Archaeologist Aids Army on Sensitivity

(AP) Col. Rick Mitchell did three tours of duty in Iraq, flying dozens of patrols and bombing missions over the desert landscape.

Even so, the veteran Air National Guard pilot did a double-take the first time he saw what appeared to be a Muslim cemetery and a mound of ruins on Range 48 at the U.S. Army's Fort Drum in upstate New York.

"It looked just like way it looked over there. It's going to give our pilots some firsthand experience in recognizing and identifying these kinds of sites from the air under fairly realistic conditions," said Mitchell, of Merrimac, N.H., who flies with the 118th Fighter Wing out of Connecticut.

"You don't want to be dropping bombs on cemeteries and mosques, or blow up some important historical site that's been there for thousands of years," said Mitchell. "That's certainly not going to make us any friends."

That's the thinking of archaeologist Laurie Rush, Fort Drum's cultural resources manager.

So with $165,000 in funding from the Department of Defense Legacy Program, Rush and the post's Integrated Training Area Management unit has begun to heighten the cultural sensitivity of the soldiers and pilots who train at Fort Drum, including building mock cemeteries and archaeological ruins and developing a field guide.

"We need to get them trained before the fact, not after the damage is done. This should be part of deployment training for anywhere in the world _ becoming familiar with the region's cultural heritage," said Rush.

Rush, who's been at Fort Drum eight years, said she felt compelled to develop an awareness program after the British Museum last year reported the defiling of the ancient city of Babylon in 2003 by invading U.S. Marines, who damaged and contaminated artifacts dating back thousands of years. Transgressions included building a helicopter pad on the city's ruins, destroying a 2,600-year-old brick road and filling sandbags with archaeological fragments.

"Museum professionals around the world were horrified. I was so angry, too, because it was just needless," Rush said.

Read the rest at CBS News