Warriors in Peace Operations - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

soldiers up at 1130 for a formal send-off. After some words of
praise and encouragement from both the Commander and
myself, the soldiers bid farewell to family and friends and
loaded up on buses for the 30-minute ride to Kitzingen. We
arrived at the railhead at 1245 and immediately
downloaded rucks and A-bags and then in-processed with
the Personnel Services Branch. The soldiers were given
soup and juice while waiting for the arrival of the passenger
train. The train was scheduled to depart at 1430. However,
delays resulted in us leaving at 1600. Prior to departure, we
had loaded an immense amount of Meals Ready to Eat
(MREs) and water. We were not sure exactly how long the
trip was going to take, but were told it would be a 2-3 day
trip and that we would not be allowed to leave the train. It
was for this reason that I decided to take as much food and
water as we could safely store on the train.
Our destination was Taszar, Hungary, which had been
designated as the Intermediate Staging Base (ISB) for
Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR (OJE). Taszar was a town
none of us had heard of prior to the deployment, and
Hungary was a country only a couple of our personnel had
visited. Yet, over the next few months, over 20,000
American service men and women would either be assigned
in the Taszar area or deploy through it on their way into
Croatia and Bosnia.
After approximately 3 hours, our train passed through
Schweinfurt, Germany (a 40-minute automobile drive from
Kitzingen). The problem, we were to find out later, was that
our train had the lowest priority on the German rail system
and therefore was placed on secondary rail routes to avoid
negatively impacting on regularly scheduled German
passenger and freight rail traffic.
At 0100 on Wednesday, December 13, we were
awakened by Czech Republic government officials and
required to show our documents authorizing our travel
through the Czech Republic. We were awakened two more
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