**Name: Major Bob Bateman
Dateline: Baghdad, Iraq**
Monday: 19 December, approximately 09:30
“Boab, ah, um, would you mind telling me what’s going on here?”
“Sir?”
Story continues below ↓ <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/#storyContinued>
——————————
——————————
————
advertisement
——————————
——————————
————
“The lava-tor-y” (My Colonel, in other words my boss, is British. Very
British. This is how he speaks.)
“Oh, uhhhh, yessir. Well see, I write a little….(pause)…did Colonel
Lovelock* tell you about the coffee creamer episode?”
Bemused look. Short reminder. “Ahhh, yes, but what’s that got to do with
this?”
“Well sir, I sort of did it again.”
“Say again?”
“Well, see sir, there are these schools…and I kinda thought that if one
inadvertent e-mail could generate 130 pounds of creamer for us, well
then a deliberate e-mail might get enough supplies to get a school off
on the right foot.”
“And this is why I can’t use the lav-a-tory?”
“Uh, yessir.”
“Right then, get rid of it.”
“Wilco sir.”
* Colonel Lovelock was the British officer who was my boss from January
through September of this year.
Tuesday, 20 December (10:30 hrs Local)
Chaos, barely contained, reigns. Roughly 1,000 lbs of your donations
pack our latrine, to a height of six feet. Three officers and one NCO
are cutting the labels off (to protect your identity), I am collecting
the shipping labels (for thank you letters), and twelve more shuttle the
boxes out to the parking lot.
Just on sheer cubic volume we are initially overwhelmed. Four Ford
Explorers will not be enough.
Get a fifth.
Not enough. A sixth then…
In the end there are six SUVs, packed to the gills, more than twenty
officers and NCOs, and a near host of other commissioned and
non-commissioned helpers for whom there is no room in the vehicles. I
give the most bizarre verbal operations order of my life, and we set
off. Ranger School is a useful training experience, but it does not
train you for this. It is now 11:45. We will arrive at the schools just
as the morning sessions let out, and the afternoon session begins. In
other words, the timing guarantees maximum chaos.
I cannot speak for all columns of our education offensive. I was leading
a single element, and trusting to the developing experience of the
others to bring their supplies to the ‘objective.’ What I can assert is
that, once again, this was a learning experience for all.
As you know, we have been supplying a boy’s and a girl’s Elementary
School, as well as a Boy’s High School. After the delivery last week we
found the High School for the girls. I faced a decision at that point:
Expand the program and initiate supply delivery to the girls’ High
School… or face rebellion and possible execution at the hands of the
female officers and NCOs from this command.
These women are armed, and appeared quite serious. Discretion, as they
say, is oft the better part of valor.
So five of the vehicles went to the schools with which he already had
relations, and I led the sixth, filled with heavily armed American women
and roughly 200 lbs of supplies, to the girls High School.
At first they did not know what to make of us. We had a new translator
with us, Mohammed, a physician who makes only a little more than $100/mo
as a doctor, so he is translating instead. First I had to help him
understand what we were doing, then he could make it clear to the
Administrators and teachers of this new school. After a few moments the
way was cleared and we started setting up a line to distribute materials
to the girls. I stepped back and out of the way at this point, because
there were two things we were delivering this morning. The first, and
obvious, was the supplies. The less obvious was an example.
For all that you read about how Iraq is, or was, secular (and it is in
many substantive ways), one should not mistake it for Paris, or Beruit
for that matter. Women occupy particular roles here, partly defined by
religion, but also by culture. One role which Iraqi girls are not used
to seeing women occupy is that of professional military officers. Two of
our officers, one an Army Second Lieutenant, the other a newly made
Marine Captain, look like they could have been attending the school
themselves. After a few moments, when I and the other male officer had
cleared ourselves to the edge of the room, they became the centers of
attention. Each was surrounded by a pack of teenage girls, who, with
little confidence in their English, asked questions in a tentative way.
We’ve made several trips to these schools now, and depending upon the
school, and the gender of the students, our female officers have had
quite a range of questions thrown at them. A typical trip has multiple
variations of these (combined here for simplicity) questions thrown at
our female officers and NCOs:
“This is your gun? Yours? And it has bullets? You are allowed to shoot?”
“You give orders to women soldiers only? No? Men too?! No!…(really?)”
“Does your husband approve and work with you?” (This, by the way, annoys
the hell out of our single female officers and NCOs. They answer this
one very directly.)
The answers today, delivered directly but accompanied with laughs and
smiles by two of America’s newest and best qualified diplomats, amazed
and delighted the girls. Yes, we delivered more than just one form of
educational support here today.
All in all the whole delivery run took about two hours out of the day,
but the smiles, both on the faces of the kids, and on our own, lasted
far longer.
Thank you for your support.
Baghdad within Earshot:
Sunday, 25 December (13:39 hrs Local)
Today is Christmas. Thus far there have only been a few mortar rounds
lobbed into the perimeter, one earlier this morning and one just a few
minutes ago. Of those, one missed us entirely. The other sounds like it
landed back towards the direction of my trailer/home, or perhaps on the
far side of the river. It is tough to tell by sound alone, but as I am
at work, this does not affect me for now. Here at our headquarters I
opened my “local” presents: A long handwritten letter from my fiancée, a
new notebook for my thoughts, and a copy of “How Soccer Explains the
World” by Foer.
Contrary to expectations, I have heard not only from my fiancée (with a
long, lovely letter, as well as photos of the presents I will receive
when I come home), but from my daughters as well. Seeing the names,
“Morgan”, “Ryann” and “Connor” in my in-box on this day is enough.
It has to be.
/You can write to Major Bob at / / Bateman_Maj@hotmail.com/
<mailto:Bateman_Maj@hotmail.com>/./
**Good news for humankind**,
