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A Short Guide to Iraq (1943)
- Kenji 5y agoGuide to Iraq in 1943: This. Guide to Iraq in 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CollateralMurder.ogv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CollateralMurder.ogv Looks like times have changed.
- eminence32 5y agoA [pdf] flag in the title might be a good idea.
- dang 5y agoWe've since changed the URL.
- lindseymysse 5y agoMy grampa was stationed in Iraq at this time. I bet he would have seen this manual. I remember him telling me about hunting Warthogs in the desert. Bullets were in short supply so hunters were given one bullet and knife. You had one shot, and then you had to go slit the animals throat with the knife. They gave the gun to my grampa a lot, he was an country boy who grew up target practicing on the range. He was always a solid shot. Thanks for the memory!
- nradov 5y agoI've heard stories about Turkish soldiers deployed as peacekeepers after the Iran-Iraq War. They weren't permitted to fire their rifles at all so they hunted deer at night with jeeps.
- lindseymysse 5y agoGuys want something other than rations. I have a hard time blaming them. Though the adrenaline in that deer is gonna make it bitter eating.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago“I’m hungry. It’s time to Wrangler me up some deer for dinner!” What did they do? Run them over with 4x4s? How do you sneak up on a deer with a Jeep?
- gccs 5y agoYou just shine your headlights at them and they freeze. Spotlighting is illegal almost everywhere because if makes it so easy.
- devoutsalsa 5y agoI had no idea.
- jfrunyon 5y agoIt's why deer-vehicle crashes are so common. Deer are pretty fast, and don't have any reason to stand in a road (there's nothing for them to graze, after all). But if they're crossing the road when you come along and your headlights suddenly blind their dilated eyes... (By the way, their eyes are more like a cats, with pupils that can dilate far wider than a humans, so imagine a cop suddenly aiming a spotlight at you when it's pitch black - and then make it several times worse...)
- Spooky23 5y agoI hit about a half dozen of them when I was younger. Freezing in front of the lights is a big issue, but a bigger one is that they flip out and do weird stuff based on the sight and sound of the car at twilight. I had one jump into and break the driver side window of my car on one occasion.
- jfrunyon 5y agoYeah, you're not wrong, but that's also caused (at least partially) by poor situational eyesight.
- methyl 5y agoWeird, I can't see any sign that you can find a Warthog in Iraq. According to Wikipedia they seem to be native to Africa. Maybe he meant Wild boars.
- junon 5y ago[pdf]
- csa 5y agoNot bad for a 1943 field guide. 1. It’s a quick read. 2. It has a clear list of dos and donts. 3. It explains what the soldier’s mission there is in a broad sense (defeat Hitler). 4. It has quite a bit of quick-and-dirty info like language basics and a map (I’m guessing more than a few folks stationed there would not be able to find Iraq on a world map before they went — that’s true today for sure). Not a bad effort.
- quartesixte 5y agoSomething about the language of manuals from this time is truly a masterclass in effective teaching. This and instructional videos from this time feels like a lost art
- lovecg 5y agoIt seems like a manual like that today would have to go through multiple layers of bureaucracy and legal approvals that would suck all life out of the language. I know that the army always had censors, etc. but maybe it is yet another example how things were “simpler” back then?
- monkeybutton 5y agoIt certainly feels a lot less sanitized or "corporate bland". The tone is very casual, like you're talking to an older buddy. Lots of colloquialisms like "southpaw" and "lick" as in beating someone. Even some puns "Yes, Iraq is hot spot in more ways than one". The one thing I can't tell if that's just how it was written naturally, or if that tone is on purpose like in the propaganda films and posters of the time. Obviously they wanted soldiers to read and follow the instructions, not get bored and toss it aside so I think the style is intentional. Can you imagine if it was written today, what would they use to make it approachable for young soldiers, emojis and memes?
- csa 5y ago> Can you imagine if it was written today, what would they use to make it approachable for young soldiers, emojis and memes? Take a look for yourself: https://fieldsupport.dliflc.edu/ https://fieldsupport.dliflc.edu/ Spoiler alert… no emojis or memes.
- meitham 5y agoNot sure why the downvote, it was a common knowledge that Bush pronounced the country name incorrectly. >>> YOU HAVE been ordered to Iraq (i - RAHK) - Page 1. And we thought Bush was an idiot not knowing how to pronounce the country, when the official guide clearly says this is how you pronounce it! Page 25 shows 1 IQD = $4, today $1 ~= 2K IQDs Interesting to also see the use of "MOSLEMS" to refer to "Muslims", today this spelling is generally only used by far right American groups. Also interesting to see the use of "JAPS" to refer to the Japanese! This is extremely offensive to use today, and I was wondering if that was the case back then too.
- fnord77 5y agowow, that introduction is worth a read alone. seems like an entirely different army mentality that today. > The best way you can do this is by getting along with Iraqis and making them your friends ... > And secondly, so that you as a human being will get the most out of an experience few Americans have been lucky enough to have.
- jollybean 5y agoThis perception really isn't true though. That the general public has not been exposed to the equivalent current documentation doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The level of understanding that many leaders have going into these situations, and especially their earnestness to want to help in material ways ... is very high. The US Army didn't 'build schools' in Germany and many atrocities were committed there, far more so than incidents today which are generally widely reported. The US firebombed German and Japanese cities and burned them to the ground, with mass civilian casualties. It was a completely different story in Iraq for example. If the US were to have 'had to invade' Iraq in WW2, the era of this 'friendly publication' - well, they wouldn't have had a problem levelling entire cities either if it were deemed necessary. Large swaths of US activity in Iraq and Afghanistan focused directly on construction and support of civil services. More so than probably any intervention in history. That's not to say there aren't gaping holes in understanding and that it frankly may not make much of a difference anyhow, but it's more true that one would expect reading the slightly cynical comments here. I do appreciate the familiar tone of the publication, and I do agree that there's something there we ought to admire, however, we do live in different times.
- refurb 5y agoI see this mistake all the time in HN, just because you haven’t been exposed to it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
- sorokod 5y agoNicely done, from zero to a polite and not completely ignorant foreigner. Was there an equivalent US Army guide from the last few decades? Was there ones for Afghanistan?
- mcguire 5y agoI have a copy of the one the US Navy gave to Seabees deploying to Iraq around 2006-08 (I don't remember when he was deployed offhand). It's very similar with local customs and a tourist-level intro to road signs, money, language and numbers.
- pelasaco 5y ago"One of your big jobs is to prevent Hitler's agents from getting in their dirty work. The best way you can do this is by getting along with the Iraqis and making them your friends. And the best way to get along with any people is to understand them" // Great advice from the dark times.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago>And the best way to get along with any people is to understand them I feel like this advice alone could help everyone globally when they condemn some political or religious group specifically because someone considers them "backward." Nobody ever stops to think that they got successful within that system, so what would cause them to ditch their beliefs now because you "an enlightened" individual "know better."
- pelasaco 5y agothis sound like the most honest and positive advice that any army or government institution could give to your team working abroad.
- abarrak 5y agonice, the id in url is incremental integers, makes easy for those who want to script and get all materials!
- sorokod 5y agoLooks like the Special Service division was quite busy, more guides (including Iran, Syria and Great Britain) here https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=United%20States.%20Army%20Service%20Forces.%20Special%20Service%20Division https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname...
- tptacek 5y agoThe Iranian guide uses many of the same turns of phase as the Iraqi guide, but has nothing resembling the same energy. It's an interesting comparison. (I'm a little disappointed; Iran is a super fascinating country).
- jonplackett 5y ago> American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis like American soldiers or not. It may not be quite that simple. But then again it could be. Wise words, not heeded.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoAlmost like they should've gave the entirety of the politicians and core officers this booklet before going over there.
- awillen 5y agoI'm shocked by the clear, simple and thoughtful advice this booklet gives. It just feels like the antithesis to the kind of official government communications today that use needlessly complex language and seem to try to avoid actually saying anything of substance.
- inglor_cz 5y agoFollow the incentives. Vague language dilutes responsibility and offends no one.
- baybal2 5y agoUSA had it easy when in the days immediate toppling of Sadam, and the prognosis was bright. Even when Fallujah happened, they had more good popular disposition than not. It took US repeated, conscious, and really best to say concerted mistakes to make Iraqis hate them. 1. Fallujah 2. Fallujah repeated 3. Fallujah fiasco repeated in other cities 4. Relinquishing of control of civil administration 5. Botched ellections 6. Propping the unpopular government elected under dubious circumstances 7. Tolerance to massive levels of corruption 8. Tolerating Iranian interference early on 9. Staging, and intentional exploitation of Sunni vs. Shia confrontation. This truly was the "Genie out of the bottle" moment
- meepmorp 5y agoYou forgot step 0: ban every member of the Ba'ath party from participating in the government, thus ensuring a large supply of insurgents with military experience and access to weapons depots we didn't bother to secure.
- hashbig 5y ago> You aren't going to Iraq to change the Iraqis. Just the opposite. we are fighting this war to preserve the principle of "live and let live." Can we bring this America back?
- dominotw 5y ago.
- hashbig 5y agoOh you mean like they liberated the people of Iraq in 2003? yeah North Koreans are really missing out... And people in Cuba and Hong Kong raise American flags just because the US is an enemy of their State (enemy of my enemy is my friend) not because of "freedom and change".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dang 5y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into ideological or nationalistic battle. It's repetitive, tedious, and nasty—the things we're trying to avoid here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- awillen 5y agoI don't think the two are mutually exclusive - if we were going to liberate North Korea, the point would be largely to let the North Korean citizens live free of their horrifically oppressive government. You just have to distinguish between the culture of a country as defined by the traditions and history of its people and the culture as defined by the government, particularly if the government is a dictatorship. The former is good and should be preserved (generally) while the latter is generally to the detriment of the former.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into ideological or nationalistic battle. It's repetitive, tedious, and nasty—the things we're trying to avoid here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- incanus77 5y agoThe most stunning part of this to me was the humanity showing through, which is completely at odds with anything I’d expect from the military today.
- djanogo 5y agoMaybe, just may be, your perception of today's military was all created by MSM?
- incanus77 5y agoSure, and my dad, a three-tour, volunteer Vietnam vet, as well as friends and family in the modern military.
- anigbrowl 5y agoI think the GP is correct; not that the military is fundamentally inhumane but that as an institution its publications are almost absurdly bureaucratic. See, for example, any field manual produced in recent decades, or look into 'military powerpoint.' Military documentation today tends to be verbose, repetitive, legalistic, and laden with references to doctrinal matters, an excess of acronyms, and lacking any kind of writerly voice. It's not all bad; survival manuals are dense but concise and well-structured, for example. On the other hand, the Advanced Combat Helmet comes with a 200+ page manual whose useful content could fill maybe 30 or 40 pages. More abstract topics like leadership, tactics, strategy, and logistics are in many respects manuals about navigating the very large and complex institution of the DoD. The smaller branches produce better output, unofficially or quasi-officially, eg the Marines have some excellent writers as do SOF - not least because soldiers in those branches are expected to exercise greater autonomy and decision-making at all ranks, whereas the army in particular is more of an organizational machine for delivery of combat power, not unlike Amazon for explosions.
- chokeartist 5y ago30 to 40 pages for a helmet manual? I think you have an extra 0 there.
- dang 5y agoUrl changed from https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=477739 https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=477739 to one that doesn't do a file download. If there's a better URL, we can change it again.
- la_fayette 5y ago"If you should see grown men walking hand in hand, igore it. They are not queer" I think this is still "normal" for guys to walk around hand in hand in arab countries, although it is a serious crime to be homosexual...
- oh_sigh 5y agoSeems fairly straightforward that there is nothing sexual about holding hands. In fact, here in America, it's common to see friends (who are both women) holding hands. But you'd almost never see two male friends do it.
- f6v 5y agoHave the Italians already settled in the US when this was written? Seems like they have a habit of warm greetings as well.
- oblio 5y agoThere were gangster wars between branches of the Italian-American organized crime families back in the 1930, so... :-) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castellammarese_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castellammarese_War
- ChrisClark 5y agoI saw it a lot in China too, and one of my friends would grab my hand while we were walking out for some food. It did feel wrong to me at first. But as it happened over and over again it started to just feel friendly, nothing more.
- flohofwoe 5y agoI bought this field guide as printed book in Germany a few years ago, next to a booklet in the same format "Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany - 1944", and for American soldiers the "Pocket Guide to Germany - 1944". It's interesting to compare the British and US military leadership's view on their own soldiers and on the Germans. In general, the British seemed to be much more cautious towards the Germans, and the Americans seemed to have trusted their soldiers more to judge a situation.
- dang 5y agoThis looks like a follow-up post to the following, which was a different military guidebook from the same period and is still on HN's front page: 112 Gripes About the French - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27852034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27852034 - July 2021 (238 comments) I wonder if Leo Rosten also wrote it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27865731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27865731). One thing's for sure, they had good writers working on these. Normally we'd downweight the follow-up post (see [1], [2] for why), but this case is such an outlier that I think two isn't too many the way it usually would be. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=follow-up%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- hedgehog 5y agoThe soldiers reading this guide would have had the truly remarkable opportunity to see the marshes in the south well before the more recent wars & Saddam's order to drain them. Worth reading about for anyone interested in the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamian_Marshes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamian_Marshes
- quercusa 5y agoWilfred Thesiger's The Marsh Arabs is a fascinating look at the natives of the marshes. It appears that the marshes may be recovering to some degree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Arabs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Arabs
- anonu 5y agoNow I know why Americans say i-RAHK...
- meitham 5y agoI pointed this earlier and was downvoted. As far as I know only Bush called it i-RAHK! As an Iraqi of course I felt it was idiotic of him not to know how to properly pronounce a name of a country he's leading a war into!
- umanwizard 5y agoThat has always been the normal pronunciation in American English — at least where I’m from. It’s not something Bush invented. I am sure there are also plenty of countries whose names are pronounced differently in Iraqi Arabic than in those countries’ native languages. That doesn’t make it “wrong”.
- anonu 5y agoYou put "Bush" and "idiot" in the same sentence. I suppose that's not really promoting positive dialogue on HN. Hence why you got flagged
- umanwizard 5y agoPresumably the manual says that because that’s how Americans pronounced it, not the other way around.
- agustamir 5y agoMay be, but Iran is pronounced correctly in the guide (EE-RAHN, in section 'The Country'). Why mess up Iraq then. Strange.
- umanwizard 5y agoWell, language being a social phenomenon, neither pronunciation is incorrect according to any objective standard, since they are both rather common variants. Is it “incorrect” that Germans call France “Frankreich” ?
- GCA10 5y agoFascinating! Most of the messaging here is refreshingly open-minded, direct and timeless. I'd expected to read a lot of imperialistic bombast that aged horribly. Truth is, as many other commenters have pointed out, this document's overall tone reflects better on the American spirit than a lot of what's in the global conversation today.
- DSingularity 5y ago“Twin pipe-lines have been constructed to the ports of Tripoli in Syria and Haifa (HAI-fa) in Palestine, on the Mediterranean Sea.” A reference in US military to Palestine before it was gifted to European settlers and rebranded as Israel. Guess it wasn’t a “land without a people” back then.
- rvp-x 5y agoThere were so few european settlers in the area before 1948 that they managed to defeat the armies of multiple neighboring countries!
- golemiprague 5y agoPalestine was not gifted to European settlers, small part of it was given to the Jews who lived there at the time and had a Palestinian citizenship, whether it was Jews who lived there for generations long before the Arab colonialism of the Levant or Jews who immigrated legally from other areas of the middle east or Europe during the Ottoman empire and the British mandate. Palestine is the name coined for Judea by the Romans, it is a bit of a cultural appropriation that Arab colonialists are calling themselves these days "Palestinians", a name that was always associated with the Jews and the land of Israel. Coincidentally, some of those Jews who immigrated to Israel were refugees from Iraq where the "Palestinian" Mufti of Jerusalem incited the population to commit a pogrom against the Jewish population known as the Farhud after meeting with Hitler and agreeing to spread the Nazi propaganda in the middle east. Iraq was ethnically cleaned from Jews, one of the longest standing Jewish communities of the world by the leader of the Arab invaders of Palestine.
- unnamed76ri 5y agoThe introduction reads like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
- walrus01 5y agoThere are a lot of problems that could have been avoided in the past 20 years if everyone deploying to Iraq, Afghanistan or a similar location was forced to sit through, and pass, a one week length cultural/sociological/religious/history class. I have found that the gaps in knowledge between your typical USAID worker in Afghanistan and some military members (even those who should know better, at E5 and E6 ranks and similar) can be quite vast.
- currio 5y agoTIL 1 Iraqi Dinar was 4.02 USD in 1945 and in 2021 1 Iraqi Dinar is 0.00069 USD https://history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/s/short-guide-to-iraq.html https://history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-roo... https://google.com/search?q=1+dinar+to+usd&oq=1+&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i60l3j69i65j69i60l2.792j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://google.com/search?q=1+dinar+to+usd&oq=1+&aqs=chrome....
- addaon 5y agoThis is an annualized excess inflation rate of about 12% over that period. (No particular meaning intended by this comment, and of course the inflation rates of both the dollar and dinar are not even close to constant over time... just an interesting number.)
- tomjakubowski 5y agoJust swap two digits and what a meme that would be.
- foobarbazetc 5y ago“YOU HAVE been ordered to Iraq (i - RAHK) as part of the world-wide offensive to beat Hitler.” I always laugh when Americans say eyeRaq or eyeRan. But apparently this incorrect pronunciation goes all the way back to 1943. Wild.
- jmcgough 5y agoI inherited my grandfather's guide to France from WW2 - it's a really lovely little guide with clear goals, practical advice about the country and local customs, and enough information to figure out where you are and how to get a hotel.
- motiejus 5y agoI read the whole thing and saved it for future reference, in case I ever go there. I wish therenwere a class of travel books written in this style. This seems particularly helpful, which I didn't know before: -3 teas/coffees is ok, 4th is a sign to leave. - quick language reference. The amount there can be learned in a few weeks prior the trip. I also like the suggested vocabulary. - a bit of history and context on why people live the way they live. Thanks for sharing!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ducaale 5y ago>Each of the 12 months has only 28 days Correction: Each month could be either 29 or 30 days
- denton-scratch 5y agoThe pronunciation guides are embarrassing - "I-RAHK", "EE-RAHN". BTW, I was puzzled by EE-RAHN - surely it was called Persia in those days?
- projektfu 5y agoIt was renamed Iran, IIRC, to stress the relationship to Aryan, because of the regime’s support of Nazi Germany. If that’s wrong, blame the History channel or wherever I heard it.
- selimthegrim 5y agoIranshahr is the original name in Middle Persian IIRC