OPD stands for “Officer Professional Development”, which basically means taking a time-out from our day to day officer duties to focus on… well, professional development. This can be in the form of classes on things we do in the Army, analyzing historic battles or wars, or taking trips to historical sites or battlegrounds.
(On a side note: There are so many acronyms in the Army that some people use them without even knowing what they stand for. A lot of people will say “ODP” by accident, which always reminds me of the late, great rapper whose name I will not spell out completely for the sake of decency.)
We’ve done OPD over here before, but it involved powerpoint slides and extreme boredom. This time someone arranged for all the officers in the Battalion to tour the Ziggurat of Ur, a 4000 year old monument in southern Iraq.
It was pretty interesting, since you can’t just drive there in a bus. We had to treat it like a real mission to Iraq (which it was) and convoy up.
The Ziggurat stands as the center point of the ancient city of Ur, which is supposed to the home of Abraham (before he made his journey to Caanan) The city died out after the Euphrates river changed its course and left its inhabitants with no means of irrigation.
The Iraqi fellow who serves as caretaker to the Ziggurat and the surrounding ruins is a third generation Ur historian. His name is Dhaif Muhsen. He told us his grandfather worked with the western archaeologists who first excavated the ruins of the city, his father was also a caretaker, and he has a son who will replace him.
There were several ancient tombs unearthed, along with what they claim is Abraham’s house (but I don’t buy it). Most of the city has been buried in sand after thousands of years of desert winds. There have been several excavation projects throughout the 20th century. There is much, much more yet to be discovered, but the caretaker said under Saddam Hussein’s rule, organizing the excavation was impossible. They hope to continue someday if the security situation calms down.
Here are some pictures from the trip:
LT Little and I prepare to leave the motorpool.
Sunset through the front window of our Humvee, on the way north.
Ziggurat Traffic Keep Straight… classic.
Here it is… the mounds on top are the ruins of the third level, and on top of that third level there used to be a palace.
The Ziggurat gift shop! I love it!
We arrived pretty early in the morning, so the shadows were magnificent.
A brick archway in one of the ruins. The caretaker also said that since they have been unearthed, a lot of the ruins have been damaged by rain and wind. They want to build shelters to preserve them someday.
Me.
This collapsing brick wall reminded me of a similar one in my own house! It’s smiling at us, as if to say “I am going to collapse at any moment and cost you a lot of money”
Cuniform, the first form of writing (so they say) etched onto the bricks. It’s pretty amazing that these little lines lasted 4 millenia.
This is Abraham’s house. The walls were rebuilt over the existing foundation. Again, I have a difficult time believing that they could figure out which actual building someone who lived over 4000 years ago lived in, but that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. It is pretty neat, each room has it’s own drain in the center of the floor, which all runs to a common sewage area. (Ancient Plumbing)
You can walk along the tops of the walls in Abraham’s house.
Myself and LTC Moseley at the top of the Ziggurat.
Me, kickin’ it on the stoop of the Ziggurat, reminiscing of my own, much shorter stoop in Baltimore.
Two Australian Soldiers started the tour just as we were about to leave. In the background you can see their armored vehicles pulling into position for their photo op.
CPT Swanson and I toast water at the Italian restaurant. We have Starbucks in Kuwait, but the Italians actually get a sit-down Italian restaurant with a bar! (No we were still not allowed to drink)
You can see how happy I am to get this pepperoni pizza. This beats Pizza Hut hands down.
Rod and I in front of the bar…
I never knew how to spell ICE TEA in Italian.
They had a plastic Ninja Turtles thing in the display case behind the register. I have no idea what it was doing there, but it was the last thing I thought I would see in Iraq, so I took a picture.
The caretaker of the Ziggurat asked us all to share our photos with friends and family. He said during the Saddam Hussein years there was virtually no tourism. He hopes that will change soon and you all can come see the Ziggurat at Ur someday.
-LT
Conner, Ceo, Boswell 
Today, Staff Sergeant George Brosenne of 1st Platoon, 243rd Engineer Company, was awarded the Soldier’s Medal. This is a pretty big deal, as the 2-star general who spoke at the ceremony could only recall 2 instances when he saw the award given during his 30 years in the Army.
I recently found a complete, 5-season boxed set of the Ren and Stimpy show. It’s an off-color cartoon show about a paranoid, impatient asthma hound chihuahua named Ren, and a fat, ignorant cat named Stimpy. I haven’t seen it in years, but it was pretty much all I watched through middle school (well, until Beavis and Butthead hit the airwaves). I’ve always been a fan of animation, but I don’t think you can appreciate it when you are 12 years old. If you look at the quality and variation in Ren and Stimpy and compare it to South Park or Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which are completely done on computers, you begin to see how lazy animation has gotten. Enough about that.
