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Also in this section:
A War without Bounty?
The New York Post, April 30, 2003
by Jonathan Foreman
Politically correct, image-obsessed military brass are breaking with time-honored tradition by forbidding battle-weary GIs from bringing home memorabilia captured from their defeated enemy.
The troops of the 3rd Infantry Division and their Marine brothers have been banned from bringing home any war booty whatsoever.
You'd be hard pressed to find a combat veteran of any 20th-century war who didn't bring home some small token of his time in Europe or across the Pacific to show his children. Indeed, soldiers have brought back such trophies from every war since Homer's Greeks took Troy.
But the G.I.s who fought their way up from Kuwait, and who are now fighting to keep the peace here until replacement units finally arrive, have been forced to hand over all war souvenirs, without exception.
There are even draconian restrictions on what battalions may bring back for their museums. Those gold plated AK-47s will be destroyed rather than wind up in display cases in Georgia.
Soldiers of all ranks have been told that if they are found with any souvenir items when the MPs go through their bags before departure, the result will be criminal charges against individuals, and the collective punishment of whole units by keeping them in the Gulf region.
The Joes understand why they have to hand in the pistols many of them picked up here. Mostly brand-new Sig-Sauers, Glocks and Berettas, the pistols were stacked in their thousands in buildings maintained by Uday Hussein. They seem to have been stockpiled as gifts (pistols imply power and status in Iraqi culture) because they were stored with antique and gold-plated weapons.
The troops have already given up all the AK-47s and other automatic weapons that fell in their hands, so that they can be given to a new Iraqi army. (You did still see a few Heckler & Koch MP5s in the hands of Scouts - it's a favorite piece of liberated gear because it's ideal for troops operating in vehicles in urban terrain.)
But they cannot understand why they cannot bring back an Iraqi army flag, a beret, an abandoned helmet, a Republican Guard badge, a presidential palace shot glass or anything else that bears the Ba'ath regime's eagle (a swastika equivalent that you see on government buildings where it wasn't pried off by angry citizens).
"Most guys just want to bring back something with the Iraqi government symbol on it, so they have something to show their kids and [can] say 'I liberated Iraq and this is what I got,'?" says Sgt. Patrick Jockisch.
"Hey, my Grandpa brought home a whole uniform from WWII, a Nazi pistol, a couple of books, some coins and medals. It's stuff we got out to look at. Stuff we took to show and tell.
"My kids will have to say, 'My dad was there, but he didn't get anything.' There'll be no proof that I was there."
Capt. Phil Wolford, whose tank company took the key bridges in Baghdad's center, had to hand in the battle flag of the Republic Guard's Medina Division. He's not happy about it. But he's "really unhappy for my guys who can't bring their bayonets home. .?.?. I think they should have one for the way that they fought. In fact, I was going to give one to all five of my lieutenants and have them engraved."
Both officers and men especially resent the ban on bringing back bayonets - and just about everyone who fought in this war found at least one. After all, says Maj. Mark Rasins, "Bayonets are your classic war trophy.
"I understand why the soldiers can't bring back crystal or silver, but bayonets?"
A veteran of the first Gulf War, he thinks it's unfair to his troops: "This will be the only war they'll ever get to go to, if they're lucky. They did fantastic. And they should have something to say that they were here."
And a new Iraqi army will have no more use for bayonets than did the old. As Rasins explains, it's telling that they abandoned them in such large numbers. He adds, "I've not come across one bayonet that's even sharp."
There were tight restrictions on war booty after Desert Storm. But they were nothing like these. "I brought back a Dragunov [Russian sniper rifle] scope, gas mask and a beret" says Sgt. 1st Class Michael Anslinger.
Why is the Army insisting on a ban that runs so counter to tradition? "If we could have quelled the looters here, it might not have been an issue" offers Capt. Wolford. Nor did it help that a handful of soldiers tried to keep a small part of a huge stash of U.S. cash found near one presidential palace.
Wolford is trying to see the side of the senior officers behind the ban: "It's in the nature of military leadership to see things in black and white terms. And we always want to take the moral high ground."
But the fact remains that a liberated Iraq doesn't need and won't miss a few thousand abandoned bayonets.
Moreover, if the army brass is worried about bad publicity, it has more urgent concerns. CENTCOM should be flying planeloads of experts to Baghdad to finally get the water and power turned back on, not to mention bringing up sufficient troops to the city to keep order.
The failure to achieve these tasks in a timely fashion, despite the vast resources at CENTCOM's command, is likely to wound the U.S. military in the eyes of the American public and the world - and perhaps fatally undermine the U.S. position here.
If a few thousand bayonets, with other symbols of a disgusting vanquished regime, were to disappear from Baghdad and arrive on American mantelpieces, the only effect would be to inspire justified pride and nostalgia in the hearts of veterans and their families.
Jonathan Foreman is embedded with the Scout Platoon of the 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, now patrolling the streets of Baghdad.