VE-Day: The WWII Persian Gulf Command, the first American soldiers in Iraq

Today is VE-Day, and as we fight on in Iraq and Afghanistan, I am taking a blog entry to remember the first American fighting force in Iraq, World II's Persian Gulf Command.  My grandfather was stationed in the Persian Gulf from 1943 until 1945, as part of the 762nd Railway Shop Battalion.  The main purpose of this unit was to maintain the tracks and trains that ran war supplies into the Russian Front, and sometimes ran refugees out of Russian and Poland.  They called themselves 'The Forgotten B***ds of WWII" but the war might have gone very differently without them.

When American soldiers went to Iraq, they were given this guide.  Reading it, I am amazed at how little has changed.  I've also read Joker One, and wonder what the soldiers in our current war would make of the information my grandfather was given, including these samples:

YOU HAVE been ordered to Iraq (i - RAHK) as part of the world-wide offensive to beat Hitler.

You will enter Iraq both as a soldier and as an individual, because on our side a man can be both a soldier and an individual. That is our strength—if we are smart enough to use it. It can be our weakness if we aren't. As a soldier your duties are laid out for you. As an individual, it is what you do on your own that counts—and it may count for a lot more than you think.

American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not. It may not be quite that simple. But then again it could. 

Iraq Is Hot! As a matter of fact, you may be so busy when you reach Iraq that you won't see much of anything for awhile. Probably you will feel Iraq first—and that means heat. Blazing heat. And dust. In the daytime Iraq can be one of the hottest spots in the world. If you happen to travel by train in the daytime, the leather seats may get so hot that you'll have to stand up. Most work is done between 6 a.m. and noon and perhaps an hour or two in the early evening. And yet the nights of these hot days are often uncomfortably cool. 

You probably belong to a church at home, and you know how you would feel towards anyone who insulted or desecrated your church. The Moslems feel just the same way, perhaps even more strongly. In fact, their feeling about their religion is pretty much the same as ours toward our religion, although more intense. If anything, we should respect the Moslems the more for the intensity of their devotion.

There are four towns in Iraq which are particularly sacred to the Iraqi Moslems. These are Kerbela (ker - be - LAA), Nejef (NE - jef), Kadhiman (KAA - di - MAYN) (near Baghdad), and Samarra. Unless you are ordered to these towns, it is advisable to stay away from them.

The guide proceeds to give a list of dos and don'ts (don't spit or smoke near mosques, do respect the Moslem women, etc.)  It also includes a list of useful phrases and conversions, and a history of both the country and the Muslim religion.

These soldiers supplied Russia with 192 thousand trucks and thousands of aircraft, combat vehicles, etc.  In 1944, there were 30,000 US soldiers serving in Iraq and Iran.  My grandfather was primarily stationed at Ahwaz, working on the diesel train engines that ran the supplies.  After VE-Day, he was sent to Munich to repair damaged engines in Germany, in order to get supplies moving through the rest of war-torn Europe.  He didn't get home until early 1946.

We have made so many mistakes in the current war in Iraq.  Maybe one of them is our lack of history, our inability to look back and remember the soldiers who were there before, their experiences, and their potential insights.  The veteran's group for the Persian Gulf Command was essentially disbanded in 2007, because there weren't enough veterans left to gather and remember.  But their stories are worth reading, and their contributions to the war should be remembered on this day. 

Ada Lovelace Day: My Grandmother The Electronics Technician

"When I was a working lady, you could be a secretary or a schoolteacher. I was an electronics technician."

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, to commemorate and celebrate the contributions of women to science and technology. My theory is that much of our progress is so recent, we all know a pioneer or two. So I am celebrating my grandmother, the second woman in engineering at Tektronix, Inc.

My grandmother is a pretty unique individual. She started telling us dirty jokes when we were in elementary school. She was the first person I knew who had two piercings in each ear. And she insisted that all notes be addressed to Ms., not Mrs.

When my dad and uncles were kids, they played cards for their allowances in the back of the car on Sunday drives, and she cheated. Growing up in Northern Colorado, she held pussy-willow swallowing contests with the boys in church and didn't understand why she wasn't allowed to roller skate in the post office. So she's always been a bit on the wild side.

She worked at Tektronix for "25 years to the day," from the 1960 to 1985. She started out in production, which was almost all women. She began in "Small Parts," where they soldered the tiny components of oscilloscopes and vacuum tubes. She didn't say, but I could see where small hands might have been advantageous.

There was one woman, Connie Wilson, in the entire engineering department. One day Connie said she was looking for a technician, and told my grandmother to apply. So my grandmother became the second woman in engineering. She says she was never treated badly, more as an aunt to the young male engineers. She also remembers that Howard Vollum, one of the founders, always parked in the farthest lot and walked in, refusing a special parking space. She respected that gesture a lot.

Jean Auel, the author of The Clan of the Cave Bear series, also worked at Tektronix then. She was a Mensa member, and brought Mensa into the company to run tests on the employees. Connie and Grandma took the test too, and scored in the top 10% of all Mensa members. Apparently the rest of the engineers were a little chagrined. She went to a few meetings, but they were 'wild' and she stopped going. Her definition of wild boggles my mind.

I can remember her scooping up rejected circuit boards on a tour of HP in Colorado Springs, and showing us the flaws. I also remember her showing us microscope pictures when we were little, and asking us to spot the differences between two boards.

Two of her sons are chemists and one is a pharmacist, so her love of the scientific and technological must have been contagious. I asked if she would be an engineer if she were a young woman today. It's a tough question, but she says she probably would, she has a knack for it.

For me, my grandmother is at once an inspiration and a reminder that keeping women from science and technology has kept some great minds from fulfilling their potential. Who knows how different the world would be if she and women like her had gotten more and better opportunities.