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Seasoned Vet
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Exceptions to war trophy policy little known
by Spc. Bill Putnam
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, May 7, 2003) -- Some U.S. soldiers are being investigated for illegally sending weapons, or war trophies, home from Iraq.
While still under investigation, the recent smuggling case of a soldier allegedly sending gold-plated firearms home from Iraq through the mail is probably an example of commanders and soldiers not understanding the potential value of such trophies, said David Cole, a curator at the Army Center of Military History.
What some soldiers might not know is that it is possible to send weapons home if certain paperwork is filed, said Cole, who also works on Army museum policy at Fort McNair.
Defining the word "war trophy" is a matter of semantics and legality, Cole said.
It wasn't until after the Grenada and the Panama invasions that the Army recognized that most military museums were filled with stuff taken from past battlefields and drafted a policy governing war trophies, Cole said. That policy was first implemented in Operation Desert Storm and continues to this day in places like Kosovo, Afghanistan and, now, Iraq.
In the regulation that governs historical artifacts, AR 870-20, war trophies are defined as something an individual soldier brings home from war -- like a helmet, uniform, flag or even a weapon.
An individual soldier buying an item from a market is legal as long as receipts are maintained, Cole said.
"But finding a prayer rug in a bunker during a battle and taking it home is illegal," Cole said.
An infantry battalion collecting something to send home shouldn't confuse it as a war trophy, Cole said.
"It's federal property," he said.
There are also units called Military History Detachments that collect artifacts to be sent home for research and history, Cole said. And what they do can't be construed as war trophy collection either, said Cole.
"The question is of title," Cole said of the collection of artifacts from a battlefield.
Commanders in the past have issued General Orders banning all trophies because they didn't want to administer all of the paperwork involved, Cole said.
"The problem with that is that some people don't recognize legitimate need for the Army as opposed to hanging it in some dayroom," Cole said.
From the Army's perspective, sending home weapons, like AK-47s and even tanks, has two purposes: historical and scientific.
The items are used by the Army to document and analyze the immediate after effects of a battle or war. Tanks, like Iraqi T-72s or T-55s, were brought home simply to learn "how they fought that war and how they might fight the next one."
By inference, looking at this equipment might show how other countries like Syria, Iran or even North Korea might use it, Cole said.
The current Army policy in place is that a battalion can bring home one weapon, Cole said. Each brigade-level unit is allowed to send home three such weapons, he added.
There isn't a restriction on the number of items like helmets or uniforms that a unit can send, though, Cole added.
A recent example of the Army sending something home comes from Operation Just Cause, the December 1989 invasion of Panama to depose Manual Noriega's government. After hostilities ended with the dictator's capture, the Army brought home his gun collection, said Cole.
Assuming it wasn't taken during the mass looting that ensued after Iraq's liberation, the Army could bring home Saddam Hussein's gun collection but not his coin collection because that's cultural, said Cole.
Cole said the big question of when to send something home is if the country is at war. He pointed out the country's involvement in the Balkans in the 1990s.
The country wasn't at war with Bosnia in December 1995. It was the opposite, a peacekeeping mission, Cole said.
Units or individual soldiers couldn't take anything home unless a local farmer gave a unit or individual soldier a weapon with the proper paperwork to show the gift.
Kosovo, however, was a war and trophies could be taken. Anything taken by units would have been protected under international laws like the Geneva and Hague Conventions.
Currently, there is an officer at Army Central Command headquarters that acts as a facilitator for requests for war trophies. That officer forwards those requests to the Department of the Army. If the paperwork meets the guidelines, an approval document is sent down from Department of the Army, said Cole.
He added that the document clears the weapon's passage through customs and it's brought back with the unit's equipment, and it is then noted on the unit's property books.
Once it's on the books, it can't "be passed along to an outgoing CO (commanding officer) simply because he was a nice guy," Cole said.
Individual soldiers sending weapons home is a different matter, Cole said. Before 1968, soldiers could send weapons home without much of a problem, Cole said. That year Congress passed the 1968 Gun Control Act, which, among other things, made it illegal to send weapons through the mail.
It also created a weapons registry and tax a gun owner would have to pay on that weapon, Cole said.
The Department of the Treasury administered the registry and eventually closed it, making it impossible to register and pay the tax, thus making the weapons illegal to own, Cole said.
There are exceptions to the act, said Cole.
Army regulations state there are weapons a soldier can send home legally. A 35th Signal Brigade soldier sending an 1856 Musketoon rifle home from Afghanistan last year is a case in point.
Because the weapon was made before 1898, it was an exception to the long list of banned weapons on the 1968 Gun Control Act's list. Not only was it made before 1898, the soldier also filled out the proper paperwork to bring it home.
"The key there is that he bought it," Cole said. "It wasn't something he took from somewhere."
Those gold-plated weapons from Iraq were sent home illegally, Cole said. That soldier will face Uniform Code of Military Justice charges if it is proven that he sent those weapons home.
"A gold-plated weapon or knife wouldn't be worth my career," Cole said. "To say the least, the legality of all this is complicated
------------------------------------------------------------ Out of every 100 men, ten shouldn't even be there, Eighty are just targets, Nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back." - Hericletus, circa 500 BC ----------------------------------------------------------- 
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Hard Charger
 
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War trophies are subject to regulation, DoD directives and Major command authorization.
Army Regulation 608-4 -- Control And Registration Or War Trophies And War Trophy Firearms.
View the AR.
http://books.usapa.belvoir.army.mil/cgi-bin/bookmgr/BOOKS/R608_4/CONTENTS
______________________________________________________________________________________________
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Trooper
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What is a war trophy and what isn't depends on your rank!
Ranger2
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Seasoned Vet
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quote:
What is a war trophy and what isn't depends on your rank!
sadly, an international truism.
Make The Voices Stop!
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Regular Joe
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We weren't allowed to take s**t home from Iraq in the way of weapons. I have a couple of seabags worth of Iraqi duece gear, but the morons wouldn't even let us take home an AK bayonet. We dumped a box of about 300 into the Euphrates. What a waste!
S/F
Mooch
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Regular Joe
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We weren't even offered the option to bring home weapons that wouldn't fall under the GCA... no handguns, no semiauto rifles, nothing.
It was a crock. They even confiscated helmets and other non-threatening items...
Chickenshit is what it is.
:mad:
Alex
Alex F
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