Short Guide to Iraq, 1943

On: By: Romeyn

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.
How To Beat Hitler. Herr Hitler knows he’s licked if the peoples united against him stand their ground. So it is pretty obvious what he and his propaganda machine are trying to do. They’re trying to spread disunity and discontent among their opponents whenever and wherever they can.

So what’s the answer? That ought to be pretty obvious, too. One of your big jobs is to prevent Hitler’s agents from getting in their dirty work. The best way you can do this is by getting along with the Iraqis and making them your friends. And the best way to get along with any people is to understand them.
That is what this guide is for. To help you understand the people and the country so that you can do the best and quickest job of sending Hitler back where he came from.
And, secondly, so that you as a human being will get the most out of an experience few Americans have been lucky enough to have. Years from now you’ll be telling your children and maybe your grandchildren stories beginning “Now when I was in Baghdad —–.”

Prepared by Special Services Division, Army Service Forces, United States Army, 1943

Digitized by Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University

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Cowboys vs. Martians

On: By: Romeyn

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own. – H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds

April, 17th, 1897, one year before HG Wells publishes War of the Worlds, a story of a “Martian” craft crashing in Aurora, Texas was published in the Dallas Morning News.

“A Windmill Demolishes It,” by S. E. Haydon, The Dallas Morning News, April 19, 1897, p. 5 Continue reading “Cowboys vs. Martians” →

Pocket Guide to Burma, 1943

On: By: Romeyn

“I claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is humiliating as hell. I thinly we ought to find out what caused it, go back and retake it!”

THOSE WORDS of a famous American soldier carried all the way around the world when the last of the Allied forces retreated from Burma into India during the first stages of the war in Asia. The speaker was Lt. Gen. Joe Stilwell who had led the retreat after trying to stop the Japanese in the fighting from Rangoon to Mandalay.

Because they were fighting words, they appealed strongly to Americans…

 

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