Introduction
In April of 2005 I drove a blue Nissan Quest from Mannheim, Germany through Austria, Slovenia and Croatia to Serbia and south within Serbia to the contested southern region of Kosovo. During the war of 1999, NATO was asked by the United Nation to intervene to prevent genocide.
My task in Kosovo was to support the United States Army, 5th Signal Command mission to provide telephone and data communications to the United States Army’s troop contributing force based at Camp Bondsteel and spread out at a few other sites. Those other sites included Ca mp Monteith, the next largest site, plus the “Russian Camp” in Kamanica, the Polish Camp north of Kacanik and the main KFOR (Kosovo Force) headquarters, called Film City, in Pristina.
This log is not set out to describe my mission or tasking in Kosovo. Instead, my mission facilitated travel in and around the region as I visited the manned locations mentioned above along with several unmanned sites that supported the KFOR mission. Members of the 5th Signal Command cadre required the freedom to visit those out-sites at a moment’s notice in order to attend to outages, and conduct regular business. Most days, I kept my cameras close by.Digital cameras embed certain information in the image files they record. The camera used, the image height and width, resolution, bit depth, name, brand, aperture and shutter speed are all recorded. I used a Yakumo Mega-Image 410, a Panasonic DMC-FZ10 and Panasonic DMC-FZ30 both Single Lens Reflex (SLR) format cameras and a pocket Sony DSC-P200. The Yakumo, I used because I needed a camera right then and the price was right. The Panasonic SLR-style cameras have 12x optical zoom so they were great for bringing distant images close. The Sony has fairly high definition in a pocket-sized package and looks far less intimidating than the SLRs.
I wrote Kosovo Travel Log after the fact by reviewing my pictures taken during travels to, from, nearby and within Kosovo during the two and a half years I spent “downrange” or “deployed” at Camp Bondsteel.
Pages: 683 Pictures: approximately 700 Double-spaced text: 231 pages Copyright: 2007 Publication date: ? Publisher: Looking Agent representation: Looking for representation
Updated February 5, 2010, 3:22pm. shawn_h@sprynet.com