A Silver Souvenir from Baghdad

I know I have written about my adventures in South America and the Caribbean back in the 1990's plenty of times. Those were great times! But a part of my life I really haven't much shared here on Hive were from the 2000's. After arriving back in the US for some further education and training, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 took place. It was a horrific event that changed the US forever, and we lost several freedoms under the guise of security which still haven't been returned after all of these years.

Within six month of the event above an Army recruiter showed up at my door dangling a large signing bonus check. It turns out they needed my specific skillset (not combat related.) So I joined the Army Reserves and spent the next twenty years of my life as part of that organization. Most of that entailed one weekend a month and a couple weeks a year of active duty activities that were really more vacations than actual work.

However, I still recall the day I received a letter from command with some lovely orders. As it turned out, I had won an all expenses paid luxury vacation in Baghdad, Iraq for three months. So the next couple of months there was a lot of getting paperwork done, getting vaccinations up to date, etc. Then came time to deploy. Once I arrived in Baghdad, I took a transport to the Green Zone which was an interesting experience as the route frequently had improvised explosive devices. Fortunately, we didn't come across any of those.

The next few months were really nice. It was winter time and not hot, the Green Zone was not a bad place at all. Essentially all my time was inside the Zone. I set my own office hours and everyone was really nice. On occasion the sirens would go off indicating mortar attacks and you had to go down into a bunker. Of course it was the middle of the night, and they never actually targeted the area where I lived, so after a while you just ignored them. A risk yes, but not a very big one... It was nice to sleep though!

I made friends with several local civilians who worked there, one of whom was a big coin buff. He was always looking for American coins, so when I had change I just gave it to him. One day he gifted me this coin, which was a very thoughtful gesture. He told me it was a silver coin from 1959, and here's a scan of the coin.

About the coin:

From numista.com

Is this the prettiest example of this coin in existence? Not even remotely, as a matter of fact, it's a bit of an ugly duckling. At some point someone cleaned the back of the coin and it has an ugly stain to boot. But since I did bring in back from Iraq personally, it's always been a little special to me and a reminder of a friend. Plus it's 50% silver which is always a good thing in my book!

I considered diving into the history of Iraq, but it is long and complicated. Many of the great ancient civilization like Babylonia were located there, that's why it's called a cradle of civilization. I left a link if you want to read up more on that under references, this post would turn into and encyclopedia entry if I even attempted it.

Needless to say, after my three months were up, I made it home safely. But they were a fun three months overall, it really was more of a vacation than work. Plus the combat pay was high and it was tax free. It was a pretty good deal overall, I'm just grateful it was winter when I was there, summer would have sucked!

That will do it for me today, please feel free to leave any comments or questions below. Thanks to all of you for all of your support, it really is greatly appreciated. Have a great Wednesday everyone!

References:

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces9563.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iraq

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