Oregon Public Broadcasting

The next Army Stryker brigade to deploy from Fort Lewis will have more ordinary soldiers who can speak and read Arabic.

Until now, brigades sent to the war zone from the Northwest have largely relied on Iraqi-born translators.  Their dependability has varied.

Correspondent Tom Banse observed infantrymen try out their new language training in a simulated Iraqi village at Fort Lewis.

Exams are stressful, regardless.  Now imagine being graded while gunfire crackles outside... your boss is counting on you to look good as well... and the questions are in a language few Americans can master.

Native speakers portraying an Iraqi mayor, police chief and tribal elder are testing infantryman Efraim Kelmansky.

He’s had 10 months of intensive Arabic lessons at Fort Lewis.  His platoon is on a simulated mission to find al-Qaida infiltrators in a mock village.  But the town leaders have their own agenda.

Specialist Kelmansky is one of more than a hundred soldiers from his brigade to be reassigned from regular training to learn Arabic.  All volunteered. 

It means this brigade will have the highest number of Arabic speakers of any Fort Lewis unit to deploy.

Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Neumann says the Army will still employ Arab-Americans and local people as translators.  But he says it’ll be nice to have someone to keep ‘em honest.

Jonathan Neumann: “Whether it’s patriotism or whether it’s go get even with the old regime, everybody kind of had a prejudice of some sort. So, you just never know -- especially with a local hire that you hire in Iraq.  Boy, you just never know what team he’s batting for while you’re there.”

Neumann served in Iraq in 2004.  Fort Lewis says the decision to send more ordinary soldiers to language school came from the grassroots, not from the Pentagon.

Jonathan Neumann: “Unless you had an interpreter, you were absolutely helpless breaking down the barrier with the population.  Now, young soldiers will figure out a way.  They’ll learn local stuff and just a way to talk to people, but you’ve got to have that interpreter.”

Commanders have to be selective about who they send to language school.  Neumann says you can’t dabble in Arabic and get anywhere.  It requires total commitment and that in turn creates holes in an active duty unit.

Recent graduate Raul Montano says the Fort Lewis language school crammed two years of Arabic coursework into 10 months.

Raul Montano: “A soldier’s job is to be a soldier first.  To add on to that trying to translate and trying to switch languages, it’s challenging.  I knew it was going to be hard.  And it is as hard as it looks.”

On an earlier deployment to Iraq, Sgt. Montano recalls learning no more than 20 words of Arabic -- words like “hello, stop, and put your hands up.”  Now, he’s not completely fluent. But he is conversant and says he’s learned the additional skill of how to improvise in Arabic to get your point across.

Montano’s Stryker brigade – the 5-2 – is still waiting to hear when and where they’ll deploy.