Mama told me so... tell it to the Marines

Lieutenant Grace Finley taught some of the young marines about to ship out to Iraq in 1943, to help the British in the Near East campaigns, and she packed an instructive booklet away with her keepsakes.

She was one of the college graduate women who, post-Pearl Harbor, signed up for officer training as their patriotic duty to "free a marine to fight."


Her vintage Iraq booklet was stashed in a campaign desk, dating from World War II, along with love letters to her husband, a Marine officer serving in the South Pacific, and old-fashioned box cameras. It was stored away for six decades in her garage.

Today, five years after the US launched its invasion and occupation of Iraq, the common-sense advice to GIs is still pertinent.

World War II-era tips for Iraq duty

We found this historical gem in an old trunk which was crammed with my mother’s World War II keepsakes. As a US Marine lieutenant, Grace Finley taught recruits at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and Quantico, Virginia. Tucked away with her brass-buttoned dress white uniforms was a slim booklet that outlined in 1943 what to expect in Iraq.

A nearly identical WWII booklet for Army personnel was published by the University of Chicago Press in June 2007 as a nostalgic blast from the past.
For today's fighters, there's no need to shell out $10 for this edition, even though it is essential reading, originally paid for by American tax dollars. In memory of Grace Finley, we have scanned the original pages of her booklet and posted them online for everybody who cares about the future of Iraq and the fate of the American servicemen and women serving there.

(Please click on images to enlarge to full-size.)







60 years before the current war started, when British troops guarding strategic Iranian oil resources from the German advance
requested the help of American allies, this GI guide for grunts had timely tips about guerrilla fighters, religious factions, and cultural taboos. Like the familiar place names, they seem just as relevant today. The guide anticipated virtually every problem encountered by troops in the past five years.

Publications by US-led 'coalition of the willing'

Sample leaflet (with Arabic text on the reverse) that US troops & Iraqi government trainee security forces distribute before raids in Iraq




Present-day fighters' guides to Iraq are far more analytical, with Orwellian vocabulary aimed at an educated fighting force. The latest one even quotes the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. Diagrams outnumber cartoons, and the the volume won't fit easily into a pocket.
This online counterinsurgency field manual, written by the new commander General David Petraeus, came out in mid-December 2006. With 280 pages for the volunteer soldier to ponder, it's ten times as long as the grunts' "Short Guide to Iraq" from 63 years ago and covers some of the same ground. Ironically, General Petraeus extols the armed forces'"Center for Lessons Learned."










Soldiers need to read the roads - where bombs are hidden in rubbish piles, dug into old craters or stashed beneath roadkill. They must be alert for an IED command wire,ready for detonation by a hidden triggerman with a cellphone.
They must read faces in mobs, and see a potential rocket attack where people cluster, or a homemade bomb where there are too few. By questioning the motives of civilians, they can sense a source of urgent danger.





Official US military poster at time of the invasion shows an olive drab determination that freedom is on the march. Four years into the occupation, it was still in use. No one in charge predicted the prolonged insurgency.


Hit the deck-- soldiers abroad were dealt these odd face cards, containing dozens of jokers, ostensibly to learn to identify enemy leaders, Iraq's most wanted.



No, this Mad Magazine Star Wars 2 parody is not official, but it was spotted in quite a few lockers on bases and email in-boxes. Widely circulated in 2002-2003, it looks decidedly dated now. Rumsfeld has long since resigned, Colin Powell is out of the picture, and pot-bellied Saddam was put to death by a bungling hangman.

miscellaneous warning posters/pamphlets

This official British Ministry of health poster from 1943, would have been seen by American troops posted in barracks near Basra, Mosul, or Kirkuk.
Reginald Mount designed the stylized orchid on the skull to represent the evils of flesh, according to the "Weapons on the Wall" exhibit at the University of St Andrews in Fife, Scotland.
The little GI booklet warned that venereal disease was rampant in Iraq, even though streetwalkers were few, and helpfully pointed out that prostitutes were confined to their own section in most Iraqi walled cities. (One of the relevant pages is below.)



Below, a vintage poster from government archives suggests that sex without protection aids the enemy.



Even World War II cartoons spread the theme of dangerous women. View Private Snafu in "Booby Trap", set in 1944 Iraq.

Posters still survive from a Warner Brothers' B-list desert war thriller of the time, called "Adventure in Iraq"





Cover of the U of Chicago Press facsimile edition- released last summer with the frontispiece illustration from Mom's old pocket pamphlet displayed on its cover.