The Road to Safwan: The 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry in the 1991 ...

220 The Road to Safwan
server could just make out the traces of long-vanished irrigation
systems and roads. It was also impossible to ignore the effects
of the war. Destroyed military vehicles and buildings were
everywhere. Before the attack there had been an airplane on a
pedestal at the front entrance of Talil Airfield and Air Force jets
had destroyed even it. The effect of the bombs on the airfield’s
thick, reinforced-concrete hangars was awesome as in every
case bombs had penetrated the roofs and destroyed what was
inside. It was apparent that the Iraqis had tried to protect their
aircraft from the coalition jets by locating them away from the
airfield. Ten or twelve burnt fuselages littered a nearby road.
As far back as 2,500 BCE, Ur dominated the southern banks
of the Euphrates River and the southern trade routes of the famous
“Fertile Crescent.” Merchants from this region traded
with much of the ancient world, from the Red Sea west to the
land of Canaan. It was along these routes, if the chroniclers of
Genesis are accurate, that Abraham and his followers, called
Hebrews, traveled towards modern Israel around 1,500 BCE.
Now, in April 1991, Ur was an ancient ruin and the location of
a 1-4 Cavalry checkpoint. After a few days in the area, some of
the squadron’s leaders hired a tour guide, paid for with dollars
and MREs, to take them through the ancient town. The guide
spoke minimal English so they used their own interpreters to
help out. The sense of past history as they walked among the
ruins was very impressive. It reminded MAJ Burdan of Percy
Shelley’s poem Ozymandias:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Damage to the site of Ur by the war appeared to be minimal,
even though the Iraqis had built a modern airfield quite
near the ruins. The major feature of the city’s ruins was the Ziggurat,
the stepped pyramid to the stars. Hoping that the Americans
would stay away from the area in order to avoid damaging
this ancient structure, the Iraqis had moved some of their
planes from the airfield and parked them near the monument.