A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

I was getting shot at daily, but to watch CNN Headline News, Kosovo was a cakewalk, interrupted only by incompetent NATO pilots bombing civilians. Of course, nothing could have been further from the truth. I saw my close friends going to great lengths to avoid harming innocents, often putting themselves at considerable risk in the process. Guys like Capt Francis M. “JD” McDonough have earned my everlasting respect for their actions to keep civilians safe in Kosovo. This is a facet of the war that has been almost entirely overlooked.

We worked under ROEs that severely hampered our ability to attack targets. We were strictly forbidden to engage if there were any chance of collateral damage, no matter how small. That’s an important goal, but when taken to extremes, it proved very frustrating. As an example, on one sortie, I saw a red vehicle traveling at high speed towards a village. I paid attention to it because, by this time in the war, we had pretty much destroyed the petroleum reserves in the country. A civilian vehicle racing down the highway was very unusual—especially when the Kosovar-Albanians had been forcibly evacuated and the Serb civilians were given a very low gasoline priority. Anyway, this vehicle stopped in a small village. A few minutes later, the village burst into flames. The vehicle then left the village as quickly as it had come. It seemed obvious that Serbs had torched the village. The Serbs, who, not long into the war, had wisely abandoned their tanks, had taken to driving around in stolen Kosovar-Albanian civilian vehicles. Even though this vehicle obviously was involved with hostile action, we were prohibited from attacking it because it was painted red—not the green of Serb military vehicles!

Now, compare my story to one by Gen H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Central Command. In 1991 he showed the world “the luckiest man in Iraq,” using the nowfamous video of a bridge being destroyed mere seconds after that Iraqi civilian reached the other side. This video was humorous in 1991, a story told lightheartedly by both the military and the media. In 1999, that same situation would have caused us to abort the attack; or if the attack had continued, it would have generated a huge media uproar. Weird? To me—yes. Nevertheless, it is probably something pilots will have to deal with in America’s next war.

After a while, the war’s routine and ROEs began to affect us all—but in different ways. Some guys got stressed out while others grew complacent. One of the chaplains on base was quoted in a major newspaper as saying that Kosovo wasn’t a real war because of the great conditions in which we lived. That was nonsense to most of the pilots. By this time, two NATO planes had been shot down, several unmanned drones had been blasted from the sky, and two Hogs from my own unit had been damaged. The pilot of one of them, Maj Goldie Haun, was my flight lead the day he was hit. I will never forget conducting a battle-damage check of his jet on the way back over the border and seeing a huge hole where his engine used to be. I could actually see his helmet through the cowling where his engine should have been. Goldie was lucky to make it back to friendly territory before his jet stopped flying altogether. His safe recovery is due to his outstanding flying skill and God’s grace.

In some ways though, the chaplain’s comments were understandable. Americans see images of World War II and Vietnam, and somehow feel that unless there’s mud involved, there is no war. Airpower has changed the reality of warfare—if not the public’s perception. World War II bomber pilots fought over Berlin and returned to party in London that night. USAF crews fought in Vietnam from such hardship locations as Guam. So, although the chaplain was dead wrong, I had to admit that the “Cappuccino War,” as we came to call it, wasn’t what I initially expected it would be. There’s something strange about watching my flight lead get smashed by a SAM—then coming back to base and ordering the greatest salmon tortellini I’ve ever had.

To all of us who fought, Kosovo was an important time—to some, a life-defining event. For example, any hesitation I had about dropping a bomb on another human being evaporated as I flew over Kosovo. Serb atrocities were clearly seen—even from three and one-half miles in the air. The country’s highways looked like parking lots as Kosovar-Albanians were forced to abandon their vehicles and walk into Albania. Entire villages were gutted and burned. I quickly learned that no matter what had happened between these ethnic groups in the past, the Serbs were clearly the oppressors now. So the first time I was called on to attack a convoy of Serb military vehicles, just outside a barracks in central Kosovo, I had no moral problems at all. I rolled in, put my pipper on the target, pickled off my bombs, pulled up, spit out some flares, and climbed back into the sun to protect myself from heat-seeking missiles. Just like that.