Barnes Blog
As the conflict in Iraq continues, U.S. News has dispatched Pentagon correspondent Julian E. Barnes for a frontline view.
Barnes, who has periodically reported from Iraq since the war began in 2003, is blogging his impressions for usnews.com.
Monday, 12/05
Cache and carry
The Air Force explosive ordnance disposal team blew up a huge pile of explosives today outside Kirkuk—some 3,000 pounds of explosives extracted from more than 15 tons of mortar rounds. But what exactly did they blow up? When soldiers find a hidden trove of artillery shells, mortar rounds, or ammunition, they say they found a weapons cache. The dictionary would tell you that cache, meaning hiding place, is pronounced "cash." But in the military if you say "cash" you mean a hospital, specifically a CSH, a Combat Support Hospital. (Like a MASH but not so mobile.) So when it comes to hidden troves of weapons, the soldiers like to pretend they are either French or Stephen Colbert. They pronounce cache "ka-SHAY." That's the wrong pronunciation of cache but is the correct pronunciation of cachet, which means prestige. And given how important it is to find weapons troves before they can be turned into roadside bombs, it is certainly true that units that find large caches earn a good bit of cachet.
Sunday, 12/04
A Naderite on the battlefront?
Ralph Nader voters are not as scarce in the Army as you might think. I've actually met two in previous trips to Iraq. Spc. Linsay Burnett was the third. But that was just the beginning. Burnett, a 2003 graduate of the College of William & Mary, is probably the least likely soldier I have ever met. What caught my attention was that she was reading Johnny Got His Gun, a classic antiwar novel of World War I. Then it turned out that she was a Nader supporter, vegetarian, labor organizer, founder of an Amnesty International chapter, and former war protester. Not the typical model of a modern soldier.
At the time of the initial invasion, Burnett thought it was a mistake.
"When it first happened," she says, "I was on the streets protesting with everyone else." She says she was supportive of the effort to remove Saddam Hussein but skeptical about how America went about it.
Today, she supports the military's efforts to help create a democracy in Iraq. She says she believes the United States is trying to teach the Iraqis useful things, trying to improve their organization–something near and dear to her heart. But she still wonders how feasible it will be to help make Iraq into a functioning democracy.
Curiously, she didn't think very much about deploying to Iraq when she enlisted in February 2004. She needed a job and health insurance; the Army offered both. So she signed up for Army public affairs and broadcast communications. Now, though, she seems to have fully embraced the experience of being in Iraq.
"My best friend was freaked out," Burnett says. "She said, 'I will find a way to get you out.' But now she's like, 'I really respect you.'"
Coming into the military from the atmosphere of a liberal arts college—Burnett was class president at William & Mary—has been a bit of an adjustment.
"I have had my run-ins with military authority," she says. "I have been critical and analytical by nature. And if I think there are better ways of doing things, I like to say so. But after a while you learn to accept what you cannot change."
Now Burnett is focused on doing her work, finding edible vegetarian fare in the chow hall, and learning as much as she can.
"You really can see what the country looks like and how the people live," she says. And of course she has also found that parts of the experience are forcing her to rethink some long-held positions. "I consider myself a pacifist," she says. "But now I have been hit by an IED and shot at by a sniper."
Burnett has an additional 11 months in her tour in Iraq and another year of service after that. "Hopefully, I will get a cushy [Army] radio job," she says. "What do you do after serving in Iraq? I guess I will start studying for the LSATs."
Saturday 12/03
Of fobbits and CHUs
Soldiers in Iraq still refer to their homes as hooches—a term from the Vietnam War—but a new word for the slightly fancier quarters of Iraq is creeping into the military lexicon: CHU. Like many military terms, CHU is an acronym. It means Container Housing Unit. Though some soldiers are housed in old Iraqi military barracks, and a few unlucky ones are in tents, on most of the forward operating bases, or FOBs, Halliburton has set up rows and rows of air-conditioned trailers in which soldiers make their home.
The term FOB has produced its own bit of jargon. Fobbits are soldiers who spend all their time on the base. Indeed, the inaugural issue of the 101st Airborne Division's magazine for soldiers in Iraq defines Fobbit as "one who avoids traveling off the FOB at all costs." Despite the occasional derision of the infantry, or perhaps because of it, the Fobbits have a well-developed sense of humor. One group of 101st Fobbits has dubbed its cluster of CHUs the Shire.