Sgt. 1st Class Jim Wagner157th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade Public Affairs
As the last plane rolled down the tarmac in Kosovo, it marked the end of one part of our journey and the beginning of an exciting new chapter in our year-long deployment.
I’m one of approximately 200 Wisconsin Army National Guard Soldiers of Headquarters Company, 157th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade, and the 32th Military Police Company who are taking part in Operation Joint Guardian, a United Nations mission to bring safety and security to the people of Kosovo, a country that declared its independence from Serbia in 2008 after years of bitter fighting.
Our mission is conducted out of Camp Bondsteel, headquarters for Multi-National Battle Group-East, and we’re responsible for the safety and security of approximately half the country of Kosovo. Another U.N. Unit, MNBG-W, is responsible for the other half of the country, with overall authority for Kosovo Forces in Pristina, the Kosovo capital.
We’ve spent nearly three months — since Sept. 12 — training and getting our medical and personnel affairs in order to get where we are today. For some of us, it was the first time we’ve been away from home; for others, this is the latest in a long history of deployments. Either way, all of us were missing our families and friends back home and trying to make the best of living in barracks and eating Army chow hall food.
Our first stop was Camp Atterbury, Ind., where we received our final medical and personnel clearance, as well as Kosovo-specific training, to include weapons qualification. In early November, we were flown to Hohenfels U.S. Army Garrison, Germany, to receive more training. The Army’s premise for training is crawl, walk, run. Where Camp Atterbury was the crawl stage of training, Germany was where we started walking, pulling 12-hour-plus shifts daily for three weeks, training to staff operational maneuvers.
Now that we’re in Kosovo, it’s time to run.
But before we started our run, Thanksgiving awaited us after a more than 36-hour transport from Germany to Kosovo — a welcome respite after going full-tilt for nearly three months with limited down time. While it will never compare with Thanksgiving at home with the family, we were treated to a fantastic spread of turkey, ham, stuffing, vegetables, cranberry sauce and a blizzard of deserts.
Our living quarters are a little cramped right now as we go through the “left seat/right seat” changeover from the unit we’re replacing. Called the “crunch plan,” HHC, 157th MEB, is doubled up on sleeping quarters until the other unit leaves and we can spread out into our regular billeting plan. All things relative, billeting is better than most deployments I’ve been on in the past. All rooms are either 16 feet by 32 feet or 16 feet by 16 feet, depending on the Soldier’s rank and how many roommates share the room. (And after weeks sleeping in a bunk bed in an open-bay barracks, a bed with sheets seems a luxury!)
The weather is remarkably similar to Wisconsin, and we were greeted to 30-degree weather when we touched down in Pristina. Since then, the weather has been blustery and cloudy, with a very rare — and welcome — display of the sun Saturday afternoon. No snow yet, but we’ve been warned — with a shudder from our New Mexico-based counterparts who rarely see freezing temperatures, much less snow — it will be arriving any day now.
For two weeks we trained up to assume the duties of our respective jobs. Our unit officially took over operations at the Dec. 10 Transfer of Authority ceremony, when Col. Jeffrey Liethen assumed command of MNBG-E.
Want to know more about our mission and how we’re getting along here at Camp Bondsteel? Post a question below.
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