Secret #17: "Papal Bull"
i hadn't really thought much about this seeing as it was 11 years ago almost to the day. But with the Pope Johnny Ratz's visit to the US and saying mass at National's Stadium and then all the flap about Hillary's visit to Tuzla with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow and then i thought...Hey! i was in Tuzla in '96!! And i was. my team was based out of Tuzla, Bosnia, the largest forward deployment of working dogs since VietNam. We were all oever the area between the Bosnian Serbs and the Muslim-Croat coalition. When the road show came to town, it was not unusual for snipers to take potshots at some of the planes, but it didn't happen too terribly often. That being said, it was common to bring planes carrying VIPs in fast and the emergency equipment would be standing by just in case. It was easy for the uninitiated to get caught up in the excitement and think they were in more danger than they actually were. Then again, they may have actually been in danger and us who'd been there for awhile were just jaded. "...another day, another sniper...ho-hum..."
Sarajevo wasn't really in our AO (Area of Operations), but i had the most bomb dogs (and the best, i might add) so we were often called on to sniff for the bigshots. We got this mission and i took three bomb dog teams down and met up with a couple of Spanish bomb dog teams and we worked for the Italians who were in charge of the overall security for the event. You needed interpreters for the interpreters. i can't tell you what all we found, but he made it in and said mass for an SRO crowd and then got outta town. It started to snow during his homily. i laughed. You can see more pictures here.
AP Photo in the St Louis Post-Dispatch, SUN April 13, 1997.
my mother didn't know i was in the Balkans, she thought i was still in Germany. i'd sworn my sister to secrecy since Mom freaked out the last time i was stupid enough to tell her i'd deployed. A friend of hers showed her this clipping from the Sunday paper. Needless to say, my cover was blown.
LEFT: Advertisements for the Pope's coming visit; RIGHT: Just another roadside attraction.
LEFT: The Serbian version of "urban renewal". If you ever saw a new roof on a house, you knew they were fucked. A couple of leftover Russian anti-tank mines were perfect for blowin' the roof of the sucka! RIGHT: "What's 'MINE' is 'OURS'":
at the edge of a roadside minefield - this qualifies as army humor.
You can see all 30 of my secrets here.