Marine History Operations in Iraq Operation Iraqi Freedom I PCN ...

officers, want to take weapons and other enemy gear home. Many memos and
messages result. In Iraqi Freedom, there was conflicting guidance from different
services and different echelons of command, beginning with CentCom General
Order 1 A. Some senior officers were unhappy with the complex requirements,
and simply attempted to circumvent them. When the MPs seized their shipments,
there was a great deal of finger-pointing – some of it at the historians “for not
finding a solution to the problem.” Establishing effective policies at the DOD-level
would allow field historians to train to standards and reduce problems for
historians, lawyers, and deployed commands. But the reality is that each major
command will most likely issue its own policy, and field historians need to be
familiar with the issues that artifacts raise.
E. Declassification of Documents: In Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi
Freedom, most units operated at the classified level, on the SIPR net. No one on
any staff appeared to have any plans to declassify documents, even those whose
classification obviously made no more sense after an operation had ended. The
default answer was that various documents would be automatically declassified
after a certain period of time (usually 10 years). This could have a crippling effect
on the timely publication of official histories. Along similar lines, the lack of
access to SIPR at HD was a drawback.
F. MAGTF Staffs: Some members of the unit felt that they could have benefited from
more training on MAGTF staffs – their structure, procedures, etc. That would have
enabled them to function better when deployed, both in terms of understanding key
billets and staffing patterns as well as what data to mine. This has traditionally
been left to the individual to learn on his / her own through PME.
5. Recommendations
A. Items Not to Change: The basic concept of this IMA Det, based at Historical
Division and enabled to create the conditions for success in field operations. There
are arguments for and against creating an SMCR unit at HD. If HD had an
affiliated SMCR unit, it might be able to obtain more pay billets (currently frozen
at 12 and per CG, MARFORRES, unlikely to change), and it might find it easier to
obtain and store gear.
B. Embedding: Explore options in this area with a MEF or MACE. Consider a pilot
program, based on a Memorandum of Understanding. One solution to establishing
more formal relationships with supported units is to find a means to embed the
field historian, or combat artist, in the supported unit early on – perhaps even in
peacetime. The difficulty of course is that the number of potential supported units
far exceeds the number of field historians (which is unlikely to increase). Thus, we
need to find a mechanism to embed the field historian at a high enough level (such
as MEF or MACE) so that he has the administrative backing AND can be funneled
down to the appropriate lower echelon when deployments occur. The field
historians would drill at the supported unit as a sub-team for part of the year, and
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