Stars and Stripes has a fascinating little bit of fluff today. It seems developing appropriate (some would say macho) operational names is getting harder and harder, at least around Yusafiyah, where the 4th /31st Infantry hangs out.

YUSAFIYAH, Iraq — Shakespeare once asked, “What’s in a name?”

It’s a question Capts. Matt Dawson, 29, of Milwaukee, and Tom Garvey, 26, of Cleveland, often ask themselves.

The officers are the masterminds behind the operation names for the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, N.Y. And to Dawson and Garvey, there is equal parts art and science to the task.

A good mission name is memorable, descriptive of the operation, and, if it works, boosts morale, they say.

It’s an interesting take on things. You want your military operations to be titled after butch, macho things because that’s the way into the history books. Does anyone remember Japan’s “Autumn Chrysanthemum” or “Spring Lilac” operations? And they have to be symbolic. The song “Wacht am Rhein” (Guard on the Rhine) is a famous and popular German song having to do with the long standing territorial conflict with France. The song is about a state of defense. Then it was used as the operational name for the Winter 1944 offensive in the West (Battle of the Bulge) and, well history shows it was a failure, probably because the operation was poorly named.

They wouldn’t, for example, send soldiers from the unit — nicknamed the Polar Bears — on a combat mission dubbed “Operation Polar Petunia,” Dawson said. “You have to think to yourself, if this mission goes down in history, how will it be remembered.”

Before there is a mission, there is a mission name, Dawson said. Deciding on an operation moniker launches the planning process, he said.

“Sometimes the hardest part of planning an operation is coming up with a cool name,” Dawson said.

Garvey added: “Sometimes we get it in a minute or two and sometimes it takes two days.”

I suppose it can be hard to think up cool names about polar bears.

The Polar Bears have logged 36 operations in eight months.

“There are only so many words that make sense with ‘polar,’ ” Dawson said of the growing shortage of names.

The early mission names were simple. Dawson and Garvey went through operations Polar Blizzard, Polar Storm and Polar Thunder.

“We did a lot of weather stuff,” Dawson said. As the missions piled up, the captains moved to other genres.

“We had sports themes, weapons names,” Dawson said. “Everybody aspires to being original and creative.”

But there are limits, they said.
…
They have also gotten one or two good tips, they said. The hands-down favorite name so far for the captains has been Operation Polar Anvil of Crom, a reference to the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie “Conan The Barbarian.”

“Anvil of Crom got a lot of fanfare,” Garvey said.

“There’s no way to judge what’s cool, you just know,” Dawson said.

I suppose Operation Polar Melting Icecap is out of the question, even in a country where temperatures rise to 130 degrees. And a name like that would show a certain lack of sensitivity to the insistence of Mr Cheney’s friends that Global Warming is a figment of Al Gore’s liberal imagination.

I don’t make up these commentaries. I just find them underneath the keyboard. Probably left there by Polar Bear Archy.