Maintain a Safe and Secure Environment (SASE) in Kosovo

HectorC — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:29:00 GMT

We finally arrived in Kosovo on June 21, 2008 from Hohenfels, Germany. We spent four weeks in Germany training for this deployment, and we are here ready to put our training to the test. We arrived just in time for dinner at Camp Bondsteel (CBS). After having terrible food and getting sick in Germany, the food at CBS was a cuisine!

CBS has about 7 miles of perimeter, and is self contained. We produce or acquire our own water, electricity, sewer, refuse, laundry, fuel and just about everything. Of course, everything is contracted out to KBR or ITT, so all we do is supervise them to make sure the government is not being cheated.

So that is my real job, Shop Foreman Supervisor. I inspect the work they do on tactical vehicle such as HUMVVs, 5 Tons and Bradleys. It is kind of a slow job, I really don’t like it, but someone has to do it. I would rather be fixing the stuff myself. CBS has two Coffee houses, two gyms, four sand volleyball courts and one softball and one soccer field. We stay pretty busy playing extra-curricular activities.

The people in Kosovo are very appreciative of the US. They love us so much that they named their principal street in downtown Pristina “Bill Clinton Blvd” in honor of Pres. Clinton’s order to bomb Yugoslav’s forces in 1999. We also employ thousand of local nationals at our camps around Kosovo.

It is a beautiful land, too bad there is a lot of trash all over the place. There are many junkyards too, because metal recycling is huge here. Many houses are under construction as well, and I take this as a good sign of the economy picking up.

I have to go, so that is it for now. I will continue this later. Adios!

Kosovo Deployment

Maintain a Safe and Secure Environment (SASE) in Kosovo