Deployment Kosovo

By Shawn Hendricks

In 1999, Serbia attacked Kosovo. Genocide of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians was the Serbian military's goal.

Shawn Hendricks deployed there for the US Army, KFOR (Kosovo FORce - coalition NATO peacekeepers) had already brought peace. Shawn spent his free time exploring.

Deployment Kosovo is a snapshot in time of Kosovo and the greater Balkan Peninsula, related in the order in which events transpired. The author is American.

Four and-a-half stars on Lisisoft.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shawn Hendricks
• Release date: Jul 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476027548

Shawn Hendricks

Shawn sat down and wrote Deployment Kosovo for people who are curious to hear about Kosovo from an American viewpoint. There wasn't a book to teach Shawn much about Kosovo so he learned mostly on his own. Besides, writing a book gives his daughter something to improve upon and it was something he needed to accomplish.Widower is a suspenseful romance. Have a look at the sample and buy it if you like.FEEDBACK IS ALWAYS ENCOURAGED! You are helping him write a better book next time. .Shawn Daniel Hendricks is the son of a retired Army Chief Warrant Officer, and spent his childhood moving from place to place. He lived for three years in Germany two separate times, in Alabama, Mississippi, Washington State, New Jersey, and Maine. Shawn graduated from Buena High School in Sierra Vista, Arizona before college. He dropped out after a year and joined the Navy, where Petty Officer Hendricks served for six years. Returning to civilian life, Shawn came once more to Arizona for a few years before relocating to Pennsylvania, and after that, to Maryland. He has deployed to Germany, Kosovo, and Kuwait. Shawn earned his bachelor's degree from Excelsior College in 2010.Shawn is an enthusiastic collector of fantasy and science fiction art. He cooks a lot, reads a lot, and takes lots of photos. Shawn took up amateur drone piloting. He has splashed only one quad helicopter into the Potomac River. The drone was recovered intact and functioned properly after a good drying out and was soon thereafter lost during maneuvers through high winds.He returned to Arizona after retiring, and spends his time doing whatever he likes, concentrating on hiking, photography or videography, and social networking.His latest manuscript is tentatively titled Marked Man, and is a contemporary fantasy centered in Tucson, Arizona.

Book preview

Deployment Kosovo

Copyright 2007, 2019 Shawn Daniel Hendricks

Published by Shawn Daniel Hendricks at Smashwords

Started December 3, 2007

[e-mail]

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

If you are a purveyor of so-called free documents, this notice forbids you from storing, linking, sharing, or promoting this document in any file format or form. By storing, linking, sharing, or promoting this document, you agree and attest that you will track downloads of this book and order an exact number of full price copies as downloads from Smashwords (www.smashwords.com). For every calendar month (whether part month or whole month) the document is stored, linked, or shared, you agree to purchase either the number of copies downloaded from your website or websites in any format – or – one copy, whichever results in a greater number of documents purchased.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

CONTENTS

Foreword – Arrival

April 4, 2005

First Blush -or- Home Sweet Hovel

Parents and Plans

May 2005

Outside the Home, Outside the Wire

The Church at Partesh

Mosque On the Way to Macedonia

Cider Brewery

Floral Kosovo and Camp Clarke

June 2005

Camp Rabbit

Camp White Eagle

Building a Mosque

Vitina and Camp Magrath

July - Green Hill

Primitive Bridge

First Time in Brezovica

Flowers of the Car Wash

August

September

October - Speed Run to Mannheim

Earthball

Skopje Distractions

Inspectors

Driving to Pristina

Abdurrahim’s Military Models

Jack’s Return

Protecting Churches

New Visits

Marketeers

Lost In Downtown Skopje

Attractions Near Camp

Jazz and Dal Met Fu

November - Bike Shop

Snow - Lots of Snow

Cold Skopje

Intro Gallery Café‚

An Ohrid Night

Ljuboten

The Turkish PX

Christmas Time

Car Wash Improvements

Snow Daze

Christmas '05

New Years Skopje

Skopje New Years Day

Skopje Monday

Colder Skopje

American Rioters

Detour Titovo

Landslide

Footprints

What Would Kastrioti Do?

Serbian Enclave Road

Kaçanik Slide

Cathedral

Gnjilane Road and Pristina

Another Snow

Camp Monteith is Closing!

Lake Wanafloodavalley (not a real name)

Kale, the Mighty Castle of Skopje

An Inviting Day

Smoky Skopje

Take your Child to Work Day

The Pristina Skopje Express

Storm Birds

Polish American Campers

Crocuses and Art

Frogger

Sveto Manev Exhibition Opening

Stork

The Cops

Dva Elena

Bog Sheep

Albanian Wedding Vest

Serbian Village

Konstantin Kacev’s Exhibition Opening

He’s Got Budapest Eyes

NSTR Skupi

Proboscis Moth

Saw Car

Film Skopje

Planet

Beggars in Skopje

Storks Browsing

New Digs

Pride in Home Ownership

Bones

Pol/Ukr Break

September Hotness

PJ

Sweet Ride

Friends in Prizren

Turtle at Last

Mannheim Speed Run II

Road Dozing

Dubrovnik

Wake Up!

The Balkan Toll Highway

Koper

Expressway to Split

Koter and Beyond

Back in Kosovo

Pristina Culture

Early November 2006

27th

Novo Brdo - finally!

Cold '07

Camp Monteith Aftermath

Art Studio

Filming

Painting Complete - Mitrovica!

Sofia Shortie

Kumanova

Ilir and Alaudin

Spring Traffic

Alaudin’s Studio

Lakeside

Hedgehog

Skopje Art Hot Spots

Painting Pick-up

June

Milos Kudzoman’s studio and the Bike-in Fly-out

The Need for High-Speed

Exploring the Hills

Dinner, Watching the Rain

Saw Cars

Photo Deliveries

Bosnia and Herzegovina Via Skopje and Austria

Butmir and Vicinity

Dinner and Sniper Alley

Olympic City Shopping

Pack Up and Move Out

Leave En Route

Epilogue

Credits

About the Author

Index

Map of the Republic of Kosovo

Map of the Balkan Peninsula

~~~~

Foreword – Arrival

~~~~

This log is not meant to describe my mission in Kosovo. Instead, deployment to Kosovo enabled travel in and around the region as I visited manned locations mentioned below along with several unmanned sites that supported the KFOR mission. Members of the 5th Signal Command cadre required the freedom to visit those out-sites at a moment’s notice in order to attend to outages, and conduct regular business. I kept my cameras close by in the car most days, or shoulder slung in a camera bag.

This foreword sets the stage for the rest of the book.

In April of 2005 I drove my blue Nissan Quest from Mannheim, Germany through Austria, Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia to Serbia, and south within Serbia to the contested southern region of Kosovo. During the war of 1999, NATO was asked by the United Nations to intervene and prevent genocide.

My task in Kosovo was to support the United States Army, 5th Signal Command mission to provide telephone and data communications to the United States Army’s troop contributing force based at Camp Bondsteel and with elements at a few outside sites. Those other sites included Camp Monteith, the next largest site, plus the so-called Russian Camp in Kamanica, the Polish/Ukrainian Camp (Camp White Eagle) north of Kaçanik and the main KFOR (Kosovo Force) headquarters, called Film City, in Pristina.

Digital cameras embed certain information in the image files they record. I write this travel log after the fact by reviewing my pictures taken during travel and events throughout the Balkan Peninsula, mostly in and around Kosovo, during the two and a half years I spent downrange, or deployed, at Camp Bondsteel.

Here’s the thing. I wrote a whole huge book with narrative based around the pictures. By the time it was finished, I had six hundred eighty plus pages full of wonderful color photos. Not a publisher or agent wanted anything to do with it. I am stuck with a book that would be great on a color e-book but with no marketing engine or wherewithal to put it out there. In the end, it seemed better to convert it to a text narrative plus a bare few color plates. On the back leaf of the book, if all goes well, a traditional publisher could attach the earlier edition in .PDF or e-document format book on CD. That way, I get two books published at once. Sneaky.

~~~~

April 4, 2005

~~~~

Driving to Kosovo required passing through Serbia. Crossing the border from Croatia, the fields were flat and deforested. The Croatian road had meandered through miles of tall forest, but land on the Serbian side was mostly under cultivation and brought to mind the plains of Kansas or Nebraska. It was before the spring planting. It might have been cooler in Serbia than Kansas and Nebraska at the same time of year.

Around 27 miles inside the Serbian border, there is a circular pad of concrete just to the south of the road (right-hand as I traveled east). It would be months before I would return to study it but there beside the road were the ruins of a Roman style pagoda. It speaks to the Serbian mentality that they left it unmarked and unexploited for tourism. On what I imagined to be a limited time budget, I drove onward toward Belgrade.

It was growing late afternoon when I reached the capital. My gas gauge read near empty and I was thirsty so I first followed signs to what should have been gasoline. Gas, the signs read, but when I got to the place the signs pointed toward, it was just a long, vacant lot with something at the other end. I could not identify the something but I didn’t care to trust the hand-painted signs that directed me to this dodgy scene – and the ‘not a gas pump’ looking contraption. I turned around, with the arrow very low on E, and returned to the autobahn. Not too far along, there appeared a pull-through fueling station where I gassed up. My car had USA NATO plates and some folks gave it odd looks. I did not feel comfortable hanging around the Serbian capital that day so I left before the hostile atmosphere I probably only imagined could materialize in more substantial form.

Down the road some distance, I drove past a weird building that has to be a Belgrade landmark that presages the bulk of the city. Past Belgrade, the road worsened considerably. It remained a divided highway but full of potholes and very poorly graded. The curves banked upward toward the inside corner of curves, making it dangerous in and of itself, but the drivers contributed recklessness as they weaved in and out of lanes. One theory I support is that countries with citizens new to car ownership have no experience sitting in the right seat and observing Mom or Dad driving. They have not subconsciously absorbed the rules of the road and they could care less (more on that later).

It had darkened during the drive through Belgrade and it was full dark by the time I reached Nis to find the turnoff to Kosovo and Pristina. There was nobody nearby, the night was black, and house lights appeared few and unexpectedly far between. Towns were what the Germans might call dorfs, with only a few houses in each. Bright blue-white lights finally appeared. I had arrived at the Kosovo frontier.

Regular European auto insurance doesn’t cover Kosovo. Possibly because the UN administers the government in Kosovo, while it remained a province of Serbia, outside insurance companies cannot or perhaps will not cover vehicles in Kosovo. I was stuck getting Kosovo auto insurance immediately, in addition to what I already carried from my American provider. The guards looked at my documents and allowed me entry into the neutral zone between Serbia proper and the Kosovo province. Earlier, I arrived for the first time in the Balkan Peninsula. Now, I had arrived in Kosovo.

For the first kilometers, I had the road to myself. It was darker than the road between Nis and the border, with still fewer villages and lights. I followed a drunk down the road for some time. He was weaving left, right, across the centerline and sometimes onto the shoulder. It made no sense to me and I wanted to get past him. The problem is that each time I thought I might pass; he drove into the oncoming lane. It was only months later that I reevaluated the driver’s drunkenness and allowed for the possibility that he was avoiding potholes. The road was in very poor condition but by that time of night, I was quite fatigued and probably paying less attention than I should.

I arrived in Pristina with no knowledge of the city or how to drive from there to Camp Bondsteel in the south. After driving haphazardly for some time, I came across another driver who helped me find a hotel. She was an Italian who worked at KFOR Main after having moved to Kosovo to work at the UN.

In 2005, the Hotel Grand was not very grand. My room smelled of cigarettes and the piping in the shower was questionable along with visible grouting problems. I went to bed after midnight and slept surprisingly well. By the time I awoke the next morning, the sun had risen brightly. I called my new boss, who was picking up visitors at the airport. We linked up at my hotel and caravanned to Camp Bondsteel.

Camp Bondsteel is just outside the small town of Sojeva (soy-yey-va) on the road between Ferizaj and Gnjilane. Most towns and cities in Kosovo have both a Serbian and an Albanian name. 85-95% of Kosovo inhabitants are Albanians. About the same percent of Albanians are Muslim. I will be using the names as I learned them for towns and cities, which generally means the Albanian name and spelling.

Camp Bondsteel proved to be colder than Grafenwoehr, Germany. I had been in Grafenwoehr only two weeks before and I experienced this difference with some dread. I had left Grafenwoehr partly to escape the cold, mistakenly theorizing that relocating a thousand kilometers south would bring warmer days. My first night at Bondsteel was noticeably colder than Grafenwoehr had been on the day I left.

Happily, I had brought my private automobile and was able to escape the camp for long periods at a time. While I have served on a submarine, I always had the next port in my future (or a harrowing, brief, dramatic, traumatic, crushing, implosive death) to look forward to.

Anyway, I had arrived and soon checked in on the job.

~~~~

First Blush

-or-

Home Sweet Hovel

~~~~

Camp Bondsteel has an assortment of structures that mostly include big metal buildings, smaller wooden buildings, and Davidsons. Davidsons are also called SEA huts (for South East Asia). SEA huts are single storey wooden structures based upon a standard design with three bays at one end and two bays on the other separated by a bathroom bay. The walls, roof and ceiling are engineered to allow the ceiling to be consistent, and the rest to be customized. Each (post-customization) rectangular bay has a door, a window and an air conditioning unit on each side of the Davidson. The ends of the standard building are blank, lacking doors, windows or A/C units. I was placed in a sixteen-by-sixteen foot half-bay during my first year and a half. This is significant only to how I lived then and the implications later when I moved into a purpose-built shipping container fitted out as living quarters. The shipping container living space was about half the size with half the wall space.

A wooden deck runs the length of a Davidson. It is covered by the overhanging six-foot edge of the roof and its plank decking is elevated above ground level. The deck has a set of stairs at each end and railing alongside but stands open to the elements. I walked out into the ambient heat, cold or milder temperature every day, when I needed to reach the bathroom.

The grounds of Camp Bondsteel were dirt when the camp was begun. The first days slogging through rain generated a bog. The muck convinced camp builders to lay down gravel or decking everywhere vehicle or foot traffic was expected. Walking is rough on the shoes but results in strong ankles.

There is a Post Exchange on Camp Bondsteel together with some smaller vendors that were AAFES (Army and Air Force Exchange Service) authorized. There were three cappuccino bars, a small satellite Exchange across camp, tailor shop, pressing service, Burger King, Cinnabun, gift shops, Internet Service Providers, and two US colleges, among other vendors. There were three gymnasiums, and two recreation centers with billiards and ping-pong tables, dartboards and other entertainments. Bank machines let me withdraw Euros to spend outside the fence.

~~~~

Parents and Plans

~~~~

My father is a retired United States Army Chief Warrant Officer Four and he took his wife and family to Germany when my siblings and I were still children. Mom and Dad got the travel bug and after retiring, drove around the United States and Canada during the summers pulling a fifth wheel trailer, while conducting genealogical research.

But back in our Germany years, while Dad worked, Mom, a multimedia artist of considerable talent, wanted something to distract her from taking care of her six charming brats. One outlet was junking.

Germans of the day would take old, bulky things they no longer wanted and set them on the curb on scheduled days. Canny Americans would go junking; driving around to see whether anything cool had been left out, and pick up antique treasures at zero cost. In that way, Mom was able to acquire a few pieces that she proceeded to strip of their decrepit and unsightly finish, sand and repair, and refinish while adding marble tops, new mirrors and felt linings. Other times, she and Dad would shop at antique stores and pick up great antiques for a fraction of the price they would command in the US.

Fast forward from the 1960s and '70s to 2005. Kosovo antiques, I discovered, fell into a few classes. First, there is the class of antiques that were too primitively built initially to have lasted to present day. Second, antiques that sit in museums; inaccessible. The final class includes items in antique shops, priced higher than BidNow prices on Ebay. Eastern Europe is aware of the global market in antiques. After some months searching, I abandoned my antiques quest, gave up on emulating my parents, and fell into a more pragmatic track; art collection.

Average income in Kosovo or Macedonia was about two thousand Euros per year. The employment rate in Kosovo was around fifty percent. Instead of antiques, I began to find art; beginning in Skopje, Macedonia. A process was begun that continued through my time in the Balkans. I searched out, evaluated, priced, and bought works of art. At the start, I found artwork in Macedonia.

The former Yugoslavian states share a tradition supporting the arts. When Tito died, the power vacuum left room for leaders to emerge and regions to declare independence. Wars were fought and resolutions were reached. A measure of stability has been achieved but the tradition of government support for the arts was not universally maintained. Art became a motivator to travel and explore new areas.

A second driver was the food. Restaurants serve delicious foods at very reasonable prices. The third primary driver was the desire to see sights and visit locales that differ from what I have experienced in the past.

The most important driver, though, was getting outside the wire. Working and living in a compound less than two miles end-to-end made me claustrophobic after a short while. I tend to explore, so Camp Bondsteel became old hat very shortly. Outside! That’s where the action is.

~~~~

May 2005

~~~~

There was an Army civilian who returned to Germany before I arrived in Kosovo. He took his car to Kosovo before me. While a personally owned vehicle was not authorized for Kosovo, it was also not forbidden. It is 'not authorized' because there are no services available to license, inspect, maintain, or provide fuel for them. These goods and services all exist at US NATO bases throughout Europe but Kosovo was classified as a danger zone.

Camp Bondsteel is located in southeast Kosovo. It lies off of the main route between the cities of Ferizaj and Gnjilane. Major roads in Kosovo are designated by NATO using animal names. There is a route Snake, Rat, Stag, Hawk, etcetera. My travels were not so extensive that I can say whether there was also a route Penguin, Gerbil, or Duck. One can only guess.

The west road reaches Ferizaj after something like five kilometers. The city center runs alongside railroad tracks that connect Skopje, Macedonia and Pristina in Kosovo. The main drag; where folks get out to walk, see and be seen; runs parallel and to the west of the tracks. Buildings divide the tracks from the main drag. Blocks to the west house the most visited storefronts. Thursday evenings, the young and the beautiful walk the streets so the coffee shops have lots of young male customers sipping cheap coffee and speculating about passing ladies.

I had some trouble getting my head around the polygamy of the Muslim religion. Muslim men can have as many wives as they can convince to marry them. In Kosovo, many men of marriageable age, or slightly younger, were killed during the war. By 2005, a crop of young folk had sprouted to maturity. There are many unmarried young ladies; more than young men. Unlike America or the bulk of Europe, that poses far less of a problem as young Muslim women flirt and try to attract desirable men, whether the men are married or not. In Muslim logic, that is rightly so.

The other side of the equation equally rocked my mind. Married men can be expected to try and attract new women. Married women are out of the game and many of them dedicate all their time as housewives, leaving the home seldom if ever. As a guest in several Muslim households, I discovered housewives of great beauty, hidden away from the outside world and jealous rivals. These hidden beauties never seemed unhappy or dissatisfied with their lot. They are keepers in the sense that they are beautiful, often highly educated, and content with a husband trying his best to provide the home of which he believes she is worthy. The Kosovo Albanian family is strong and, despite polygamy being legal, few husbands keep more than one wife.

~~~~

Outside the Home, Outside the Wire

~~~~

I began learning about Kosovo outside the Camp Bondsteel fence while having my vehicle washed. Regulations insisted motor pool vehicles be washed weekly. There were two options; wash the motor pool vehicle myself at the Wash Rack on camp, or have it done outside at one of the numerous car washes (Auto Larje) lining the major motor ways, and a few minor ones. With high unemployment, it was vital for Kosovo’s workers to create their own opportunities.

The region surrounding Camp Bondsteel houses a number of gravel pits and other small industrial quarry operations. The windshield of my government vehicle had, over previous years, become scoured by the pervasive, white, gritty dust as it mixed with rain