the great Powers allied to Great Britain that these noble Arabs shall not have suffered in vain. It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth, and that it shall bind itself together to this end in unity and concordMaude hoped for a smooth colonial administration embodying just enough of the ideals expressed in the proclamation to keep the native population calm. That did not happen. What resulted instead was a Shi’a-Sunni-united rebellion against the British in 1920, known widely as the Arab Revolt, though memorialized in Iraq as the Great Iraqi Revolution.
Imperial British proclamations in newly-captured Baghdad can’t be compared directly to a soldier writing to his priest in 2003, relaying the joy of people free to worship. Some of Paul Bremer’s speeches are the more obvious comparisons to Maude. But in their contrast, the 1917 proclamation and this letter together express to how far things fell in Iraq in the years following both "successful" invasions. That, and the limits of "liberators."
American Soldiers' Letters, Operation Desert StormJuly 31, 2006 4:18 pm
From Andrew Carroll’s letter anthology War Letters: an excerpt from a letter from Vietnam veteran Bill Hunt to fellow veteran and then-columnist David Hackworth on the brink of war with Iraq in 1990. I know this site is meant as an archive of the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force and the American soldiers of the current war, but this letter seems appropriate. The veteran’s concerns over what would draw him to fight in Iraq now read with a newer relevance. Civil war in Iraq, though not Saudi Arabia. Bombs and rockets in Lebanon and Israel. $75 oil barrels. What else? Since 1990?
And in the end all wars are about dying. When the dying is about honor it is somehow OK, even to, and maybe especially to, the dead. Only the folks back home have the luxury of viewing war as about living.
As a war vet, I can’t ask a young soldier to go into combat unless the mission is something I personally feel equals the value of my own life.
So, where’s the honor? Well, if the President asked me to walk point all the way to Baghdad in order to secure the release of a single hostage, I’d say yes…
…If the President convinced me that Iraq was about to attack Israel and I needed to be the sacrificial lamb, I’d say maybe. But I would want a lot more. Israel has been a real problem lately. My personal blood would require one heck of an explanation…
…Oil? No, Mr. President. This ultimate value of crude on the world market will never go higher than about $60 a barrel. That’s because alternative fuels can be produced more cheaply than that, and we the people, if not the President, are starting to understand that. We really need a national energy policy that requires energy independence. We’ve needed it for years. I’m not going to die for oil.
To liberate Kuwait? Well, frankly, Mr. President, is Kuwait some flowering democracy? Can you get the Emir to go on TV and talk about the new constitution that provides rights for all citizens? Perhaps the Emir will call for an election after I liberate the place? If I die in Kuwait, will they stop calling me an infidel? An do you really expect meto go in with Syria on my flank?
Then, shall we just protect Saudi Arabia? Well, yes, Mr. President, with serious reservations. I think I could be friends with the people of Saudi Arabia, in time. But our presence may very well bring on a smoldering unrest, and even civil war. If that happens, Mr. President, you’ve got to promise me one thing. Promise me we’ll get the hell out. The one thing I leanred in Vietnam is that you don’t mess around in someone else’s civilwar. Not unless you’re nuts.
As an American citizen I feel pretty helpless in the face of foreign policy that I know is short sighted or patently wrong. Nothing I’ve said here will change what happens in the Middle East one iota. It’s all happening too fast.Bill Hunt, November 28, 1990, from War Letters, p. 445-446.
The photo is by Peter Turnley, of a American soldier in Kuwait at the end of the first Gulf War.
Today on his blog Prof. As’ad AbuKhalil posted a letter from an American soldier stationed in Kuwait. Abu Khalil teaches political science at California State University and guest lectures at Berkeley. Ken Silverstein recently did an excellent profile of the Angry Arab on his Harper’s blog, Washington Babylon.
Barbara Kruger, Untitled No, 1985."Mr. Abu Khalil,
I am myself in a difficult situation. I am in the American military, as you might see from my email address, and am serving in Kuwait. I graduated from Syracuse University where I studied International Relations. My concentration was Middle Eastern studies and conflict resolution (go figure, right?) and I now find myself settled in the middle of a bunch of racists. The images most Americans here on camp have of Kuwaitis aren’t even of Kuwaitis, or even Arabs.
I am emailing I suppose to tell you about how disappointed I have been with the Soldiers and Officers who serve with me. I have tried my best to get them understand the conflicts raging within the area along the Mediterranean, but most wave their hand and dismiss it as a war waging for thousands of years, which you and I both know is not true. I make the effort to explain why we need to deal with conflicts with an even hand, not a biased opinion without facts. I try to give them a glimpse of what it would be like to have an America like Israel. America is not perfect, by no means, but we still have our limits… In America, you don’t get certain rights because you are part of the majority, the white protestant group, or lose them if you decide you would like to follow a different faith. I believe is it completely un-American to support a state such as Israel, yet we are their biggest supporter. What are they, the 18th richest country in the world? Receiving the most of our tax dollars?
I want to explain to the Soldiers that this conflict is a direct result of the seeds sown by WWI and not of an ancient conflict between Muslims and Jews. The seeds planted by the west are now deeply rooted in the area. Israel exists, and the Zionists continue to exploit those around them, as seen by some of the pictures posted on your “Angry Arab” website. I wanted you to know I am disgusted, and have been since the Iraq War started. There is no one man enough to do the right thing… There is an agenda out there that is so very strong, as you have mentioned. Israel’s plight is shown, but not the innocent bystander Lebanese. It breaks my heart to watch the news because I know what is really happening. It’s no wonder that Americans think the way they do, but somebody must know what is really going on… Or so I keep telling myself.
I believe I will be leaving the military as soon as my commitment is up. What do you think, if you have the time to give me your opinion, is a good course of action once I get out of this military of ours? I want to make a difference in the lives of people and get them to somehow understand what is really happening and also how embarrassed we should be. I wish there were somehow a way to show these people in a light that would make people realize what a crime we are supporting. And even if we’re not supporting, we’re standing by watching and doing nothing, which is most of the time even worse.
Thanks for telling it how it is, and I just wanted you to know, all of us aren’t totally blind."
American Soldiers' Letters, Academic War Coverage, War Literature, Operation Desert StormJuly 21, 2006 11:38 am
Where to find American war letters
December 3, 2003
Andy Carroll, founder and director of the Legacy Project, chats about the literary and historic value of soldiers’ letters home with Spc. John Sainato, a heavy equipment transporter, or HET, driver for the 11th Transportation Company. (from Army Images)
Besides the NEA’s Operation Homecoming and the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s online exhibition, there are other accessible online archives of war letters. Andrew Carroll, editor of War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars and, more recently, Behind the Lines: Powerful and Revealing American and Foreign War Letters and One Man’s Search to Find Them, has been running the Legacy Project since 1998 - "a national, all-volunteer effort that encourages Americans to honor and remember those who have served—or are currently serving—this nation in wartime by seeking out and preserving their letters and e-mails home." PBS produced a documentary, "War Letters," based on Carroll’s book, as did the History Channel, though "Dear Home" was based exclusively on the Legacy Project’s WWII letters. The writing collected through the NEA’s Operation Homecoming will be released as a book, edited by Carroll, this September.
Here’s one of the letters featured on the PBS site and from Carroll’s book War Letters. It is a letter by Dan Welch, a Staff Sergeant from Maine who served in Operation Desert Storm.
March 8, 1991.
"I can’t describe it. I mean the scene on the highway. We all just looked at it in the moonlight as we drove through the now silent carnage going God damn, God damn… There was a dead Iraqi in a car, eyes wide open, frozen in a silent scream… I guess I’ve played it so much for the last ten years that it just didn’t seem much different than the training. I’ve had field problems that were tougher. The waiting and worrying before we did it were worse than doing it. …It’s only been the last couple of days that I’ve come to realize the horror that has taken place here. …And I think it’s taken so long because with only the small number of exceptions on our part, it was almost entirely theirs…"After the war, Welch developed asthma, memory and equilibrium problems. He has since retired from the military.
Operation Iraqi Freedom, American Soldiers' Letters, Academic War Coverage, War LiteratureJuly 18, 2006 2:27 pm
The National Endowment for the Arts’ Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Exprerience will eventually include a literay anthology and an active archive of soldiers’ narratives of war. For now, their website includes a few sample wartime letters, memoirs, and poems, plus plenty of copy about the writing workshops of the past two yeasr that were led by Richard Bausch, Tobias Wolff, Andrew Carroll, and others distinguished writers. Last year, the NEA promoted Stephen Lang’s one-man play, Beyond Glory, an off-shoot production for Operation Homecoming, where Lang presented the voice and characeter of eight decorated veterans from World War, Korea, and Vietnam. Based on Larry Smith’s book Beyond Glory: Medal of Honor Heroes in Their Own Words, Lang’s play was performed at bases across the globe, including American ships in the Persian Gulf.
There are a few letters, memoirs, and poems available at Operation Homecoming, which supplied The New Yorker with the letters it ran in its "Life During Wartime" issue earlier this summer.
From War Is Personal: “Tell the Marines to Leave”
Photojournalist Eugene Richards has an ongoing project at The Nation, pairing his black and white photos of Americans affected by the war at home with their own personal reflections and agony. "War Is Personal" has profiled three people so far: Tomas Young, a 26 year-old Missourian recounting an ambush in Iraq where he asked his fellow soldiers to kill him, his injuries that painful; Carlos Arrendondo, a 45 year-old Massachusetts father grieving his young, slain Marine son; and, most recently, Mona Parsons, a 52 year-old mother from Ohio trying to persuade her son not to return to Iraq.
How do we read and react to the exposure of war at home? To supremely detailed accounts of families, veterans, and caskets in America?
When a few Marines surprise you on your birthday to announce your son’s death in Iraq, and when your heart drops, thinking that the surprise was going to be Alex, in person, home from war, should asking Marines to leave your house be such an ordeal? Should asking them to leave lead to dousing yourself in gasoline, in agony? Should it lead to an explosion?
For Carlos Arrendondo, it did just that. Asking the Marines to leave was torment, but the thought of it seemed somehow productive, beyond asking "Are you sure that was Alex? Are you sure?"
As he says:
I run back into the house, grab Alex’s picture to give it to my mom. Then seeing the uniforms, ask the Marines to please leave, leave. "Can you please leave." Perhaps I thought that if they did leave, then none of this was happening.
The voices of this war will be men like Arrendondo, I believe, if only because the articulated efforts to "Bring our Troops Home!" or to "Support Our Troops!" swirl in politics, amid disingenous suits and media-exploded figures whose sincerity is either watered down or quickly undermined by the noise machine that trumps them in the first place. Cindy Sheehan’s effort to memorialize her son with a vigil in Crawford, TX is what now? We remember it because it was on every newschannel and in every paper, crudely dissected one way or the other. But I don’t remember her voice. If anything, it was too clear: my son has died and it’s George Bush’s fault. I don’t disagree with the ultimate reasoning, just the simplicity of it. Her vigil was too buzzworthy, too easily picked-up and tossed, in its simplicity, left and right.
Try and heave Carlos Arrendondo’s reflection of his son’s death into the political climate. Try plugging it into the noise machine and getting a clear sound. That you can’t is why his voice rings for me. Whatever fact exists in his son’s death in Iraq is muddied by the lurid details of war over there and at home in Massachusetts, where Arrendondo lit himself on fire in despair. He lay in a stretcher during his son’s wake, morphine muddying his senses and his memory.
Wanting to reach him I was lifted off the stretcher and climb up to kiss him, to touch his head, his hands, his fingers, his shoulders, his legs, to see if they were still there. I lay on top of the casket, on top of my son, apologizing to him because I did nothing for him to avoid this moment. Nothing.
Operation Iraqi Freedom, American Soldiers' Letters, Military Blogs, War PoetryJuly 4, 2006 10:26 pm
I wish this war were the American Revolution. Then romance would flutter, the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot the aural ring to any bemused thought of machine death or injury.
But it’s not. The eloquence of Tom Paine’s war talk gives way to what today? Stock political speech? Nielsan ratings fast talk amid digital flags and toupees and studio makeup? Pass the easy targets. What is the most memorable thing said about this war in the past 3 years? Who said it?
The soldier letters, blogs, bestsellers, and even the discredited early war TV network movies are quite a mix of war record, for sure. My own reluctance to open up my thoughts on this blog comes right out of clear concern for heaving this topic of "soldier letters" as some kind of mass to help an argument - same concern for soldier blogs. There is no monolithic opinion, save for general expressions of politics revealed in the trumped type for the heroes’ effort of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The need for articulate, public war talk is no more equal on a national holiday than on any other day when soldiers die in Iraq. The Presidential use of the 4th of July to say the war is being won is predictable, if not condemnable on the same day that national papers are counting the percentage increase in bodies in the Baghdad morgue. But I don’t want to argue the war with Bush speeches and newspapers.
That’s not why I brought up Tom Paine. The need for voices is no more pressing today than it was last year when I first wrote these sentences about Paine, "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" early notes for an essay dealing, through reflection and contrast, with the war in Iraq. I still don’t exactly know why I wrote it, or for what point. Where does a political pamphlet that was read, cheered, and condemned a few hundred years ago fit into contemporary war talk? I suppose, at the least, Common Sense was popular. At the least, it rang.
Who writes about the war these days with any kind of ring? I ended the essay that opened with Tom Paine with this Harold Pinter poem. By heaving language and undermining the concern for being offensive, it mocks rhetoric with a point, which seems such a necessary step in figuring out how really to comment, critique, and talk about our current war. And it rings.
American Football
(A Reflection upon the Gulf War)Hallelullah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!Hallelullah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.Praise the Lord for all good things.
We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.We did it.
Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.
Eugene Richards/VII, for The New York Times
Usually it has been Butler’s youngest factory workers and farmhands who have been called to arms. But that changed in the winter of 2004, when the local detachment of the Pennsylvania National Guard — Alpha Company, First Battalion, of the 112th Mechanized Infantry Regiment — was ordered to Iraq, part of the largest battlefield deployment of the National Guard since World War II. Among the 200-odd men of Alpha Company (unlike some other National Guard units, they were all men) fully two-thirds were married, more than half had children and at least 50 were over the age of 30. Even within this demographic, Chuck Norris was something of an anomaly: at 37, the father of three was one of the "old men" of Alpha Company.
This is an excerpt from the cover story of the Sunday Times magazine of a month ago. The mistake in calling up National Guardsmen in their 30s with wives and children to fight in the Sunni Triangle was not only tactical - these men are not the 20 year-old fighting specimens of the Marines - but unsympathetic: how do casual, family Army men who survived Iraq return home? One Guardsman, Ron Radaker, is quoted in the article on the trouble adjusting to home life:
"And I don’t mean to sound arrogant when I say this, but I miss the power," he says. "Over there…we were the king of the road, and they either respected or hated us for it. And now you’re back here and you ain’t king of nothing."
In 2004, the wives of these Guardsmen in Butler, PA created their own non-profit to support their deployed husbands called S.O.S. Butler, or Support Operation Soldier. A few soldier letters addressed to the organization are available on their website.
April 6, 2005
Janice & Alecia and SOS Butler:
Please pass on to everyone involved and especially yourself; my thanks for the
numerous care packages that SOS Butler has sent me since being deployed.
It is like X-Mas every time I get one.Thanks again….. SSG Talarico J.G.
Feb 26, 2005
SOS Butler:
Sorry it took me so long to write, but believe me, I have thought of your generosity
and that of the other ladies HUNDREDS OF TIMES! We appreciate your generosity!
So it has been a LONG 8 months, but the time has also gone by pretty fast. Sometime
in the next few weeks we will hit our half-way point, but since we don’t know EXACTLY
when we will be home we won’t know the half-way date. I still try to take it 1 day at a time. Have I mentioned that your generosity is appreciated? I have maintained the point that
we have way too many paperback novels and disposable shavers, but this is not a complaint. Bar soap, shaving cream, razor blades, hard candy and cloth wipes are snatched up quickly, but I suppose most have stocked away a small supply in their
room. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the time that you have devoted to our deployed soldiers! I am ALWAYS excited to receive mail, so I suspect others are too!Thank you once and for all!
SFC H. Miller
Feb 10, 2005
Greetings, from the war torn country of Iraq. Thank you very much for your support
and Christmas packages.SFC S. Fancella
Feb 1. 2005
Dear SOS Butler,
My name is SPC Nunn and I would like to take this time to thank you so very much
for all that you have done and for your support. Every little thing that you guys do for us means so very much and makes it easier to get through our long days here. We are
very busy and free time is rare, but I wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart
for everything.Sincerely,
Spc Trenton Nunn
On Military Blogs and a Scam Soldier’s E-mail
GBZI Sport Apparel is one of the premium sponsors for the military blog network MilBlogs.
I posted Captain Brown Hugh’s message on the comment section of a few military blogs (milblogs) yesterday, trying to solicit some reaction from the sites’ authors or readers on the scam soldier letter. One advised me, "freddy, I got that e mail too. I dismissed it as BS and promptly deleted it."
Okay, sure. I know. It’s BS— a 419 scam from Nigeria, most likely. But can there be no commentary on it beyond that it’s phony? After all it’s a fake soldier letter during wartime, with the simple promise of millions in exchange for attention and correspondence, really. And I can’t help thinking that this letter, as it’s bounced around the web, is getting more public screen time than authentic soldier letters.
"I can tell ya what that Capt. Brown Hugh stuff is…full of s..t" commented another milblog reader. "This is similar to many internet scams going on…too bad it’s so hokey…and plays on military morality! Stinks to high heaven!"
What is a play on military morality? After all, what is military morality, and how does one play on it, besides purporting to be in possession of millions of stashed dollars in Karbala? Marines possibly gunned down two dozen civilians in Haditha in only the most publicized recent report of Iraqi deaths, and Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo images of the American military acting on its unworldly rhetoric have long been embedded in the public view of this war. I hardly think "military morality," then, is so static, let alone certain. Did the commentator mean to suggest that "military morality" is considerate, even smart, like a smart bomb?
Then again, if I’ve taken anything from reading many military blogs recently, it is that they are a residence for the monolithic language of Operation Iraqi Freedom, of freedom and patriotism, and of justified war.
But at least this 419 scam has worked its way into the milblog lexicon. One reader thought a post applauding a recent Ralph Peters’ article in Armed Forces Journal was "good… (too good for [the blog’s author] to get a ‘Brown Hugh-o-gram’)." Apparently posting the phony email as a comment was an insult to this blog post on Peters, a retired army general who writes Op-Ed for the New York Post, and authors books like New Glory: Expanding America’s Global Supremacy.
Operation Iraqi Freedom, American Soldiers' LettersJune 26, 2006 2:38 pm
“I need a reliable person to send this money to”
This forwarded message arrived in my mailbox this morning; a potential sequel to Three Kings?
From: "Capt.Brown Hugh" <captbhugh09@gmail.com>
Subject: PLEASE CONTACT ME
Please i am Captain Brown Smith of the US Marine currently serving in Iraq.
On Monday 19 June, 2006 we received an urgent call from northern Baghdad that some terrorist group camped there.Consequestly, my battallion were sent there to forestall their activities.
Sensing our presence, they opened fire on us.We returned fire on them,after which some of them were caught.After intense torture,they took us to Karbala near Baghdad.On reaching there they took us to a deserted building where they kept their weapons. Atfer intense search one of them took us to one of the rooms .
In the room were three metal boxes. I opened them to my amazement, they were loaded with the US dollars. I was dumbfounded, I asked one of them he told me that they were into illegal crude oil sales and also that they do receive financial support from other islamic fundamentalist groups.
On return to our base,i hid the metal boxes in my personal room as the squardon commandant.At night of the same day, I
counted the money it amounted to $7.6 million USD in $100 denomination.
Now, I need a reliable person to send this money to, please give me your name, contact address,phone number and bank account number so that I can send the money if you are interested. You have 30%, while I have the rest. I will come down there immediately you receive it .I will even reign from my job.
Above all, try to keep this information secret and confidential Don’t disclose it to anybody for security reasons and to protect my job with the US Marine.Please contact me with this email address:captbrownhugh@yahoo.com.
Yours sincerely,
Captain Brown Hugh .
Narratives of War and Inattention
The Indian soldiers’ experience in World War I Mesopotamia forms half of the base of this site; American soldiers now in Iraq are the other half. Capturing narratives of those soldiers is the goal of this research. So far, against the sparsity of Indian letters, the personal record of American soldiers is that much more extensive and, in degrees, accessible. Indian mail was subject to censorship by British officials, or worse, to harsh combat and captivity in Kut, Baghdad, Mosul. Even if he survived the campaign, it wasn’t as though a soldier returned to the Punjab where a book deal was waiting.
In contrast, then, American letters, emails, blogs, and books standout for their instant permanence. The New Yorker devotes a recent issue to soldier letters (having already profiled a soldier-poet), while the National Endowment for the Arts’ Operation Homecoming trains soldiers to be writers, blog posts from Iraq supplement intermittent letters, and bookstores stack and sell amped-up soldier memoirs.
Not that all of this forces a public imagination. Even with all the modern information and narrative, this war is often ignored or briefly forgotten day-to-day with front page dispatches from Baghdad a regular, consistent sight. What allows for this separation between war information and an articulated public attention to it? Is it the commonly thought of numbness to a glut of war coverage? Or, something more? Journalists file daily print and video reports, but the new fact is that soldiers are writing. Part of my question is who is reading them; the other part is the effect of reading narratives of war.
Indian Soldiers' Letters, American Soldiers' Letters, Religious War, Magazine War CoverageJune 9, 2006 12:52 pm
Religious Fighting and the Print-Media Soldier
The current New Yorker features a cover of entrenched soldiers, one reading by flashlight, and inside 12 pages of soldiers’ letters anchor their "Life During Wartime" issue. A selection from "Dispatches from Iraq: Soldiers’ Stories" can be heard on The New Yorker’s website; if audio tracks of war letters are of interest, more can be heard at the Gilder Lehrman Institute—letters from the American Revolution to the current war.
From this New Yorker: in 2003, Captain Donna Kahout wrote to members of her Colorado church about fighting on religious land:
One clear day, I looked down at the rich greens of the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates and pondered over the fact that these were the Tigris and Euphrates that I’d learned about in chruch and school my whole life. Genesis describes the Garden of Eden standing at the headwater of four rivers, two of which are the Tigris and Euphrates. That places the Garden just north of Basa, within sight of where I flew almost daily.
Abraham, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, the whole displaced Israelite nation, and perhaps even Adam and Eve all trod the ground I was looking down on daily. And I was living in the same desert where the Israelities wandered. We complain about being there for three months—it’s so barren, flat, windy, hot, sandy, and dry—it’s no wonder the Israelites complained during the forty years that they followed God around the Sinai Peninsula between their exodus from Egypt and their entrance into the Promised Land, near Jerusalem.
While current soldiers remark at a combat zone with Biblical connection, some of the Indian soldiers in Iraq in the 1910s, trodding the same ground, refused to fight against the local population for their own religious reasons. A 1916 letter from a Punjabi Muslim named Fateh Ullah to his friend, Fateh Ahmed, who was stationed in France, relates a friend’s refusal to fight in Mesopotamia:
We have learnt from Nasir Khan’s letter that his brother Raja Khan has been sentenced by court martial to fourteen years’ imprisonment. This has caused us much grief. The details which he gives are that when the 15th Lancers reach Basra they were ordered to fight against the Turks. They, however, declined to take up arms against their brother Muslims and asked to be sent to some other theatre of war. A court martial was convened and 400 men were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.
- David Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War (London, 1999), p. 199.
