Brits helping to train Iraqi Army

PATROL BASE LIONS’ DEN — One of the United States’ longstanding allies is helping build the Iraqi army, sometimes from the ground up.

There are four British Soldiers serving with troops of the 2nd Battlion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) out of Fort Drum, N.Y., at Patrol Base Lions’ Den, Iraq, at any given time.

They aid the “Golden Dragons” of 2-14 Inf. Regt. military transition team, also known as a “MiTT.”

Capt. James Morris, a native of Devon, England, is a Royal Marine who came to work with 2-14 Inf. Regt. as part of an officer exchange with U.S. troops.

Sgt. Paul Watson is a native of Manchester and a member of the Royal Guards, the well-known guards around Buckingham Palace who wear tall bearskin hats and are teased by tourists trying to get them to break their straight faces.

They and two others deployed April 28, training in Kuwait and Iraq, before arriving at Lions’ Den in May to work with the infantry battalion. They work closely with Capt. Dennis Grinde, of Grand Forks, N.D., and Sgt. 1st Class Scott Madden of Miamisburg, the MiTT commander and noncommissioned officer in charge, respectively.

“There’s really not much difference between the U.S. and British Armies,” said Morris, who served with the 10th Mountain Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team in Afghanistan in 2006. “Your armored Humvees are much better. But patrol tactics are not much different. You can integrate British and U.S. troops with no problem. What you call ‘fives and twenty-fives’ we call ‘five-meter-and-twenty-meter searches,’ but it’s not difficult to figure out. The tactics remain pretty much the same.”

“I call it ‘same (stuff), different Army,” Watson said. “Soldiers are Soldiers at the end of the day, wherever you go.”

“It’s really interesting, “Grinde said. “We’re really all one team. Like Winston Churchill said, fighting a war with an alliance is hard, but it’s impossible without one.”

The MiTT has been working on training many Iraqi soldiers, most of whom they had to re-train from the ground up because the troops had not internalized much of their previous training.

On a recent mission, much of the Iraqi company was 35 minutes late to begin the patrol.

“One of the platoon leaders, Omar, always has his guys there on time and squared away,” said Morris. “The others, not so much.

“We’re not trying to get them up to Western standards. We’re trying to get them to Iraqi standards, so that the British and American Soldiers can go home and they can have a functional native Army,” Morris said. “We’re not here to change their culture, we’re here to train them. In their culture, it’s very ‘insh’allah’ – God willing – being on time isn’t a big deal.”

“In the last four weeks, they’ve started really thinking,” Watson said. “They’re asking for vehicle support, but they’re doing their own techniques and we’re falling back a little bit.”

“They need confidence,” Morris added. “We’re trying to give them that, and then start weaning them off our support. We’re stepping back and doing overwatch while they do more of the missions now.”

After the Iraqis train at Lions’ Den, they will go south to Tallil to work with an Australian unit, which helps get them to a higher level of skill, Morris said.

Until then, the Soldiers of 2-14 Inf. Regt. and their British attachments continue to teach.

“If we train them in the morning and late afternoon, they remember more,” Morris said.

“The level of education and literacy they have means that practical, hands-on training works better,” he explained. “And when we make it a little entertaining, it works much better.”

The British regale the 2-14 Inf. Soldiers with tales of their riot training, with full-contact company-on-company riots, with a unit of British regulars against a unit of Nepalese Gurkhas. The fighting is no-holds-barred, with live Molotov cocktails – “petrol bombs,” as Morris and Watson call them – and attempted kidnappings.

The Americans enthusiastically ask about Watson’s time in the Queen’s Guard. (“Does the Queen send tea out for you?” “Yes, but we can’t drink it, it would involve moving,” And “What happens if you smile?” “Twenty-eight days in jail, no questions at all.”)

“You guys should be good at counter-insurgency now,” one Soldier said, laughing. “I think we kind of beat you with insurgency warfare a few years ago.”

“That you did,” Morris said, also laughing, “although we had a good run at the beginning. But we’re onto those tricks now.”

Pharaoh and the Sergeant

1897

". . . Consider that the meritorious services of the Sergeant Instructors attached to the Egyptian Army haue been inadequately acknowledged. . . . To the excellence of their work is mainly due the great improvement that has taken place in the soldiers of H.H. the Khedive."
--- Extact from Letter.

Said England unto Pharaoh, "I must make a man of you,
That will stand upon his feet and play the game;
That will Maxim his oppressor as a Christian ought to do,"
And she sent old Pharaoh Sergeant Whatisname.
It was not a Duke nor Earl, nor yet a Viscount --
It was not a big brass General that came;
But a man in khaki kit who could handle men a bit,
With his bedding labelled Sergeant Whatisname.

Said England unto Pharaoh, "Though at present singing small,
You shall hum a proper tune before it ends,"
And she introduced old Pharaoh to the Sergeant once for all,
And left 'em in the desert making friends.
It was not a Crystal Palace nor Cathedral;
It was not a public-house of common fame;
But a piece of red-hot sand, with a palm on either hand,
And a little hut for Sergeant Whatisname.

Said England unto Pharaoh, "You 've had miracles before,
When Aaron struck your rivers into blood;
But if you watch the Sergeant he can show vou something more. '
He's a charm for making riflemen from mud."
It was neither Hindustani, French, nor Coptics;
It was odds and ends and leavings of the same,
Translated by a stick (which is really half the trick),
And Pharaoh harked to Sergeant Whatisname.

(There were years that no one talked of; there were times of horrid doubt --
There was faith and hope and whacking and despair --
While the Sergeant gave the Cautions and he combed old Pharaoh out,
And England didn't seem to know nor care.
That is England's awful way o' doing business --
She would serve her God (or Gordon) just the same --
For she thinks her Empire still is the Strand and Holborn Hill,
And she didn't think of Sergeant Whatisname.)

Said England to the Sergeant, "You can let my people go!"
(England used 'em cheap and nasty from the start),
And they entered 'em in battle on a most astonished foe --
But the Sergeant he had hardened Pharaoh's heart
Which was broke, along of all the plagues of Egypt,
Three thousand years before the Sergeant came
And he mended it again in a little more than ten,
Till Pharaoh fought like Sergeant Whatisname.

It was wicked bad campaigning (cheap and nasty from the first),
There was heat and dust and coolie-work and sun,
There were vipers; flies, and sandstorms, there was cholera and thirst,
But Pharaoh done the best he ever done.
Down the desert, down the railway, down the river,
Like Israelites From bondage so he came,
'Tween the clouds o' dust and fire to the land of his desire,
And his Moses, it was Sergeant Whatisname!

We are eating dirt in handfuls for to save our daily bread,
Which we have to buy from those that hate us most,
And we must not raise the money where the Sergeant raised the dead,
And it's wrong and bad and dangerous to boast.
But he did it on the cheap and on the quiet,
And he's not allowed to forward any claim --
Though he drilled a black man white, though he made a mummy fight,
He will still continue Sergeant Whatisname --
Private, Corporal, Colour-Sergeant, and Instructor --
But the everlasting miracle's the same!

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