Operations Allied Force was in full swing and the Serbian president was digging in his heels about ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Operation Noble Anvil was planned and implemented with haste. Two more Air Control Squadrons (ACS)would be deployed one to Hungary and one to Romania. Initially I was slated to go with another unit to Hungary but the Romanian parliament in a brave gesture agreed to allow the Air Force to deploy an ACS to Craiova Romania. The kicker, the unit normally armed to defend itself against a level 1 threat would only be allowed to bring three 9mn pistols to protect classified. After the break you’ll meet a character from M*A*S*H, gypsies, and how the unit single handily saved an American institution.
It was mid May 1999 and I told my section to go home and pack their gear but privately told my boss that we would never get the airlift but it would be a good check. That weekend my wife and I drove some of the Airman to Boise to see Episode I and on the way back one of them let it slip that we were going to Romania. My wife didn’t miss a beat and said "so that’s where you’re going." On Monday we found out that we were leaving Wednesday (so much for my airlift prediction).
When we got to Ramstein Germany and our squadron was joined by a character straight out of the 4077th an OSI agent to provide us with force protection. We’ll call him Maj Flagg because he said he was a Maj. I suspect that he was a SSgt or a TSgt because when he got stressed out he would call me sir. At one of our morning briefings as we waited in Germany Maj Flagg told us that 10,000 Romanians in Craiova had protested the U.S deployment to Romania and that we were going to have to be very careful. He also told us if any Romanian asked us if we were in the AF we were to tell them no, that we were sight-seeing. American’s go to Craiova for one reason and that is to adopt. He also said that while waiting for the bus to take us out to the radar site we couldn’t be in uniform. Once we got to Craiova he grew more paranoid if that was possible. He had the commander place the strip club that was right behind our hotel off limits. He didn’t notice the cinder block building on the way to the radar site with no windows and a giant blue neon palm tree as the only sign. He also must have missed the propane refilling station that had huge propane tanks right next to the road on the way to the site. We were eating dinner in a restaurant that served the food on trenchers and the plates were wood rounds that had been sanded and varnished. I had always wanted to eat food served off of trenchers. The restaurant was in the basement of a building and had windows to allow light. Maj Flagg took one look and ordered us to leave because the place was a death trap. Our Maj told Maj Flagg to chill but when he took a sip of his wine he grabbed his throat and pretended that he had been poisoned. The food was excellent but some of the troops weren’t too happy with the baby chickens walking around our feet. One morning as we waited for the bus, about 50 men and women wearing brown t-shirts, shorts of some type, and combat boots, a local man walked up to me grabbed me by both arms and said in pretty good English that his brother lived in Niece (Nis). I wasn’t too concerned as long as he kept both hands on me, but I had decided that if he reached for anything in his clothes that I was going to have to hurt him. I also was looking around for the two guards the Romanians had provided us for the hotel. The man kept insisting that his bother lived in Niece. Just as I decided that I was going to have to extricate myself the two guards ran up dragged the man off me and hauled him off to jail (I hope). That morning during the brief I learned that we had bombed Nis Serbia the night before and a munitions malfunction had a 500lbs bomb fall in the city proper. I guess the man’s brother had called him to register a complaint.
Our biggest threat was from being pick-pocketed by gypsies. It only happened to one person. But everywhere we went (in pairs) we would be accosted by gypsy children holding out there hands and saying "money money". They would surround us and stick their hands in our pockets and try to steal our wallets. When we were with our Romanian AF interpreter they wouldn’t bother us. I asked the interpreter why that was and he replied calmly, "I would hit them and they know it." One evening in late June my boss and I were eating at one of our favorite places sitting at an outdoor table. One gypsy kid had followed us and was leaning against the railing asking for money. My boss offered him a slice of pizza. No I want money was the reply. That day we had gone to the bank to get some Romanian coins. You had to go to the bank to get coins because the exchange rate was 20,000 leu to the dollar. The smallest coin you received in change was 500 leu. My boss gave the kid a 500 leu coin. The kid looked at it in disgust and then threw it at my boss. The kid unfortunately had lost situational awareness and our waitress had snuck up behind him and before the kid could run away the waitress hit him over the head with a large menu. The kid ran away and the waitress told us "you just have to hit them." We didn’t ever take the "hitting advice" and everywhere we went we were accosted by children asking for money. I knew it was time to leave Romania the day I walked back from the local mall. I walked through the fountain square and the gypsy kids lying on the walls and in the fountain just waved and didn’t bother me. The kids spoke pretty good English. I was surprised but except for the news all Romanian television was American programming with Romanian sub titles. Unfortunately the favorite show in Craiova was "Al Bundy’s Family".
I would say that some of my best memories of Romania were the food. It was delicious and cheap. By the end of our first week there most of the restaurants had a somewhat English menu. I said most because on another occasion my boss and I were out to dinner we entered a hole in the wall dinner that didn’t have a translated menu. The Romanian word for chicken was pui. The Romanian word for pizza was pizza. So I ordered a chicken pizza and a beer. My boss ordered by pointing at a soup and an entree. My pizza arrived with lumps of mystery meat and a bonus of black olives. The mystery meat turned out to be chicken livers. The olives still had the pits in them. I don’t recommend chicken liver pizza. My boss’s food arrived and it was tripe soup and scrambled eggs and calf brains! My boss seemed to enjoy the meal. Unfortunately about half the squadron either didn’t like the food or were annoyed that when you sat down at the table in any restaurant they brought you a bowl of bread and butter that cost 10,000 leu (50 cents). For those that were unhappy with Romanian food about a half mile from the hotel was a McDonalds. We were getting two meals a day breakfast and lunch from the hotel but some squadron members ate every meal at McDonalds. On a couple of occasions I walked some of the people from my section up to McDonalds. I even had a Big Mac one day. One morning on the way to the site with the commander we stopped and got hot apple pies for the command post. As we were waiting for the pies to cook the manager came over and asked if we wanted coffee or anything to drink. We declined and the commander asked the manager to join us. The manager was friendly and I finally asked the question that had bothered me from the first time I went into McDonalds. For the average Romanian the prices here are quite expensive how do you survive? She replied that they were about to close when the Americans arrived and that we had saved the franchise. I asked how that was and she replied that in the evening the Americans would come for food and the locals would come and get a drink or an ice cream and watch the Americans. That some of locals would even come to McDonalds on the night that they were eating out to eat like the Americans. That night I walked up to McDonalds with some of the AGE troops and sure enough there were about twenty people eating ice cream and watching the Americans. So not only were we saving the Kosovar’s from ethnic cleansing we saved an American Institution. A search showed that the McDonalds is still in Craiova.
That’s a deployment memory.
If you have bothered to read this far I hoped you liked it. Please take a moment today to think about our men and women that are in harm’s way or just far from home. For the fallen warriors take a moment to ask the God of your choice to look after them and to ease the pain for their families.