Kosovo Force

S

Sapper

Active member
Hi again!

Back from the summer exercises, I've been told that my unit is going to be deployed in Kosovo as part of the KFOR. I'm curious if somebody out there has been already in Kosovo. I've been told that the region and the mission is rather similar to Bosnia-Herzegovina's SFOR (been there, done that). Any KFOR veteran out there? :D
 
I was there from FEB 00 - SEP 00. I was at Camp Bondsteel, Vitina, Mogila, and Verbovac... basically the southern most part of Kosovo.

What would you like to know?
 
yeah.........its not much diferent i guess,but behold of creaqzy albanians with AK's!!!yeah u better should
 
I was in the same areas in 2000 vrbovack vitina bondsteele and also mijack (we took that one over while i was there so i don't know if you heard about it. i was with task force falcon. Thats back in the 82nd airborne days.
 
I haven't served in Kosovo, but I've been several months in Bosnia and Macedonia, so from what I've seen and heard KFOR is pretty similar to SFOR...

When are you going to be deployed?
 
indeed...did you ever guard the church in Vrbovak? I believe you all named it the rat's nest. The place definately lived up to its reputation. I never thought hunting mice would become entertaining. The joys of peace keeping.
 
Yeah many times. We did 24 hour squad rotations there. Our company commander put out bounties on the rats. The squad that caught the most got an extra day refit at camp bondsteele. You know the hole you slept in there is the morgue. I didn't do much sleeping there by the way. mogila however was also a morgue but it wasn't rat infested. I enjoyed our rotations up there. I know it sounds like we rotated a lot but it kept the Soldiers from getting complacent.


So what was your favorite part of KFOR??
Mine was definitely CAS and the R&R trip to Bulgaria. I might still be on the wall at the MWR there I won the dart tourney when we were waiting to leave that God forsaken country. Despite how much I talk bad about the place I will have to say it was a very fun deployment.
 
Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question but this seems like the best place to ask. Why do countries send their airborne divisions to peacekeep?
From what i know these division are trained to be extremely aggressive. It would make more sense to me to send a normal ID.
 
airborne divisions are cheap to deploy and have much less equipment to ship. As soon as they hit the ground, give em a few 5 tons and they are ready to go. With tanks, you got to wait for them to arrive and there is a lot of maintenance involved. Also, tanks really do not add much to peace keeping missions. Rolling an M-1 is not exactly a good way to control a riot and remain "friendy" with the locals. Most issues in the Balkans require foot patrols, searches, check points and crowd control. Light infantry are much better at those than mech.

On a nother note, it was amusing to see an apache push back a rioting crowd.
 
Thanks for replying you answered some of it. I was mainly saying shouldn't these aggressive troops be in afghanistan and let the normal infantry handle the peacekeeping stuff? It almost seems like a waist of training but then again i'm not in the military so i dont know. Im assuming that peacekeeping isnt very combot involved.
 
sgtbreeden said:
Yeah many times. We did 24 hour squad rotations there. Our company commander put out bounties on the rats. The squad that caught the most got an extra day refit at camp bondsteele. You know the hole you slept in there is the morgue. I didn't do much sleeping there by the way. mogila however was also a morgue but it wasn't rat infested. I enjoyed our rotations up there. I know it sounds like we rotated a lot but it kept the Soldiers from getting complacent.


So what was your favorite part of KFOR??
Mine was definitely CAS and the R&R trip to Bulgaria. I might still be on the wall at the MWR there I won the dart tourney when we were waiting to leave that God forsaken country. Despite how much I talk bad about the place I will have to say it was a very fun deployment.
Click to expand...

I had no idea!!!! Wait until I tell my friends. Actually I spent 2 months at the company HQ, which was a house down the road a bit by the Serbian school. The hot shower we had was the best part about that house. My guard duty consisted of 6 hours on, 12 hours off with one 4 day trip to Bondsteel. Talk about complete boredom. At the end of 2 months, all there was to do was sleep. Then I went to patrol Vitina for 2 months. They made the big warehouse there into a post with a mess hall. We had a flee infestation that was so much fun. The only problem was the 1sg was always around. Then I got stuck on radio watch for last 2 months. It got so bad I could not even write a letter home.

you got R&R...that must have been nice. Our BN Commander decided that we did not need any R&R. That created a little resentment. He made up for it by getting us a beer tent for 5 days at Skopie, Everynight looked like a war zone when the beer tent was open.,

I guess my favorite part was a mission we did near the Macedonia border. We had to hump up that big hill South of Vitina. Then we monitored the people coming into Kosovo, looking for weapons. We were only suppose to be there a few days, but the command wanted us there longer. We got a chinook resupply. Those bastards threw our water and MRE's on the side of the mountain and it took us a good bit to collect all the goods. It got pretty damn cold out and our platoon SGT asked if this was a "combat" environment. THe answer was no and we had this big ass bomb fire. I am sure people could see us from all over. The low point was walking on a mined trail. Lucky, the locals told us what trails to take. When it was time to leave, we were able to get a chinook to pick us up on the mountain. I believe the LZ was not with in the safety limits. I know the pilot was more than happy to make the pick up, but the crew chief was cussing up a storm. It made for a few good picts tho. Well, that's my high point of the deployment.
 
Boy are you guys gonna hate to hear this.

During the air campaign, my unit was stationed in Budapest for a couple months. We did over-flight in Serbia, but their IADS were neutralized, so they were like milk runs. Best deployment I ever had.

On a side note, Hungarian women are absolutely gorgeous. No exagerration.
 
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