Send in the cows!

Image from LSD Photographers

Animal husbandry has been a military skill since nearly the beginning. It remains so today both in terms of offensive soldiering as in the Special Forces use of pack animals and in civic-action projects where soldiers provide veterinarian services for locals. In Imperial Grunts extols the virtues of MEDCAPs, DENTCAPs, and VETCAPs as humanitarian missions legitimizing occupying forces in hostile territory. Craig Mullaney refers to a VETCAP mission as “OPERATION DOOLITTLE” in his The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education (my review here).

Then, of course, there are the men who stare at goats.

Getting to the point, Graeme Wood details the latest in civil-military husbandry: teaching the widows of insurgents how to milk cows in Fallujah. The USMC contracted a trainer from Land O’Lakes looking for “a cow person comfortable in a war zone”. Amazing story. Whether it is effective or not can only be told by time, but I am glad to see the creative thinking.

Read: Graeme Wood’s Bovine Intervention