Flashback 6

­­One of the most undersung positives of our art is its use as an international bonding tool. To further clarify that obscure opening sentence, we artists are often used as a way to bridge the communication gap between foreign forces working together as a coalition. At various times through various trips I have been asked by the units I am embedded with to draw Afghan or Iraqi commanders and troops. The reasoning depends on the period of the conflict I was involved in - their relationship was in its infancy, or fraught with distrust, or recovering from an incident, or immediately after a troop rotation, or all of the above.

I am here as part of a group of four field artists in Iraq representing the National Museum of the Marine Corps (NMMC) in Quantico, Virginia. We are two civilians and two active duty Marines (two teams with one of each). Two youngies and two oldies. The civilians being the oldies. Artist team One is made up of the experienced, esteemed, and gentlemanly illustrator Victor Juhasz, and SSgt. Elize McKelvey a reprographics Marine at the Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia. In team Two, I am playing the role of the curmudgeonly Scottish/Canadian artist, accompanying Captain CJ Baumann, a Marine logistics officer at The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia.Often, we are part of the "bonding" subterfuge, and at other times it only becomes clear after the fact what was going on, and why.

Case in point our visit to the Joint Operations Command (JOC) for Al Anbar province, a small patrol base nearby Al Taqaddam. The room was filled with banks of monitors, and all kinds of Iraqi brass. We all stood around awkwardly among the sea of desks and computer screens trying to explain what we were about by waving our arms and talking loudly. Then we tried using the translator. It didn’t help much as he himself seemed confused about our purpose. So, the artists stood out of the way until both sides of the coalition could align their stories. The various Iraqi Commanders obviously had no idea we were coming. We had no idea of our true ‘bonding’ purpose. Everyone seemed a bit put out. There was some obvious consternation on security clearance and the like. Then in strolled an Iraqi Airforce Brigadier General. And suddenly everything was smooth as silk.

I sat in one of the plush beige pleather armchairs and sketched what I had in front of me, which turned out to be an Iraqi Border Police officer acting as a liaison between US and Iraqi forces. He seemed to be mostly ignorant of my presence. Just how I like it. I figure he was calling his wife to say some weird Scottish bloke was drawing him.

I was only partway into this when the Brigadier General realized what we were actually doing. I think his previous generosity and bombast had been all for show. He immediately came and stood in front of me and thrust his chain in the air – he wanted to have his portrait done.

I am no novice with these awkward high-pressure sketches. One of my most stressful was back in 2007 in Afghanistan when I hooked up with a Canadian Operational and Mentor Liaison Team (OMLT). The OMLT decided to use me in that “bonding tool” way and arranged for me to sit down with the Afghan Commander for a portrait session. The Commander decided the best location for this was sitting in two office chairs in the middle of the dusty parade ground in that Afghan National Army (ANA) side of FOB Ma’Sum Ghar. Not exactly an intimate setting, and made less so when about thirty ANA came and stood behind me while I drew. That was seriously high-pressure. By comparison my face-off with the BGen was a piece of cake. Weird though.

He was a distinctive looking bloke. He had a wicked combover that curled upwards again down below his ear, and a scar on his nose, a flight suit that was a tad on the tight side, and a glint in his eye that was just daring me to draw what I saw. Before this I had one category of portraits I generally tried to avoid doing - that of women over a certain age. They apparently don’t really want me to capture every detail, regardless of how beautiful those details are. I now have to expand that category list from 1. Women over a certain age, to 2. Iraqi Brigadier Generals. So I drew what I saw … with perhaps a gentler eye than I would normally use. I think I got away with it though.

I was not alone in my awkward misery though as SSgt. McKelvey had found her own Iraqi General with a penchant to get himself immortalized in prismacolor. She is an excellent portrait artist, but not used to working under these conditions. She did an exceptional job I think. It was very well received. We skedaddled before anyone could decide otherwise.

Another opportunity to assist the Corps in bonding with Iraqis presented itself when myself and fellow illustrator Vic Juhasz accompanied a USMC psychological operations (PsyOps) team during a visit to see their local Iraqi counterpart. This involved a short drive in an armored Toyota Landcruiser with all of the swarthy-looking Marines. The Marines wore the plain-clothed low-key civilian uniform of shirts with tactical chinos. They each carried a sidearm in some holster or another, each with an M-15 in the footwell of the Toyota. I don’t think of myself as a small fellow but I felt a lot like the mayonnaise in a sandwich on that journey. I was jammed in the middle of the back seat, as we rolled along through the desert around the base. The AC didn’t cut it in the least, and neither did the General Mathis-shaped air freshener swinging from the rearview.

They were visiting an Iraqi Vice Officer (VO) at a nearby base. The same patrol base we had visited to meet the Brigadier General. I am not entirely clear what a VO does exactly or what this meeting was about even. He cottoned on pretty quick that Vic and I were outsiders to this group. No danger of him mistaking us for CIA or anything. A great deal of small talk was exchanged, and we again played our part in helping with international relations again by sharing our sketches. But once he realized we were sketching it became very difficult to get him to sit still, hence the hasty render here. Thank goodness he was a bald-headed bloke. A simple single line is so much easier to draw than someone with hair, or wearing a hat, or Kevlar. At least the other Marines and Mr. Juhasz sat still as he flitted from place to place. We had a half hour or so at most to get the details down before our ‘psychological operators’ ran out of psy-ops to implement, and we stepped back out into the heat and the dust.

One late evening I sat in the smoke hut and tried to pull together a scene of the Marine corporals and master corporals sitting relaxing in the 110-degree wind-heat. Hardly anyone smokes tobacco anymore. They chew or they vape, but mostly they just seem to sit and stare at their phones. Couldn’t quite make this one into something. Can't win them all eh?