Posts Tagged ‘ Army ’

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — Wrestlers from across the military will compete at a North Carolina Marine base to determine which service is king on the mats. The 2010 Armed Forces Wrestling Championships starts on Saturday at Camp Lejeune and runs through the weekend. The tournament will feature both Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling. Wrestlers from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines will be competing in seven different weight classes for individual gold and silver medals. Competitors also earn points for their efforts. The Army dominated last year’s tournament held at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho.

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CISTERNA di LATINA, Italy — For American forces fighting their way north to Rome, it was the site of a heroic but hopeless stand, where only eight men out of two Ranger battalions escaped German troops. For the Italians caught in the fighting, it was the place where they lived underground for months before being sent on a forced march north by the Germans. On Friday, the anniversary of the roundup in 1944, this town between Anzio and Rome held its annual commemoration of the bloody events of World War II with ceremonies held beside a monument to victims of all wars and school children visiting the grottoes where their grandparents took shelter from the bombing. This town of 32,000 people, once a manufacturing center but now the heart of kiwi production in Italy, has not forgotten the elite U.S. Army Rangers, who fought to liberate them from the Nazi occupiers. There is a Via dei Rangers, a school named after the Rangers’ commander William O. Darby and signs noting Cisterna is twinned with Darby’s hometown of Fort Smith, Ark. The site of the Cisterna battle, alongside a canal on the road to Nettuno, is recorded by a plaque in English, German and Italy recalling those who “fought and died.” “It is an ugly memory but we can’t forget it because it is part of the history of our country,” Mayor Antonello Merolla said at the ceremony. By all accounts, the Cisterna battle was a disaster for the Americans. The Rangers were used as a spearhead after the landing at Anzio, but because of poor intelligence met unexpected, fierce resistance at Cisterna, and by authoritative accounts did not have the support weapons to overcome it as they battled through mud and drainage ditches. In the book “Day of Battle,” author Rick Atkinson said 250 to 300 Rangers died and eight escaped, leaving hundreds of others captured. According to Marsha Henry Goff, an unofficial historian for the Rangers whose father served in the elite corps, “Colonel Darby, who had protested the use of his Rangers as conventional troops — contending they were trained for a different type of fighting — had gone into a room alone and sobbed” after learning of the casualties. She said the first word of the disaster came in an Associated Press war dispatch from Naples on March 8 — five weeks after the battle. “A grim secret kept locked in the hearts of allied troops in Italy for over a month now has been placed in the record of heroic but hopeless ‘last stands,’ ” it began. The breakout from the beaches of Anzio had been stalled and the liberation of Rome, the first Axis capital to fall, would have to wait until June. This was also grim news for Italian civilians. “We lived for months underground,” Bruno Fieramonte, 75, a retired school teacher, told school children taken down to the dark and dank grottoes of a 16th-century palace on the main square, recalling the fighting and bombing that destroyed 90 percent of the town’s buildings — with only few scarred and blackened homes from that era still standing. Then, on March 19, the Germans, increasingly worried about resistance, rounded up the entire town and marched them north. Many ended in labor camps and farms as far north as Tuscany. Felice Paliani, who was 13 at the time, said he was taken in as a mascot by the Americans when Cisterna was finally liberated. “We survived because we were united,” he said. Surviving Rangers, mostly in their 80s, generally visit around American Memorial Day, combining it with a stop at the military cemetery in Anzio-Nettuno. The mayor was asked by a reporter whether German survivors were ever invited. “Actually no,” he replied. “But you’ve given me an idea for next year.”

Originally posted here: Italian town remembers Rangers, WWII battle

FORT WORTH, Texas — Former congressman and ex-Army Secretary Pete Geren will return to his native Fort Worth to lead the Sid W. Richardson Foundation. The foundation on Thursday announced the 58-year-old attorney will become the group's senior adviser and president-elect. Wildcatter Richardson used his fortune to create the foundation to do good works in Texas. Geren will follow Valleau Wilkie Jr., who retires in 2011 after heading the foundation since 1973. Wilkie is 86. Geren's stint as Army secretary ended last year. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Friday that Geren will earn about $350,000 as foundation president, nearly twice as much as his salary at the Pentagon.

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BAGHDAD — It was nearly two years ago when Iraqi soldiers raided the home of Senaa Tahir Abid, but she thinks about it every day. The soldiers said they had received tips that Senaa's husband and her sister's husband were insurgents against the government in Iraq. Senaa and her four children were hustled outside. When they were let back in, they found her husband on the kitchen floor, his bloody body full of bullet holes. Senaa's brother-in-law was dead in the living room. “I was sitting on the couch the other day, and all I could do was cry and wish that I was dead,” says Abid, recalling her distress as her four young children played nearby. “I know my psychological situation is fragile,” she says. “I am always thinking about committing suicide, but there is a voice inside my head that tells me my responsibilities are too big to leave this world.” Iraq is just beginning to address the unseen battle wounds of paranoia, depression and anxiety rising out of the war that began with the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein, says Abdul Rahim al-Fredawi, a psychologist and professor at the University of Baghdad. But the scars may run deeper and longer in Baghdad and other areas that saw some of the worst fighting over the course of the war, he says. As Iraq enters the eighth year of war this week, the violence has vastly diminished from the worst days of the bloody conflict that pitted Shiites against Sunnis, and took the lives of more than 4,300 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. But the memories of those days still linger, and the fear that violence can start up again at anytime weighs heavy on all Iraqis, al-Fredawi says. Countless people had loved ones dragged from their homes in the night, tortured and killed by militants on both sides who were exacting revenge and vying for power in the chaos the followed Saddam's ouster in 2003. Tens of thousands of people survived horrifying suicide bombings that scattered limbs in the streets. Any marketplace is a potential slaughterhouse for a suicide bomber. “Psychological problems that stem from this war and occupation could have an effect that stays with Iraq for many, many years to come,” says Kamal al-Kilani, a Baghdad psychologist. Violence across Iraq diminished significantly after the surge of troops ordered by President George W. Bush in 2007. Civilian casualties are near the lowest levels of the war. Even so, recent suicide bombings in the heart of Baghdad have terrorized Iraqis. Massive bomb attacks in August, October and December in Baghdad killed hundreds of people. In January, terrorists tried to blow up three Baghdad hotels, killing 37 people; and 38 people were killed on the day of the March 7 elections. The ever-present threat of death has left Iraqis in a fragile collective state of mind, al-Fredawi says. Each major terror attack reminds Iraqis how vulnerable they are, he says. Scant research has been done on the mental toll the war has taken inside Iraq. In 2008, the United Nations surveyed some of the more than 1 million Iraqis who fled to Syria and found that 89 percent suffered from depression and 82 percent had anxiety disorders. The U.S. military has not conducted any significant projects to examine mental health in Iraq, says Army 1st Lt. Elizabeth Feste, U.S. military spokeswoman. The U.S. Embassy had no record of any projects to help Iraqis deal with war trauma. Anna Prouse, an Italian diplomat who heads the Italy-U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Team in the southern Dhi Qar province, says mental health hasn't received much attention because Iraqi officials haven't wanted money to be spent there. Al-Fredawi agrees that the government has focused little attention on dealing with Iraq's mental health care issues, as the country has directed the bulk of its resources toward dealing with security threats posed by militants and loyalists of the former regime that are trying to mount a comeback. “We face the danger of our next generation becoming one that will always live in fear or one that becomes hardened by all the violence it has experienced,” al-Fredawi says. “There's a black cloud over Iraq that could have long-term consequences for our nation.” 'I will see her again' What Mustafa Hisham, 14, remembers most clearly about the worst day of his young life was the animal-like scream that came out of him when Shiite militiamen took away his mother and father. The black-clad gunmen stormed into his home in the middle of the day on May 5, 2007. Mustafa pleaded that they not harm his parents, who the gunmen said were being arrested because they were Sunnis living in a Shiite neighborhood. “For a long time, I screamed and cried,” recalls Mustafa, who lives in an orphanage for boys. “I remember the moment like it just happened. I don't think I'll ever forget it.” Several days later, his father's body turned up in the morgue. He appeared to have been tortured with an electric drill before he was executed. His mother was never found. “I see her in my dreams,” he says. “I talk to her, and I tell her that I miss her. She tells me to be a good boy. “I know I will see her again.” Selma Muhsen, the director of the Al Zahour girls orphanage in Baghdad, says about half of the 28 girls she works with have lost parents to violence. Sisters Noor, 8, and Tabarek Abbas Saad, 7, are among the most rambunctious in Muhsen's charge. The girls' father, a poor laborer, was executed in Baghdad's Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum that has been the site of the fiercest killing of the war. The girls' mother, a poor and illiterate woman, watched over them until a man asked to marry her but insisted she give up the children, Muhsen says. The mother agreed. On a recent afternoon, the sisters appeared cheerful and spoke about how their father used to play with them. When Muhsen asked them what happened to their father, Noor stopped speaking and stared at her feet. When Muhsen brought up their mother, Noor asked to be excused. “At their school, I was told they were well-behaved before the incident, but now the teachers are always calling to complain that they are disruptive or misbehaving,” Muhsen says. “The children like Noor and Tabarek, who lost a parent, are different.” Iraq has been in and out of war since 1980, the start of the Iran-Iraq war. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed in that conflict, and thousands died in the first Gulf War in 1991. But those conflicts didn't seem to have the same effect on Iraqis as the current war, al-Kilani says. Most Iraqis were far from the front lines in those conflicts. Today, al-Kilani says, he has observed that children's play has become macabre, and both the young and old are becoming desensitized to violence. “I found my own young son, who I've tried to shelter from talk of violence and images of the war, playing a game in which he was using his pencil box as a coffin. He said his (imaginary) friend was killed in an explosion,” al-Kilani says. It may be difficult to help Iraqis, many of whom fear they'll be ostracized if they admit to having a psychological problem, al-Kilani says. Anti-depressants and sleep aids are available without a prescription at Iraqi pharmacies, so there is an increasing risk of substance abuse, he says. “If we have people suffering from mental illness self-medicating, it will only make the situation more difficult to deal with in the future,” al-Kilani says. 'I want to find peace' Abid, the mother whose husband was killed in her kitchen, says no drug or therapy can heal the mental wounds she and her children have suffered. The killers forced them to wait outside in the cold February air and then gathered them in the kitchen for several hours — a few feet from where her husband lay — while the soldiers searched the house. Abid's youngest daughter, Sara, was shivering. Abid took a towel that the soldiers had thrown on the ground and wrapped it around the 4-year-old girl. Abid didn't notice that it was drenched in her husband's blood. “My little girl started to scream about (her) daddy's blood, but it took me a moment to realize what I had done,” Abid says. “I want to find peace. But tell me how am I supposed to recover from a memory like that?”

Original post: Among Iraqis, psychological scars run deep

SARKARI BAGH, Afghanistan — The leaves have returned to the trees along the banks of the Arghandab River, and row after row of grape vines and pomegranate trees have received their first irrigation floods of the year. Winter is yielding to spring, and that means one thing to the U.S. troops in this village outside Kandahar, birthplace of the Taliban. “It’s getting harder to see the insurgents,” Staff Sgt. Michael Payne says. Payne and his company are among the thousands of NATO and U.S. troops that are filtering into the province for an offensive against the core of the Taliban’s strength. The preparation follows the successful clearing of Marjah, a city in nearby Helmand province. The push is part of a counterinsurgency strategy by top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and is bolstered by 30,000 additional American troops that President Obama sent here to reverse Taliban gains. Military leaders are positioning the new troops on the outskirts of Kandahar to prevent Taliban forces from infiltrating the city. Here in the Arghandab district is one of the most important points. “If you control the environs around Kandahar, you go a long way to controlling Kandahar,” McChrystal said. “Unlike a Marjah operation, where there was a D-day … it is more likely that this will be a series of activities that target different parts of it to increase that security.” Payne and his men arrived in Arghandab Valley when the landscape was desolate. The valley, which sits across a small mountain range just north of Kandahar, is in full bloom. Visitors from Kandahar will be streaming in to take in the surroundings as a getaway from the city. The growth creates blind spots along the river, and the floodwaters swallow up familiar paths the troops used for patrols. Payne led a group of his men along the river Thursday in their armored personnel carriers to figure out where they can still navigate. “Before, we could go anywhere,” he says. “A lot of these fields are flooded now — thick mud, holes, low branches. We’re just trying to have everything planned.” Capt. Claude Lambert, who commands the U.S. company responsible for the north edge of the river, says the foliage gets so thick in parts that helicopters with thermal imaging technology can’t even see through the trees. And with so much of their counterinsurgency strategy dependent on foot patrols to better communicate with the locals, that means insurgents will be able to take quick shots at them and quickly hide under cover. “It just gets so dark in there,” Lambert says. “It concerns me greatly.” The spring bloom also coincides with the beginning of the fighting season in Afghanistan. Traditionally, major fighting halts during the harsh winters, giving both sides time to regroup and plan, says Army Lt. Col. Guy Jones, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which is responsible for the river valley. “It’s going to get worse between now and the summer,” Jones says. The Taliban has already started. This week a suicide bomber struck a patrol in Arghandab, wounding two U.S. soldiers. In Kandahar City, coordinated blasts, including two car bombs and six suicide attackers, killed dozens of people Saturday night. The Taliban issued statements saying the Kandahar attack was a response to the buildup of U.S. troops ahead of the summer Kandahar offensive. On Thursday, many of Lambert’s troops spent the day getting maintenance work done on their vehicles. A helicopter dropped off supplies, and troops rested as the relatively calm days of winter come to an end. Pvt. Cory Brown finished up a two-hour shift standing guard at one of watchtowers surrounding the outpost late Thursday. The 20-year-old, on his first tour of Afghanistan, was looking forward to some sleep, but was ready for the fighting months ahead. “Bring it,” he said.

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UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. peacekeeping chief said Thursday it’s time for the international community to take “concrete steps” to allow Afghans to take charge of their future — and to ensure that “Afghanization” becomes more than a slogan. Alain Le Roy told the Security Council that the Afghan government is “legitimately eager” to lead and the international community risks failure in its goals for the country if this doesn’t happen. He said Afghan “ownership” must take place on both the military and civilian side, with the international community in support. Afghanistan’s U.N. ambassador, Zahir Tanin, told the council the government has taken up the leadership challenge and in the coming year its priority will be “Afghanization,” with Afghans and Afghan priorities taking the lead in every area. “We face a busy calendar that will test our strength and resolve but, with the support of the international community, it can also set us firmly on the path towards success,” he said. Le Roy was briefing the council on Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s latest report which noted the “crowded agenda” in the next three months. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called a peace “jirga” or conference on reconciliation in April. Kabul is hosting its first major international conference in June, which Le Roy said will mark “the concrete and systematic beginning” of Afghanization to present its priorities and programs in civilian areas in hopes of attracting funding. Preparations for parliamentary elections in September must begin, and the military surge is continuing. Ban said these events “could form the structure of a transition to greater Afghan leadership” or take away “political energy” from the government and international community’s priorities. “The focus of this transition is on making Afghan sovereignty real,” the secretary-general said. “There is no sovereignty without capacity and responsibility, and the purpose of the transition is to ensure that the government of Afghanistan has both sufficient capacity and sufficient responsibility to exercise actual sovereignty.” Ban warned that if the international community bypasses the government the transition could be undermined, and he called for “a new mindset that shows greater respect for Afghans’ own understanding of their country.” At the same time, Le Roy said, “the Afghan government must concretely demonstrate that it can deliver on the accountability required for a real transition process to be sustainable.” Tanin said the first step is to reverse the Taliban’s momentum and improve security across the country, and he predicted that the new strategy of the top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, “will begin to turn the tide.” At the same time, he said, the Afghan army and police, with intensive international training, will gradually replace international forces beginning “as soon as possible.” “And with the help of the international community, Afghans will bear full responsibility in five years,” Tanin said. He stressed that reconciliation and the electoral process “must be Afghan-led and guided by Afghan priorities.” Last month, Karzai signed a decree allowing him to appoint all five members of the Electoral Complaints Commission. The body previously had three U.N. appointees and the decree was criticized as a bid for control of the commission, which stripped Karzai of nearly one-third of his votes in last year’s presidential election. Karzai was declared the victor after his challenger dropped out of a runoff. Earlier this month, Karzai reversed the decision and allowed two foreigners on the commission. Le Roy said that “if transition to Afghan responsibility is to be reflected in this electoral process” in September, both electoral bodies must perform their duties “effectively, impartially, and with the confidence of all Afghan stakeholders.” U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said the U.S. remains concerned about Karzai’s decree and echoed Le Roy saying members of the Complaints Commission should conduct their activities “in an impartial and independent manner.”

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Following a successful demonstration in Iraq, commanders in Afghanistan are going to request more C-130 aircraft to be used for time-sensitive, mission-critical cargo delivery, the Army’s top logistician said. “We’re about to get a request for it,” Lt. Gen. Mitchell Stevenson, deputy chief of staff for logistics, said Wednesday. After the 2010 budget decision transferred the Joint Cargo Aircraft and its mission to the Air Force, the Army and the Air Force wrote a new concept of employment for how the aircraft would be operated now that it would no longer be in the Army’s inventory. Last year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates pledged that the Army would not suffer in terms of support because of the decision, “and the Air Force would be just as responsive as if we owned the aircraft ourselves,” Stevenson said. That new concept of employment was tested in Iraq, using the C-130 as a surrogate for the Joint Cargo Aircraft, last October through December. “It worked just like we wanted it to,” Stevenson said. After the demo, the Army told commanders in Afghanistan that it could relieve some of the burden being placed on CH-47 Chinook helicopters, which are seeing record use in theater, by providing more C-130s, Stevenson said. “The last I checked, the Air Force has about 400 C-130s and we have less than 50 in Southwest Asia today,” he added. During a video teleconference about a week ago, commanders in Afghanistan said that the idea made sense to them and they are going to send a request through Central Command, Stevenson said. Once a request is received, the approval could happen in a matter of weeks, he said. “Then the question would be how quickly can the aircraft be called up,” Stevenson said. “We’re talking about probably reserve crews — Air Guard crews — because the Air Force doesn’t have a lot of active-component C-130 capability. So they’ll have to notify the unit that they’re being called up.” In Afghanistan, the Army spends just under $8 million a month on contractor fixed-wing and rotary-wing air support. The introduction of more C-130s is intended to bring that cost down. “That’s exactly why we proposed it, because we’re interested in doing two things: saving a little bit of money and taking a load off of CH-47s,” Stevenson said.

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The Dutch military’s failure to intervene during a 1995 massacre in Serbia suggests that allowing gays to serve openly — as the Dutch military does — hurts military readiness, a retired Marine Corps general said Thursday. Gen. John “Jack” Sheehan, who commanded Atlantic-based NATO forces in the 1990s, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that European militaries — many of whom allow open service by gays — were weakened in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nations such as Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and others, he said, believed active combat capability was no longer needed and, as a result, those nations made conscious decisions to “socialize their military.” The focus, Sheehan said, became peacekeeping operations. “That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war,” he said. At the 1995 massacre of 7,000 Bosnian-Muslim men at Srebrenica, he said, the Dutch battalion on station “was understrength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to telephone poles, marched the Muslims off and executed them,” Sheehan said. “Did the Dutch tell you it was because there were gay soldiers there?” asked Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee chairman. “Yes,” Sheehan said. “They included that as part of the problem. … A combination of the liberalization of the military — a net effect, basically, of social engineering.” Levin waited until the end of the two-hour hearing to vigorously push back on Sheehan’s contention. “I think we all remember Srebrenica,” Levin said. “Any effort to connect that failure on the part of the Dutch to the fact that they had homosexuals … is totally off target. I see no suggestion of that. It’s no more on point than the fact that they may have allowed African or Dutch-African or women” to serve. “My comment was that the liberalization … ” Sheehan said. Levin interrupted. “I agree with that,” he said. “They weren’t good in that respect. They were trained to be peacekeepers, not peace enforcers. … But to slide over from that into a suggestion that it had something to do with the fact that homosexuals were allowed in the Dutch army suggests that somehow or other homosexuals are not great fighters. … I think that is totally wrong.” Sexual assault report Sheehan also cited statistics from the Pentagon’s fiscal 2009 report on sexual assault showing that 7 percent of the 3,230 incidents recorded were male-on-male. And in arguing that repeal of the military ban would undermine good order and discipline, he told the story of a male-on-male foxhole sexual assault in his unit during the Vietnam War, and its divisive impact. Testifying in favor of repeal were two former officers who were discharged under the law and the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Michael Almy, an Air Force major at the time, said he was kicked out despite never making a public admission of his homosexuality. A member of the unit that replaced his in Iraq did a routine search of computer files, found personal e-mails and forwarded them to his commander back in Germany. “ ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ failed me despite the fact that I upheld my end of this law by never disclosing my private life,” Almy said. “Never once in my 13-year career did I make a statement to the military that violated ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ despite pressure from my commander to do so.” Almy, who would like to return to active duty, said the Air Force’s decision to separate him disrupted unit cohesion — because he was replaced by a far more junior and less experienced officer. “This had a negative effect on morale and unit cohesion, and the mission suffered as a result,” Almy said. The other former officer, Jenny Kopfstein, decided to tell her commanding officer on the cruiser Shiloh that she was a lesbian and while he reported her, as required, he allowed her to continue serving openly. “I expected negative responses,” said Kopfstein, a former lieutenant junior grade. “I got none. Everyone I talked to was positive, and the universal attitude was that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was dumb. I served openly for two years and four months.” In a fitness report, she said that her commanding officer wrote that her sexual orientation “has not disrupted good order and discipline onboard.” She noted wryly that the ban on open service by gays often has been defended as necessary to preserve those qualities. “It seems to me that the captain of a ship in the United States Navy is the most qualified judge of good order and discipline among his crew,” Kopfstein said.

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Sheehan: Gays weakened European militaries

NEW YORK — For 68 years, John E. Love has been haunted by the memory of carrying fallen comrades to a mass grave hollowed out of a Filipino rice field. Now, at last, a bit of history is being rewritten because of those memories. After six months of research, The Associated Press this week is correcting the caption on one of the most famous photos in its library, 65 years after the image first moved on the newswire. The image shows defeated Allied soldiers after their surrender to Japanese forces on the Philippines’ Bataan Peninsula in April 1942. Over the years, the photo — which shows a procession of men walking down a dirt road, bearing bodies in blankets hung from bamboo poles — has become perhaps the most widely published image of what came to be known as the Bataan Death March. But for many of those years, Love, a native of Albuquerque, N.M., who fought to defend Bataan as a 19-year-old Army corporal, saw captions paired with the photo that he believed did a disservice to the truth. In August, Love picked up the Albuquerque Journal and saw the photo again, together with a front-page story about Bataan survivors. He called the newspaper and told an editor the caption was wrong. It described the scene as part of the infamous Death March, a forced six-day march by Japanese captors of 12,000 Americans and more than 66,000 Filipino prisoners across the peninsula. Thousands died in the march; some were killed by captors impatient with their progess, other succumbed to a lack of food, water and medical treatment. “That picture is not of the Death March,” says Love, now 87. “The Japanese would not have tolerated a bunch of slow marching guys carrying their own dead. They wouldn’t have tolerated it just one New York minute.” A Journal reporter, Charles D. Brunt, found other local Bataan survivors who agreed, wrote a story about the conflicting information and contacted AP, the source of both the photo and the caption. That launched the cooperative’s own investigation of the photo, originally supplied to news services by the U.S. military after it was confiscated from defeated Japanese forces. Deep in the AP library of millions of photos, the caption filed with a negative in 1945 identified the image as showing U.S. and Filipino forces carrying war casualties as they neared the end of the death march and approached Camp O’Donnell, where prisoners of war were held. AP archivists contacted the Pentagon. Eventually, that led to the original photograph, on file in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The catalog recorded it as a photo of American prisoners using improvised litters to carry comrades. But a note filed along with the image, date unknown, said that, according to a retired U.S. Army colonel, the photo was not of the death march, but of the burial detail in the weeks that followed. That’s exactly the way Love had long recalled it. “We rounded up bamboo poles … and we confiscated what blankets we could from the incoming prisoners. We told them we had to have them. The guys were dying faster than we could dig graves or carry them,” Love said. “We carried them 1,000 yards and we would just unload the blankets there and the guys would fall out into the graves. I did that every day until the late hours of the evening for six weeks.” After discussing the evidence, AP decided to correct the caption. It now reads, in part, “At the time of its release, this photo was identified as dead and wounded being carried by fellow prisoners during the Bataan Death March in April 1942. … Subsequent information from military archivists, the National Archives and Records Administration, and surviving prisoners, strongly suggests that this photo may actually depict a burial detail at Camp O’Donnell.” It is rare for the news service to correct the information filed with a historical photo, said Valerie Komor, director of the AP Corporate Archives. There are many images in storage, and any individual photograph is likely to be re-examined only if someone calls it into question. But that does not mean the first draft of history cannot be rewritten. “I’m glad we came to a resolution for these veterans who understandably take it very seriously, as well they should,” said Chuck Zoeller, a longtime director of the AP Photo Library who now works on the corporate communications staff. “I’m glad there’s some satisfaction for them in it.” The new caption does not change history. It merely revises a footnote, 68 long years after the fact. But on Wednesday, when Love recalled his experience at Bataan and his insistence that it be recorded correctly, his voice broke and his eyes welled with tears. “I did it for the guys that I buried,” he said. “We owed it to them.”

View post: New story behind well-known image from WWII

MARJAH, Afghanistan — A month after losing control of their southern base in Marjah, the Taliban have begun to fight back, launching a campaign of assassination and intimidation to frighten people from supporting the U.S. and its Afghan allies. At least one alleged government sympathizer has been beheaded. There are rumors that others have been killed. Afghans in the town that U.S., Afghan and NATO troops captured in a three-week assault that began Feb. 13 awake to letters posted on their doors warning against helping the troops. Winning public support in this former Taliban stronghold in Helmand province 360 miles southwest of Kabul is considered essential to preventing insurgents from returning. The Marjah operation will serve as a model for campaigns elsewhere, including one expected by summer to secure villages around Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual birthplace and the largest city in the south. Military commanders believe the Taliban campaign is achieving some success because of questions raised at town meetings: Do the U.S. forces want to shut down the mosques and ban prayer? Will they will use lookout posts on their bases to ogle women? Are they going to take farmers’ land away? “Dislocating the insurgents physically was easy. Dislocating them socially — proving that we’re here to stay and to help — is a lot harder,” said Lt. Col. Jeff Rule, the head of operations for Marines in Helmand. There are no firm figures on how many Taliban are left in Marjah. Marine and Afghan military officials say they believe most of those still here are from the area and the foreign fighters have fled. Regardless of Taliban numbers, their influence is still felt. New cell phone towers brought phone service to Marjah a little over a week ago. But the service doesn’t work at night because the Taliban threaten or bribe tower operators to shut off the network, presumably to prevent people from alerting troops and police as they plant bombs after dark. Some of the workers on canal-clearing projects have been threatened or have been beaten up by insurgents. At least one canal worker who received threats returned and said he will keep working despite the risk, said Maj. David Fennell, who oversees about 15 civil affairs troops working to win over the population. “That’s when you know that you fought the Taliban and you won,” Fennell said. “I tell my team time and time again: ‘What did we just do today? We hit the Taliban in the mouth.’“ This is the struggle for Marjah now: winning people over with a job or a vaccination for a child. The victories are small because the Taliban already proved it can make good on its promises by enforcing harsh justice while in power. “My sense is that the Taliban will reinfiltrate in due course as the Afghan government fails to live up to the modest expectations NATO has of it,” says Mervyn Patterson, a former U.N. political affairs expert in Afghanistan. “I do not think that the Taliban have been weakened in Helmand by the loss of Marjah. They have been having ups and downs, and this was a modest down, but not something that is significant, in and of itself. I expect they will gradually return to Marjah.” Many of the estimated 80,000 people here share the same fears, even though there are about 4,000 NATO and Afghan troops in and around Marjah, including two Marine battalions in the town. Some say they’re afraid to take money from the military because if the Taliban find them with the cash, they’ll be punished. “I can’t take any money because I’m afraid for my life,” said Borjan, a rough-skinned farmer who owns a house that has been taken over by a Marine platoon until they can build their own outpost. He seems to want compensation: he lists equipment and field supplies that have been damaged but refuses to discuss how much it is worth. He just wants them out of the house, which is occupied by a son. Lt. Shawn Miller said he believes Borjan really is scared. But the elders who accompanied Borjan to help him lodge his complaint are more indifferent. They just want to be left alone to farm. The Taliban mostly left them alone. The Marines are trying to win partly through diplomacy and partly through getting development and infrastructure projects running as quickly as possible to show that the Afghan government is serious this time. U.S. troops are having success with offering to improve mosques — repairing structures or installing loudspeakers to try to win over influential mullahs while creating an unattractive target for Taliban militants who won’t want to attack mosques. This may overestimate the restraint of the Taliban. The beheaded man was a mosque leader, said Capt. Iqbal Khan of the Afghan army, whose 91 soldiers are embedded with a Marine company in central Marjah. Even so, projects of all types push ahead. Three medical clinics are open, staffed by doctors from Kabul and locals who ran private clinics under the Taliban, Fennell said. Two interim schools have started, staffed by locals and with more than 100 students. The canal-cleaning project has grown from 40 workers to about 800, Fennell said. But it took weeks of cajoling — taking first the teenagers who showed up, then eventually recruiting a few men of military age, then turning the older men into contractors in charge of getting fighting-age men to clean whole sections of the canal. Marjah’s administrative chief, Abdul Zahir, said he and his advisers have decided that they need to show they have the upper hand in town by the end of the month. “We have about two weeks to prove ourselves,” Zahir told The Associated Press in an interview at his temporary headquarters — a concrete structure in a dirt compound outfitted by the U.S. with a few tents for holding meetings and sleeping cots. But he acknowledged that the task is difficult. Homemade bombs still appear every night on roads traveled by the military. Gunfire can be heard many evenings in the center of town. Earlier this week, a Marine foot patrol hit a bomb planted near the district center, seriously wounding several of them. “We have to prove there is security so that people take part in projects,” Zahir said. While the Afghan government and its NATO allies have far greater force, the Taliban are locals and a proven threat. “They are part of the community down here, so it is very easy for them to influence people,” Zahir said. The Marines refuse to give precise time frames, saying they’ll be here as long as they’re needed. But commanders and Afghan officials also acknowledge that they only have a short time to win over the population. “If this takes six to seven months, that gives a big enough window to the Taliban,” said Lt. Col. Calvert Worth Jr., commander of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment operating in central Marjah. He spoke as he toured a dusty market where merchants sought money for battle damage. Some demands are minor: broken locks on shops. Some are exaggerated: a man wanted $100,000 for oil stolen either by the Taliban or the allies in the offensive. Three days a week, residents line up to lodge complaints or requests with Zahir. One middle-aged man said he was there to collect restitution for his 10-year-old brother who was injured in the fighting. He carried a paper from medics who treated his brother as proof. Gul Sahed said his neighborhood is still not safe. There is fighting nearly every day and the Taliban say they’ll be beaten if they leave their homes at night. He considered not coming to the district center because the Taliban might see him. But he decided that he needed the money, and took the risk. ——— Associated Press writer Kathy Gannon contributed to this story from Laskar Gah, Afghanistan.

Continued here: Taliban using fear campaign in Marjah