Kosovo Arrival...

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Those final moments before we got on the bus in Germany were bitter sweet. Last minute running around, shoving soldiers onto the buses, locking up buildings and briefing soldiers on the safety precautions kept a few of us busy. As I looked to the foothills that surrounded our training post I was swept up by the beautiful foliage and how the autumn leaves were glimmering in the sunlight. But then my eyes refocused and just below the tree lines was this Hogans Hero’s type post.

This place had indeed been a concentration camp during WWII, and for the past month it had held us hostage behind the locked gates. I can say that I won’t miss much about the Germany experience. Yes, the training was realistic and quite intense at times, but it is usually the small things that really get on your nerves. The food for one. I often wonder why the army is always hell bent on saving a few dollars on our meals when we spend millions of dollars on tanks and high speed helicopters. For breakfast and dinner we had to eat UGR’s (Utilized Group Rations), which is like eating a meat, a starch and vegetable from big pans that serve about 50 soldiers at a time. A TV dinner on steroids if you must. Not good at all, and the local national cooks tried to add spices but it just made the food that much worse. We were supposed to eat MRE’s for lunch, but instead would get broth soup made from the breakfast leftovers, which always included hash browns. It was just weird stuff. I won’t miss the mud and filthy state of the facilities, and I don’t think anybody will miss the open bay showers and sharing a room with 69 of your closest friends.

I have never seen so many people excited to move on to the next stage of deployment. Kosovo was looking pretty good. By the time we traveled to the airport, loaded all the bags into the belly of the aircraft and got settled into our seats, we welcomed the short two hour flight to our next stop, if not just for the little time of peace and relaxation.

It’s always a very ominous feeling when one flies into a strange country on a military mission at night. Everybody is twisting their necks to just catch a glimpse out the window of what the landscape might hold, to find a familiarity or to just put their minds at ease that it will be a safe place to land. The sergeant boards the plane and instructs us on the proper debarking procedures and has the baggage unloading team take their gear to a certain location on the tarmac and we start unloading our cargo from the plane into baggage trucks.

Soldiers from KFOR 11 were waiting for us in the terminal and gave us a friendly welcome to Kosovo. Honestly, I think they were just tickled to see us since our arrival signified that they were down to only a few weeks left of their deployment. We had to hurry up and wait for the buses and security vehicles to form up into a convoy formation, and eventually we all had a special seat on a school bus bound for Camp Bondsteel.

It was a little over an hour we rode on that bus. Only about 14 of us so it wasn’t crowded at all. We had the windows down although it was a bit chilly. We wanted to see as much as we could even though it was as dark as dark could be. No street lights, no turn signals glowing at the intersections and as we passed most of the small villages and towns there would be no lights in the windows of the houses. Don’t really know if they didn’t have any power or if everybody went to bed at 8:00 in the evening.

The first few minutes were a little strange I might say. The bus I rode on had a lot of soldiers who had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan for previous tours of duty. There was a tenseness about those minutes. We hadn’t been on foreign soil since departing those war zones and so I think our memory banks kicked in as we looked at the familiar landscapes. Not unlike any third world country, the streets alongside the bus were dirty, the buildings were not completely finished being built and the roads were extremely narrow without any shoulders to them, just ditches on the edges. It wasn’t the normal surroundings that jumped out at you, it was the little insignificant visuals.

The way the rocks were lined up in front of some of the driveways, which in memory was a sign of a possible IED. The abandoned vehicles facing backwards in the ditch close to the road, which led you to believe something suspicious. The coincidence that the lights would go out in a business window just as you passed by on the bus, like maybe it was a signal to others. Or how the blue lights of the security escort vehicles would bounce off the buildings as we passed through congested areas. Even the local vehicles would be pulled over as we passed them, knowing that the bus was much bigger than them.

It was just for a few minutes, but it was those minutes that let your mind drift back to a time where danger was a known and everything was suspicious and threatened the safety of everyone. It was sullen on the bus, each of us in a different place and time. I was glad that one of my soldiers from Iraq was sitting behind me, because as I felt the tear fall down my cheek, I could feel her closeness and understanding. I thought about my fallen soldiers and hoped that their spirits would stay with us on our journey here in this foreign land. Iraq is behind us and we are here for a peacekeeping mission, much different than all out war.

There are no IED’s here, nobody is out to get us and it is what it is. Kosovo. We are serving in this area as a neutral party, and to establish good will and assistance. To provide positive role models for the next generation and to find a gentle peace with the people of the country and the landscape of the area. For a few of us, maybe a peace inside and chance to experience what it feels like to first hand experience the good that we can do for others. We are the Peacekeepers.

Next stop. Camp Bondsteel…Kosovo!

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