War Post

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.

Let’s start this up every Friday now: a range of comments and descriptions of life in Iraq from a breeze of milblogs.

From Back in the Sandbox:

We finally caught one of the million lizards that are running around this place. Everday when I walk back to my room, I see these little guys scurry into a hiding place. This one was caught in our work area. They’re hard to get a picture of and even harder to catch. On my first deployment, I saw Camel Spiders all of the time. That’s not the case this time, but that’s fine with me. I’d rather live in a place with these little lizards than those ugly spiders.

At Half a World Away, "Sack," a National Guardsman at Camp Anaconda, gave a very detailed description of watching Tiger Woods win the British Open last weekend, and wrapped up his various critiques of the coverage - "SSG Johnson and I thought it was comical that after Sergio got off to a terrible start, they didn’t show any coverage for him like 10 holes" - with this:

Well, back to the daily grind. Today is our 4th month anniversary, so we are 1/3 done with our time in country. Our section celebrates this milestone by going "out to eat" at BK or Pizza Hut. I think I’ll have a whopper tonight.

365 and Wake-Up (featured in the WSJ’s milblogging piece two days ago) described returning home in January:

Back Home

     After 18 months away the 1-184 IN returned to the sunny shores of California last Monday.  It has only been a week since A Co touched down, but when I look back at my days in Baghdad they seem somehow vaugely unfamiliar.  It is almost as if I were watching the actions of an unfamiliar other move through my memories. As the memories reconsolidate I will be posting again to finish filling in all the gaps in our deployment… but for now I am just enjoying the free air.

Matthew Burden at Blackfive offers fiery, conservative war rhetoric and little document about soldier life. But here’s a letter from an Israeli soldier posted on that site today, if only to show that ideology is a pretty busy highway:

This is our time to rise to the challenge, put on the helmets and the bullet proof vests and make sure that the northern border is secure.

We shall fulfill any mission in a most effective manner, in face of any challenge.

If we shall not fulfill our mission we shall forfeit the right to exist.

We shall not lose this war, which we did not start.

Our duty is to serve as a defense force of the Jewish People, and to secure the peace of mind of the civilians in northern Israel.

If we shall not do it, no one will do it in our place.

For two thousand years we waited for the establishment of the Jewish State, and we are not going to roll back because a bunch of terrorists assume that they can scare us.

He who cannot defend Liberty does not deserve Liberty.

If we will not be able to fight until our last drop of blood, in order to secure the Liberty of our People on its own soil, our People will not enjoy Liberty.

There is time to talk and there is time to act.  At this time, when missiles and Katyushas afflict the North all the way to Haifa, in addition to the two kidnapped soldiers, the ten soldiers killed and the dozens injured, it is time to fight and not to talk.  We are the force, which has been chosen to fight, and we shall perform in the most effective manner.

I will be the first one to enter the battle and the last one to come out, and will do everything in my power to get you out alive and well. On Friday, with God’s help, we will rejoin with our families. However, I cannot do it alone. Once we cross the northern border, you should exercise full alert and full responsibility toward your fellow soldier.

More of Peter Turnley’s photos from the first Gulf War are available here at the Digital Journalist. Turnley posted his photo essay on that website in 2002. Many of the photos in it were never picked up and printed by the press during Operation Desert Storm. Of the photos Turnley writes:

"I came across another scene on an obscure road further north and to the east where, in the middle of the desert, I found a convoy of lorries transporting Iraqi soldiers back to Baghdad, where clearly massive fire power had been dropped and everyone in sight had been carbonized. Most of the photographs I made of this scene have never been published anywhere and this has always troubled me. As we approach the distinct possibility of another war, a thought comes to mind. The photographs that I made do not, in themselves, represent any personal political judgment or point of view with respect to the politics and the right or wrong of the first Gulf War. What they do represent is a part of a more accurate picture of what really does happen in war. I feel it is important and that citizens have the right to see these images."

 
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.

I just discovered Stephen P. Cohen’s The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation, which offers glimpes of Indian home life during the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force. Most of all, the British Government of India wanted men, more and more of them, to send off to the desert plains of Iraq or the squalid trenches of France. Here Cohen portrays the rectruitment center of the Punjab.

The final two years of the war brought enormous pressure upon civilian and military officials to speed the flow of recruitment of the Punjab. Sir Michael O’Dwyer, Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, toured the countryside from division to division, district to district, exhorting the youth of the martial classes—especially the Sikhs—to come forward. In numerous speeches he argued that India’s cause was that of Britain: therefore India should contribute a proportionate number of soldiers which we calculated to be three million. He threatened that conscription would be necessary if Indians would not volunteer. A quota system was informally introduced and the threat of conscription was used as an incentive. O’Dwyer praised the districts whcih had contributed large numbers of troops and shamed those that did poorly, especially with the taunt that Bengal had provided a "keen and capable" unit. 

And now, from Anthony Swafford’s Gulf War memoir Jarhead (a jarring, useful source, regardless of its film version), a description of idle Marines being interviewed by newspaper reporters. "They shake our hands and urge us to speak freely, but they know we’ve been scripted."

"I’m from Texas, ma’am. I joined when I was eighteen rather than go to jail for a few years. Petty stuff. I finds out later my dad talked to the judge the night before and set the whole thing up. How ’bout that shit? But I’m proud of what the Corps has made me."

…I’m proud to serve my country. This is what I signed for. I’m gonna make my mom and pop and my girl proud. I come from a little town in Missouri. They’re gonna make a parade for me, they got the ribbons up already. My mama says the whole town is behind us."

The photo is an undated inspection of Indian troops, perhaps in India, or France.