Major John Clark of the British Royal Engineers served as a staff officer in the 1st United Kingdom Armoured Division, then as aide-de-camp to division commander Major General Peter Wall, in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. On staff until the middle of March, Clark, a graduate of the University of Oxford where he studied Arabic and Islamic studies, was called on to become the translator for the 7th Armoured Brigade commander. According to Clark, "In the early days, there were far fewer interpreters than there are now. One minute I would be translating for the brigadier and the next minute I would be out on a foot patrol with a squad somewhere. There wasn't a sufficient number of interpreters to have them all the way down to the squad or platoon levels." He went on to say that while bridging the cultural gap was fairly easy for him - "being privileged in the sense that I had lived and worked in these environments before - the more frustrating thing was trying to sell my thoughts and perceptions to my colleagues who were in these environments for the first time." He also talks about seeing firsthand the Basra city council in its infancy and the interaction of tribal, religious and liberal factions. He also notes that the American forces in central and northern Iraq faced a much more complex sectarian environment as compared to the solid majority of Shi'ite Arabs in the Basra area. As the aide-de-camp of Britain's highest ranking officer in Iraq, Clark was privy to meetings with high-level political delegations, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, and, "given my background and experience, I was one of the few people able to qualify with some degree of authority what was going on in the area with an understanding of the historical background. I was thus able to participate in those meetings rather than just be a note-taker on the side. That was fascinating." Clark states that, despite a few systemic issues, American and British forces have an extremely good working relationship, and that in terms of doctrine and ethos, the US Marines are very close to the British Army. Speaking of counterinsurgency, Clark says, "For all the much-touted British counterinsurgency experience, which is there and is real, the actual experiences that US forces have gained over the last three or four years in Iraq have gone way beyond what British forces have experienced in this form of combat, at least in recent memory anyway." He closes by stating that educating people in other languages and cultures can yield enormous dividends in foreign environs while costing a fraction of the more popular technologically-driven solutions.

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