July 19, 2017 (Wednesday)
Today I am passing along a picture I received in an email I received this week. The commentary is edited material from Snopes.com.
The sculpture was crafted by an Iraqi sculptor from bronze recovered by melting down statues of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Members of the U.S. Army paid the sculptor, who had previously worked on a few other Saddam statues, to create the work pictured according to a design of their choosing.
As part of the U.S. Army’s Task Force Ironhorse, the 4th Infantry Division was deployed in Iraq for most of 2003, participated in the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003, and saw many of their comrades killed and wounded in the violence that followed the end of major combat operations. In mid-2003, while the 4th Infantry Division was headquartered in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, Command Sgt. Maj. Charles Fuss, the division’s top noncommissioned officer, headed up a project to commemorate the unit’s dead and conceived of a memorial featuring the figure of a forlorn soldier kneeling to mourn before empty helmet, boots, and rifle — an array of objects that traditionally represents a fallen compatriot.
The sculptor’s initial asking price was far higher than the officers had expected. He blamed the steep price of bronze. So the Americans decided to recycle the bronze Hussein-on-horseback twins. “We figured we were going to blow them up anyway, so why not take the bronze and use it for our own statues?” recalls Sgt. Fuss. “That way we could take something that honored Saddam and use it to remember all of those we lost getting rid of him.”
Without having to supply the metal, the sculptor agreed to do the job for $8,000. By comparison, the former regime paid him the equivalent of several hundred dollars for his work on the Hussein statues. To finance the project, Sgt. Fuss publicized it in the task force’s internal newspaper and asked officers to get soldiers to contribute $1 each. Within weeks, he raised $30,000.
In July 2003, Army engineers blew up the two Saddam statues, cut them into pieces, melted them down, and delivered them to the sculptor. Using a photograph of 1st Sgt. Glen Simpson as a model for the depiction of the kneeling soldier, work was begun on the monument; near the end, another segment was added to his task:
As the work neared completion, Sgt. Fuss and the division’s commander, Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, decided it needed a clearer connection to Iraq. The general suggested adding a small child to symbolize Iraq’s new future, Sgt. Fuss says. When they told the artist they wanted another statue, the sculptor demanded $10,000 more. “He learned capitalism real fast,” Sgt. Fuss says.
After four months’ worth of night and weekend labor, the sculptor completed his assignment, and the statues were installed in an entrance-way inside the 4th Infantry Division’s headquarters in Tikrit. In February 2004 the statues were flown to the 4th Infantry Division Museum at the unit’s home base of Fort Hood, Texas.
(Read other versions of the statue’s history in Snopes.com).