The next morning, Barnes rode in an Avenger truck, a Humvee mounted with a .50 caliber machine gun, behind a line of tanks and trucks, and surrounded by rows of infantry.
As the soldiers approached, they realized that the airfield was really an onion field.
“We thought one building was a weapon cache, but turns out it was a farmhouse,” he said. “What was funny by the end of the day had been nerve-wracking in the beginning.”
According to Barnes, the soldiers named this blunder “The Invasion of the Onion Field.”
The soldiers also devised a nickname for Barnes, “Harvard Hippie,” referring to his Crimson heritage and his hair, which was slightly longer than the average soldier’s crew cut.
—Staff writer Wendy D. Widman can be reached at widman@fas.harvard.edu.