My Dad used to have a set of these cufflinks.
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He must have huge arms.
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Oh, I, I didnāt realise the scaleā¦ 
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This. So much this
because every kid deserves that foundational support from parents,ā he said.
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Could be āFuck Todayā instead, but Iām putting it in Odd Stuff because I wonder if even 1% of USians are aware of the de facto war weāve been waging in Somalia for 15 years now.
Weāve been bombing and killing civilans there all that time, even more than Israel slaughters Palestinians? Hmm, thatās odd.
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Boinged here:
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Probably not, but isnāt our involvement even longer than 15 years? I mean, my dad spent 4 months there in 1992 or 93 as part of the 10th mountain division? Weāve been there a while.
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I used to be in 10th Mountain for a few years.
To The Top!
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My dad volunteered. He was in the reserves at the time (in unit in N. GA), and thatās where they put him! Heād been out of active duty for my entire life, pretty much. He joined up originally like a month after Nixon ended the draft and left active duty right after I was born (and went into the reserves instead).
And then he came back early (I think heād signed up for a year, but came home after 4 or 5 months?), cause his mother got sick (she passed away not too long after he got back, too). We had to get in touch with our senator to get him back stateside (Sen. Sam Nunn).
Oh, and once I was at the local bookstore, wearing my dadās old army jacket that had patches of his unit, and a guy came up to me and said he recognized the patch. Turned out that they were in Germany at the same time - he got the locale a bit wrong, said Alabama instead of N. GA! My dad was usually sent to S. Korea for their yearly reserves training, but that year (96?) they were sent to replace troops heading to the Balkans in Germany instead. I wonder if you were one of the ones he was standing in for? I know you were in the Balkans, but donāt know the years you served thereā¦
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So he would have been in the rotation that replaced the 1st Armored division (us) while we were in Bosnia, doing the various guard tasks that we had been doing and helping out with troop movements and such. Cool! I wonder which Kaserne he was at?
I went over in early '96 and the 1st Armored division had been in-country since December '95. We rotated back out in october-November of '96. Then I went to Macedonia in spring of '97, then back to Bosnia in late '98 into early '99 with 10th MTN (as part of TF 1st Cav).
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That sounds familiar to me! Probably so then.
That I could not tell you, Iām afraidā¦
You were there a while! Thanks for your service!
That whole situation was such a fucked up mess. Who would have thought that Yugoslavia would have been the communist country to implode like that? Whenever I think about those wars, it really pisses me off and makes me incredibly sad. I can imagine being there was even more depressing.
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The first Bosnia rotation was very much peace-enforcement. The fighting had only ceased a few months earlier. We were operating from temporary bases and mostly didnāt get off our vehicles because of all the mines. The whole country was sloppy with mud from our vehicles. But we had a sense that we were there to do good and most people were trying to piece their lives back together. A lot of people were moving, either returning to homes or being relocated. We were doing a lot of public works type stuff, rebuilding roads and bridges and the like.
Macedonia was overall fairly chill. We were mainly doing border guard, but also were closely monitoring the Albanian situation. Some spots of excitement but overall nothing crazy.
The 98-99 Bosnia rotation had a very different mood. We were now three years into the operation and the temporary bases had become pretty permanent (many of the smaller camps had closed). Force-protection status had changed to where we were mostly hunkered in the camps, and only went āoutside the wireā in armored convoys (we had been doing foot patrols before). Local and national government were back in operation, and I think we arrived right after the national elections. The decision on the BrÄko district was decided in Dec '98 too which brought out all the nationalists. Many of the locals were getting a bit tired of us still being in the country. The public had reached a point though where they were confident enough to point out grave sites and the location of war criminals, which kept us busy.
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Ughā¦ not something anyone really wants to be busy doing (grave sites). I guess going after war criminals would have been satisfying, though. I guess that it would have been satisfying helping people get some closure, though. Still, a very tough assignment.
I donāt know that Dayton really changed anything, but only sort of froze the tensions in amber. Given how tense things remain in places in Bosnia and Kosovo, I worry about what could happen with the right (wrong) intervention. Iām sure Putin would love to distract everyone from his little war in Ukraine with a flare up of violence in the Balkans.
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āIn full makeup. In full body hair. No lines ā I grunt, but no lines ā and Iām so looking forward to this,ā Eisenberg added.
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