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

actions—all at the same time. Once I established the fact
that our soldiers could only do one thing at a time and that
we needed to move through the unloading process in an
orderly and organized fashion, we were able to bring some
structure to our actions. We expeditiously unloaded all the
rucksacks, A-bags, MREs, and water. This process took
about 45 minutes. We then assigned a detail to clean the two
passenger cars while the rest of the unit loaded the personal
gear, MREs, and water on two buses that had been assigned
to us for transporting the soldiers and our personal
equipment. We also had an additional detail assisting in
downloading our vehicles and hospital equipment.
The one event that I was totally unprepared for was the
number of news media personnel that descended upon us
like a swarm of bees shortly after our arrival. I quickly
asked the ISB public affairs officer to give us a couple of
minutes before we met with them. I used this time to remind
our soldiers to answer their questions honestly, but to not
speculate on any issue that we were not prepared to
address. We were here to provide medical support to all
soldiers deploying into and through the ISB, and our
responses should be directed toward what our mission was
and not to try to answer questions that were not in our realm
of responsibility or authority. The interviews went well. Our
soldiers were proud to address questions related to our
mission in the ISB, but were extremely careful not to try to
speculate on questions pertaining to non-medical issues.
Taszar was a Russian MiG Base prior to the end of the
Cold War. After the Cold War ended, the base was shut
down with the exception of a few buildings on the airfield
that were utilized by the Hungarian forces. The MiGs were
flown only rarely, and the remainder of the military base
slipped into a state of disrepair. Upon our arrival, we were
directed toward old barracks buildings some two miles from
the airfield and railhead area. The buildings had not been
used in over 5 years, and, as we were approaching them, we
all pictured the worst. We soon arrived at the barracks
building that had been designated as “temporary” billeting
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