There is a saying that I associate with the war back home in The Big One. The Home Front. I see it in stoic Englishwomen, flickering in grainy black and white, watching their men go off and then going down to the plant to work on some assembly line. ”They also serve,” went the line, ”who only stand and wait.”

It was a way of justifying with honor those who could not go and be shot at personally, but still contributed to the war effort.

The line came form Milton, the English poet who lived in the days of Cromwell’s Roundheads and the Puritan revolution, and the time when Kings were killed. Actually, Milton stopped writing poetry when he served as Cromwell’s secretary, and in so doing went blind.

I don’t know if there was cause and effect or not.

When the monarchy was restored, he retired in despair and wrote his masterwork, ”Paradise Lost,” the epic poetic cycle in the style of Virgil’s treatment of the travails of Aeneas. I suffered through that a few decades ago and haven’t been back since. The quote I remember comes from his Sonnet XIX, which is better known by its first line:

”When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
”Doth God exact day labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask; by Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: ”God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest.
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

It is actually about the process of going blind. But the last line echoed down the centuries and evoked something important for the Home Front, and was taken up by the ministries of information to buck up the spirits of those who stayed behind in the global struggle against the Fascists.

I was reminded of the words when I saw the list of the casualties from the Iraq War. As best I can determine, there has not been much of a Home Front cost to this thing, except for the gas prices and the ruination of our currency.

But the all-volunteer force concept of the Army has meant that many support functions have been outsourced to civilian contractors. This includes logistics and chow-halls, language services and interrogations, maintenance, security and communications.

In fact, it is the whole spectrum of jobs that were once done by men and women in uniform. In return, they have been kidnapped and beheaded and strung from bridges and blown up just like the active duty troops.

The people who perform these jobs, in the war zone, are taking significant personal risk. It may be for a paycheck, but many of these people are veterans who learned their skills in uniform, and are serving again.

I don’t know how the ones that die are coming home, or if the flag is draped on their caskets.

The Government Accountability Office was directed to conduct a study on exactly what was happening out there in the theater, since the number of Allied and Coalition workers is largely invisible in the background of the uniformed formations.

Civilians have always gone to war with the active force, from the Civil War Sutlers and Hooker’s Brigade, to the technical experts who maintain our high-performance aircraft.

But what is happening now is quite extraordinary. We have put the contractors directly in the line of fire. Maybe it is the changing nature of the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or maybe it is something else, the out-sourcing of war itself.

U.S. Active-duty casualties at the end of March stood around 1,530. UK and Allied troops have lost and additional 173 personnel.

The GAO found that the total of civilian/contractor deaths amount to 275.

Titan Corporation has contributed most to the dogs of war. It has lost at least 131 employees, or subcontractors, in Iraq since the invasion two years ago, 15 in 2003 and 116 since then. The company specializes in providing the Army with Arabic and Pashto linguists, and those services accounted for 12 percent of Titan’s 2004 sales.

Halliburton subsidiaries were hit next hardest, losing 26 employees and 35 subcontractors. The rest are divided with the dozens of companies providing services.

The GAO noted that there are no reliable figures for the total number of contractors in Iraq. A spokesman for the Joint Chiefs estimated last year that there could be over 30,000 contractors in the Middle East and Afghanistan, in addition to the 20,000 providing private security. That would equal almost a third of active-duty strength in the Theater.

GAO is concerned. They are conducting another survey to figure out exactly how the contractors are being used in this war, and how they are serving.

One thing they are certain to find is that they are not standing around waiting.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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