United Nations Pics From Macedonia
Late last year (98) the UN mission in Macedonia was cancelled. It was taken over by NATO and was little known until the Kosovo Bombing started. My Battalion was deployed for a 6 month tour starting in Sep of 96. The mission consisted of watching the Macedonian/Kosovo border as international monitors. Many of our Observation Posts (OP's) were situated high up in the mountains which means resupplying those OP's gets very difficult in the winter. Half of the sector was patrolled by USBAT (us) and the other half was patrolled by NORDBAT (a collection of nordic countries such as Norway, Finland, Sweden, etc). The US soldiers that were captured by the Serbs were patrolling the same area as what is pictured.
Left: This is the view from OP U53A looking back toward U51E which is on the opposite ridge. In the middle of the valley somewhere is U52 which is just up from the main border crossing with Serbia.
Right: This was my OP, U70. It was the command post for our company's sector which consisted of 6 OP's including this one. My job was to drive the First Sergeant's (1SG) HMMWV (Jeep thingy). We checked on operations at the OP's, ran to the rear for mail and supplies, and ran interference for everyone else.
These two "hard targets" were down the road (more like a trail) from our OP. The one on the right is an old WWII Sherman tank (nothing salvagable, we looked!) and the other, I have no idea, though it was a wheeled vehicle.
This is what we called a "White Hawk" as opposed to its military name of blackhawk. White Hawk was thier actual callsign. When the weather got bad later in the year these were invaluable to resupply some of the OP's since the roads became near impossible to drive.
Left: This is the White Hawk leaving our OP and flying over the town of Kumanovo, the 2nd largest city in Macedonia. As you can see we were pretty close. U52 was in the same valley on the opposite side of the city.
Right: No, this is not fog, but clouds. Macedonia is at a high altitude and the OP's are higher still.
This is when the weather started to get bad. Visibility was bad at times but usually was still good enough that we could drive.
This is a few days after a good snow storm. Macedonia is kind of like Germany in that it gets to the point where it is too cold to snow. The picture at left is overlooking Kosovo (Serbia) and the one at right is one of the main streets through Kumanovo.
When I said it was difficult to get to some of the OP's in the winter this is what I was talking about. The 5 ton truck on the left was trying to get up the hill to U51E. That OP had the worst road since the last 100 meters was a 30% grade. The tank on the back of the 5 ton is a full water tank, very heavy. All the water for the OP's had to be trucked in about once a week. The truck in front of this one slid on an ice patch and demolished the front fender of the truck pictured. The problem was they were resting against each other halfway up the hill. At the bottom of the grade was the view from the upper left picture, an almost sheer drop off. There is my HMMWV, all winterized with hard doors and a bunch of other tricks.
Another storm was forcast so they flew in a couple mechanics to repair the damaged 5 ton (you can see it in the left pic). You can see the White Hawk to the rear of left pic and the mess caused by a helicopter taking off in snow in the right pic.
Left: Another shot of the the White Hawk taking off.
Right: This is Nordbat's front gate for their command post. That is a Fox recon vehicle that they use in sector in place of the HMMWV's the US uses.
This is the plane that took me back to Germany. Picture looks awful but that was how it looked, we couldn't even see the plane until we were right up on it.