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DefenseWatch "The Voice of the Grunt"
03-11-2004
From the Editor:
Recycling Saddam
By Ed Offley
From simple wooden crosses hanging on a British church wall, to cenotaphs and mausoleums across the French countryside, to the larger-than-life depiction in Arlington of Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, to the mirror-bright black surface of the Vietnam Memorial on the national Mall, there is no limit to the ways that we commemorate those who fell in war.
With the first anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom fast approaching, one U.S. Army unit bloodied in Iraq has come up with a particularly creative way to honor its dead: recycling Saddam Hussein.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, when the 4th Infantry Division began suffering casualties from the Iraqi insurgency last summer, senior division officers tasked Command Sgt. Maj. Charles Fuss with the responsibility for coming up with an appropriate memorial. The career noncom came up with the idea of a statue of a grieving soldier kneeling before a helmet-rifle-and-boots display traditionally used by the Army in battlefield memorial services.
Fuss told a Journal reporter that the officers and NCOs of the division wanted to depict in the memorial the stark sense of grief and loss they felt over the 84 soldiers from the division and “Task Force Ironhorse” lost during the yearlong deployment. “It’s something leaders have to live with for the rest of our lives: Because of the orders we gave, those men and women are dead,” he told the Journal. “It’s a lot to carry.”
As the newspaper reported, Fuss didn’t have to go far to find a talented sculptor to carry out the project – or the materials to do so:
“Searching for a … local sculptor … the Americans asked an Iraqi contractor if he knew any. The contractor recommended Khalid Alussy, a thin 27-year-old with a quick laugh. Asked about his sculpting experience, Mr. Alussy told the officers that some of his work was right outside the division’s temporary base, one of Mr. Hussein’s presidential palace compounds here in the deposed leader’s hometown [of Tikrit].”
The sculptor referred to a massive pair of 50-foot bronze statues of Saddam Hussein on a galloping horse, his sword pointing toward Jerusalem.
Faster than you could say, “Fire in the hole,” division combat engineers blew up the two statues and melted down enough bronze for Khalid Alussy to work with. The sculptor set up shop on the second floor of his house and quietly began creating the tableau that Fuss had conceived. He worked with a photo of a soldier kneeling before a battlefield shrine, along with a helmet and photos of an M-16 rifle (the division hesitated at giving him a real weapon to use as a model). At the suggestion of division commander Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, the memorial was enlarged to include a small Iraqi girl reaching out her hand as if to comfort the soldier.
Members of the 4th Infantry Division passed the hat among themselves to cover the $8,000 fee that Fuss had negotiated with Alussy. After four months, the sculpture was done and the division installed it in its Iraqi headquarters building.
As it carries out a planned redeployment to Fort Hood, Tex., the 4th Infantry Division is bringing the statue back home, where it will be the centerpiece of a monument the unit plans to unveil on Memorial Day. Division officials told the Journal that they plan to surround the statue with a semi-circular wall on which the names of the fallen will be inscribed, with additional blank space at the end.
That’s because the 4ID will redeploy to Iraq in 2005.
Meanwhile, the unit whose soldiers captured Saddam Hussein last December can take heart that with their new memorial they have turned something symbolic of oppression and violence into a reminder of the price that was paid to bring freedom to the Iraqi people.
Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com. © 2004 Ed Offley. |
