Remember the scene in Army Wives when Belgrad talks about naming a mountain in Afghanistan that he and his men captured after his wife? I found a related, non-fiction version.
Staff writer Sam Dagher sat in on some of the planning for an operation that US advisers in Tikrit, Iraq, were working on with the Iraqi forces (see story). What surprised him was the language.
For starters the operation was dubbed "Makua," which means "coming together" in Hawaiian. Some members of the US team - attached to the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division and working with the Iraqi Army - are natives of Hawaii.
"To underscore how much they missed their wives (one of the US officers had only seen his wife once in the past two years), the Iraq target villages assumed code names like Ashley, Christen, Gerri, Juanita, and Stacey - names of the US officers' wives," says Sam. But, noted Sam, their Iraqi counterparts sometimes became confused by the code names.
Hey, how about Wendy Way, Stephanie Street, LAW Lane, Dizzy Drive or TripleE Trail? I like it.....
