The Engineer Regiment in Kosovo

For the better part of 1999, much of the world's attention was focused on Serbian President Slobodan Milosovec's ethnic atrocities in Kosovo as well as NATO's 78-day bombing campaign that eventually compelled Milosovec to stop and accept deployment of an international peace-keeping force in that beleaguered province. American soldiers first entered Kosovo on 12 June as part of that force and began to establish a safe and secure environment. The media gradually began to pull out of Kosovo, so by the end of the year, Kosovo, along with Bosnia, became essentially "backwaters" of international interest. The Russian war in Grozny, the new millennium celebrations, and other issues commanded headlines.

For engineers, that was a bit of a shame because what happened in Kosovo after June is just short of a miracle: two base-camp "cities" were erected in record time to house the American force and its allies before the onset of a harsh Balkan winter. For me personally, Kosovo after June 1999 was an engineer's dream. While perhaps not news to the rest of the world, in Kosovo the Engineer Regiment again proved its versatility and worth to the Army and, more importantly, to our soldiers.

Planning

Engineer planning for operations in Kosovo began months before the first bomb was dropped. At the outset, planners wanted to use the lessons learned in Bosnia and convinced decision makers to reach base-camp "end state" as quickly as possible. Because of uncertainty about the Bosnian mission's duration, when the Army moved across the Sava River into Bosnia in 1995, soldiers were housed first in tents -- in the winter! Only years later were they moved to semipermanent Southeast Asia (SEA) huts (a theater-of-operations design that first made its debut in Vietnam) on base camps. Engineer planners knew it was much more cost effective to forego this gradual approach in Kosovo in favor of building end-state SEA huts right away, and operational commanders agreed with this approach.

The First Infantry Division (1ID), known as the "Big Red One," was tapped to be the first unit in Kosovo. The division's Engineer Brigade would oversee the sapper and construction-engineer effort. A relatively new entity (engineer brigades within divisions were formed less than 10 years ago), the organization would prove its worth by integrating engineers from outside the division, indeed around the world, into the task-force effort. The Engineer Brigade commander at the time, COL Joseph Schroedel, and his staff worked tirelessly at a base-camp plan that would incorporate all the necessary requirements and still be functional for the mission. Incorporating requirements from force-protection experts and safety specialists, Engineer Brigade personnel laid out a base-camp "template" that depicted where soldier living areas should be arranged in relation to helicopter flight lines, ammunition holding areas, etc. At the same time, planners also took geologic data (obtained from the Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, Mississippi) that indicated possible underground water sources and matched the data to possible camp locations that had been selected from satellite imagery.

The engineer force assembled in Kosovo in the summer of 1999 consisted of more than 1,700 personnel under the command and control of lID's Engineer Brigade. Foremost was the organic 9th Engineer Battalion, whose mission was to provide direct support to lID's 2d Brigade Combat Team. Attached construction units included the 94th Engineer Combat Battalion (Heavy), with the 535th Combat Support Equipment Company from Germany; Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 3 (Seabees) from California; A Company, 864th Engineer Battalion from Fort Lewis, Washington; and the 568th Combat Support Equipment Company from Fort Riley, Kansas.

Also attached to the lID Engineer Brigade were explosive-ordnance-disposal units and a team of about 30 military and civilian engineers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore District with expertise ranging from structural to electrical to environmental engineering and more. The team's job was to integrate the final requirements of units and agencies on the camp, assist with final design, and ensure that standards were being met by both contractor and construction engineers. This team came with its own video teleconference system back to districts in the states and made the term "tele-engineering" come alive. More than once, the answers to tough engineering questions were no more than a telephone call away. A construction-management section attached to the brigade staff assisted the construction battalions with design and layout of various projects. The brigade staffed a mine-action center in the task-force headquarters that maintained a database of all known and suspected mine locations in sector a nd also coordinated United Nations and humanitarian demining operations.

Mission

The mission was simple, daunting, and as broad as any the Corps of Engineers had ever faced. First and foremost, it was to provide direct engineer support to the maneuver commander with mobility and force protection so that a safe and secure environment could be established in sector. This would not be easy and proved to be a challenge to the 9th Engineer Battalion every day until it left the theater. At the same time, the Engineer Brigade was to merge construction assets and integrate them with the contractor, Brown & Root Services Corporation, to build not one but two base camps for a total of 7,000 troops. That would have been a tall order in itself had not the V Corps commander added a deadline of 1 October. His challenge to the engineers was to ensure that housing for soldiers was built before winter set in, and he didn't care that the deadline happened to be less than 90 days after many of the construction units arrived on site.

During this time, two phrases were adopted as unofficial mottos to help leaders at all levels discern the highest priority when conflicts arose and to remind everyone that there were more engineer missions than there were engineers. Those phrases were "It's the SEA huts, stupid!" and "No idle engineers!"

When the 9th Engineer Battalion hit the ground in Kosovo, it began building triple-standard concertina fences around the areas selected for the two base camps--Bondsteel and Monteith. In all, elements of the 9th built more than 17 kilometers of fence in Kosovo, 10 kilometers around the perimeter of Camp Bondsteel alone. Additionally, the battalion reconnoitered more than 320 kilometers of roads and classified 75 bridges for military use by sappers. Because of the magnitude of the overall peacekeeping mission, one company from the 9th was reorganized as infantry and attached to a mechanized infantry battalion to conduct presence patrols near the city of Gnjilane (see Engineer, February 2000, page 6). Other missions for the 9th included clearing mines and ordnance when they impeded maneuver and constructing force-protection bunkers on base camps to protect against possible indirect fire.

The construction effort began in earnest around the first of July with the arrival of the Seabee battalion overland from Albania, where the battalion had been a part of Task Force Hawk during the air war. The Seabees occupied Camp Monteith (on the edge of Gnjilane), which had been a Yugoslav army artillery barracks before the war. The camp itself was largely untouched, except where two precision bombs had destroyed the maintenance facilities. However, either retreating forces or locals had trashed and looted each building, and it took weeks to make them usable again.

Force-protection concerns caused by the closeness of Gnjilane forced us to abandon many of the original buildings on Camp Monteith and build most of the camp in an adjoining field. More than 75 SEA huts, along with support structures, were built for the planned force of about 2,000. It is perhaps a curse of fate that those looking for engineer stories in Kosovo always will overlook Camp Monteith. But even though it is smaller than Camp Bondsteel, Camp Monteith--the site of the American headquarters--is no less an engineering marvel. Buildings have been refurbished, electricity and water run to all soldiers' quarters, and facilities such as weight-lifting and recreation rooms have been built in large fest tents. The camp is also the center of tactical activity in the American sector because of the mixed ethnicity of the surrounding population and the camp's proximity to the Russian battalion serving alongside other peacekeepers in Kosovo. Indeed, the first American fire support for Russian forces since World War II--155-millimeter illumination rounds--were fired from the artillery positions made by Seabee engineers at Camp Monteith.

But Camp Bondsteel is the "Grande Dame" in Kosovo of what engineers do. Spread over almost 900 acres of rolling wheat fields, it was picked early on to become what it is today--the major American base camp in theater. Within its fenced perimeter are more than 175 SEA huts, a 30,000-square-foot headquarters building, an ammunition holding area, motor pools, chapels, recreation and dining facilities for about 5,000 American and allied soldiers, and a helicopter airport with more than 50 parking pads. Water is piped into each hut from huge holding bags filled by several wells in camp. And there's even a wastewater treatment plant. It is Camp Bondsteel that benefited most from all the staff planning conducted early on. Its layout is very similar to the templated camp design, adjusted only for the terrain and other factors.

The numbers involved in building both camps were staggering. At the height of the effort, about 1,000 expatriates hired by Brown & Root, along with more than 7,000 Albanian local nationals, joined the 1,700 military engineers. From early July and into October, construction at both camps continued 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with perhaps half a day each week for soldiers to perform personal chores and equipment maintenance. More than a quarter-million 2 by 4s were used, along with almost 200 tons of nails and more than 100 miles of electrical cable. More than a half-million cubic yards of earth were moved on Bondsteel alone, and the gravel used at both camps would cover a two-lane road from St. Louis to Kansas City.

Camp construction centered around the SEA huts. Each living-area bay was 16 by 32 feet--almost exactly the size of the familiar medium, general-purpose tent. In Kosovo, we joined five of these bays and a latrine under one roof. We planned for six soldiers per bay, 30 soldiers per SEA hut, and 120 soldiers--about a company's worth--in a "quad" of SEA huts that were then surrounded by a force-protection wall. We covered the plywood floors with linoleum and hung plasterboard on the walls for fire resistance. We installed smoke detectors, emergency lights, and eight electrical outlets in each bay. The SEA huts had vertical supports that rested on concrete footers placed on compacted earth and gravel. We used no foundations and did not place footers on fill because of settlement. We installed a heater/air conditioner and a small window at each end of the bays. We routed electricity, water, and communications utilities underground and prefabricated walls and other sections so they could be constructed quickly.

Toward the end of September, it was taking about 18 days from initial site preparation to complete a SEA hut for 30 soldiers, with dozens of them under construction at any one time. In the end, more than 700,000 cubic feet of living space had been built--equal to a subdivision of some 355 houses--all in less than 90 days!

Challenges

Obviously, any endeavor this size is not without its challenges. Shortly after site preparation began at Camp Bondsteel, a 36-inch natural-gas pipeline was discovered under the camp -- right where we wanted to make a 3-foot cut! It was easier to redesign the camp around the pipeline than dig it out, and that's why today a "no-construction" strip of land runs northwest to southeast among the SEA huts. The total absence of civilian sewage-treatment facilities in Kosovo forced early diversion of critical horizontal equipment to build sewage lagoons, so we would not foul the local watersheds.

Outside the wire and at the other end of the engineers' mission spectrum, the 9th Engineer Battalion was given several ethnically mixed villages to control, because someone occasionally terrorized the area with small-arms and mortar fire at night. Although the "mad mortar man" was not caught, he did stop after a section of tanks and a military-police element were placed under control of the engineer lieutenant in Gnjilane. The combat engineers' ability to not only maintain control under extreme circumstances but also to inspire confidence in this small village and elsewhere speaks volumes of the American soldier and junior leaders who made it happen on the ground.

Lessons Learned

The engineer lessons learned in Kosovo are few and simple. First, a brigade-level command-and-control headquarters was essential to effectively integrate the enormous engineer effort required to get soldiers under cover before winter. While many have questioned the need for engineer brigades in divisions as the Army looks ahead in the twenty-first century, it was essential to Task Force Falcon's early success. The magnitude of commanding more than 1,700 soldiers and integrating the efforts of nearly 10,000 people would have swamped a normal engineer-battalion staff.

Second, our engineer soldiers are trained and led well, as evidenced by the broad range of missions they accomplished--from patrolling as infantry to major camp construction. However--and this is not news--their equipment is outdated. The 94th Engineer Battalion had some bulldozers that vendors no longer stocked parts for in theater. The only sources for parts for many of the prime movers and trailers were cannibalization points in the United States.

Finally, we need to put some muscle back into the sapper battalions. For a variety of reasons over the past several years, these battalions have been cut to the bone and are on the verge of becoming irrelevant on the battlefield. According to the table of organization and equipment, the personnel strength for line companies in sapper battalions is now less than 100. When such a unit is manned at less than 90 percent strength (as was the case in June 1999), and you subtract nondeployable soldiers (all units have them), you end up with 65-person companies patrolling sectors as infantry or trying gamely to conduct route-clearing operations that would be so much easier with more soldiers. It's time to stop doing more with less.

As the millennium changed, so did the engineer force in Kosovo. And, although most of the camps were built by Christmas, a significant list of projects remained. Taking over from the 9th Engineer Battalion was their sister unit, the 82d "Blue Babe" Engineer Battalion from Germany. A National Guard combat-heavy construction company from North Dakota--B Company, 142d Engineer Battalion--deployed to take over duties from the 568th and 864th Engineer Companies. Additionally, a company-sized "air detachment" of Seabees replaced Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 3 at Camp Monteith.

Accomplishments

The story of American forces in Kosovo is far from over. However, as opposed to the Army's earlier experience in Bosnia, soldiers deploying to Kosovo will have a warm, dry place to live. There, the Engineer Regiment came together as one and, in record time, built base camps worthy of American soldiers, so they could perform their critical duties. Although the camps were by and large complete when the world celebrated the new millennium, engineers were not left without a mission. Presence patrols by combat engineers continue around the clock, minefields and unexploded ordnance are still being marked, and snow from main supply routes throughout the American sector is being removed by engineers with more than a half-dozen plows and salt spreaders. Yes, engineers have been tasked to plow snow in Kosovo. It is no surprise that the clearest roads there this past winter were in the American sector.

With luck, much of the world will turn away and forget the terrible tragedy of Kosovo as time passes. However, the Engineer Regiment should not forget its accomplishments but build on them as One Team, One Regiment, One Fight--active and reserve, civilian and military. Anyone who has had the opportunity to see what the Engineer Regiment created in so short a time in Kosovo cannot help but be impressed with the "can-do" spirit of engineers, as well as that of America and her Army, when the mission demands action.

Colonel McClure commands the 1st Infantry Division Engineer Brigade. He was previously on the U.N. peacekeeping mission planning staff in New York; commanded the 92d Engineer Battalion when it built the U.N. base camps in Haiti; and served more than 10 years in Germany, including company command in the Berlin Brigade. COL McClure is a West Point graduate, holds a master's degree from the Kennedy School at Harvard and a War College Fellowship from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, and is a registered professional engineer in Virginia.

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