UPDATE: My Afghan Legacy?

I've been occassionally curious about military naming conventions when it comes to operational or objective names. For example, who came up with the name Operation Overlord (Allied invasion of Normandy)? Or Market Garden? Or Sea Lion (planned German invasion of England)? Was there a specific alphabetic naming convention or was it just some words someone came up with?

Stars and Stripes (actually shocked I found this article) had a brief article about coming up with operation names in 2007. The imbedded reporter did an interview with the two planners in one of the infantry battalions of 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division. The battalion was the "Polar Bears" so their naming convention always had "Polar" at the beginning. Must have been a slow news day.

My brigade, 3-2 SBCT, had a similar way of naming operations in '06/07. Since we were the Arrowhead Brigade all operations started with "Arrowhead"; the second part of the name was an operational name from 2nd Infantry Divisions exploits in WW1 and WW2. They didn't always make sense like when Comedy Central's Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" mocked 3-2 SBCT's name for the operation in Baqubah...Operation Arrowhead Ripper (Arrowhead ripper? What does that even mean? Are we fighting the terrorists with nonsense words?).

When naming operations and objectives in '09/10 the planners were given limited guidance by the Squadron Commander...nothing offensive or animals that could be considered offensive. Not only did he not want us unintentionally offending our Iraqi security counterparts, but he didn't exactly want to write a letter to a mother stating that her son died on Objective Pukeface during Operation Dog Fart. The squadron planners would eventually adopt Washington state counties and towns for our naming convention or would just adopt what higher headquarters had named the larger overall operation/objective, i.e., Operation Arrowhead Pursuit would become Operation Warhorse Pursuit. Later on, our Squadron XO would tell us to channel our inner 5 year old and if an operation or objective name made us giggle...don't use it.

So what does this have to do with anything?

The fools here at ISAF Joint Command have allowed me to name certain objectives. Having seen some of the other objective names I have come to the conclusion that there is no standard to the naming convention and have taken the liberty of ignoring all previous advice from my former Squadron commander and XO. If it makes me giggle, it's an objective name. I have found a way to make my mark on this war.

Some time in the future, when someone is briefing a general about Objective Fuzzy Jackal, my inner 5 year old will be giggling madly. Professionalism? The hell is professionalism?

UPDATE: My inner 5 year old did indeed giggle madly while Fuzzy Jackal was briefed.