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Mass graves and mine-riddled neighborhoods | page 1, 2
No longer are Kosovo Albanians harassed at the border by Serbian border police, who did their best to humiliate, delay and intimidate them, while letting Serbian cars whiz past with a smile and a wink. Now, American GIs, looking terribly young and slight in their camouflage helmets and flak jackets, man the Kosovo-Macedonian border. Uncertain of the dangers they face on this new mission, they carry their weapons defensively, but treat the Kosovo Albanian refugees arriving on the border on foot and in cars like human beings. After checking that no one is carrying weapons, the U.S. troops give the Kosovo Albanians the go-ahead to move on into Kosovo unimpeded: the first taste of freedom many of them have had in over a decade. Some of the returning Kosovo Albanian men, thinned and suntanned by weeks spent in the blinding sun of refugee camps in Macedonia, can hardly believe it. Groups of them walk in the middle of the road, unable to wipe the smile from their faces. They hold their fingers up in the V-for-victory sign to all who pass, honk in euphoric greeting as they see friends, and wave and cheer wildly in gratitude at the convoys of serious-faced NATO soldiers who move thunderously past in enormous, heavy, slow-moving convoys of armored personnel carriers, tanks, trucks, jeeps and humvees carting their water, food, fuel, ammunition and tents. While the NATO soldiers try to see themselves as neutral in this conflict, the Kosovo Albanians openly regard their presence in Kosovo as the greatest miracle they have ever witnessed. The American soldiers can't help but be moved as the Kosovo Albanians cheer them as they pass, the children chanting, throwing flowers, snapping photographs. The handwritten sign just inside the Kosovo-Macedonian border crossing says simply "WELCOME NATO." "It feels good to make them happy," said Sgt. Joseph Webb, of the 82nd Airborne, out of Fort Bragg, N.C., manning a .50-caliber machine gun mounted atop a tank. It is Webb's first hour in Kosovo and he has no idea what to expect, but the hills above his machine gun are green and quiet for the moment, and the Kosovo Albanians he passes are the friendliest people he has seen in his career. "I guess they like what they see," says Webb's tank mate, Staff Sgt. Ryan Murphy, also of the 82nd Airborne, trying to suppress a smile. Further up the road, an American military convoy stops by the side of the road while mine experts check the territory they are to move into, in southeastern Kosovo, for mines and booby traps. A group of Kosovo Albanians comes out of their houses to welcome them. Standing in the shade next to their truck, task force surgeon Eric Mansfield, a doctor from Columbus, Ga., and Staff Sgt. George Fitzgerald, from Mission Hill, Mass., are giving high-fives and shaking hands with the smiling Kosovars coming to greet them. Fitzgerald, with red hair and freckles, says he feels a special connection to this mission because his mother was a refugee from post-World War II Croatia, which, like Kosovo, was part of the former Yugoslavia. "I feel honored to be here," says Fitzgerald. His mother immigrated to America from Croatia in 1949, met his father in a bar in Brigham Circle in Boston, and died shortly after a new war broke out in Croatia in 1992. "My mother died after seeing the war start. It made her feel so sad, like the war that made her leave Europe was starting again." Mansfield, a smiling, bespectacled African-American, says his buddy Fitzgerald wept when they moved into Kosovo and saw the Kosovo Albanian refugees walking home. "He got all choked up and cried when we went past the refugee camp, and he saw the guys walking home," confides Mansfield. Mansfield says that even though his own ancestors don't hail from the region, he too feels drawn to help the Kosovo refugees and end the bloodshed in Kosovo. "I just can't imagine having to pick up all my stuff and run for my life, and leave my wife and children behind," he says as groups of refugees go by. "If your heart can't go out for that, then you don't have a heart."
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