Learning to Disarm, Learning to Lead
In 1998 the Ministry of Defense created a special unit to stop the chain of accidents and to start cleaning the mess of landmines. I moved from Hookas to Tirana and was asked to help set up the division. Under the Partnership for Peace alliance came teams from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Denmark, Greece, Italy, and others. Major Adrian Wilkinson arrived, and with him came a British officer who changed my life, Major John Anderson. They put us through three months of hard training, and the first lesson was simple, no more raki for breakfast, quite the culture shock! The old habits had to die so that men would not.
The Kosovo crisis broke open in early 1999, and the north of Albania filled with refugees and cluster bombs that had been fired across the line. We drove to the north on orders that crackled on the radio, we climbed village roofs to pull bomblets off tiles, we walked around schools with red paint and rope to make safe paths, we stood in the road with shepherds and explained that the shiny metal in the grass was a killer. We trained soldiers and we trained teachers; we took the fear we felt and turned it into information that could save a child. The Americans brought an EOD Navy master sergeant named Todd, and he taught me as we climbed. I was thin and strong and ran like a goat up those hills, and the men behind me laughed and told me to slow down so they could keep their breath and their explosives together.
John trained me even when we were travelling. One morning, on a ferry journey, he put a single paper on the floor and traced with his finger how to render safe a particular cluster bomb used on our border. Do this first, block this, watch for that, he said, and I memorized every line because I knew we would need it. He taught me discipline with kindness and with rules that did not bend. He was a friend, and he never let friendship weaken the work. He also kept me from doing something that would have changed me in a way I might not like today. In a hot moment I wanted to join the Kosovo Liberation Army, to jump across the border and fight, and John spoke to me all night and kept me on a less impulsive the path.
There was a day a helicopter set us down to clear a dropped cluster ammunition on a ridge. A shepherd with one hand came to offer help. We told him he could not help with the mines, he offered food, and he came back with bread and goat cheese and a plastic bottle filled with raki that smelled of sunflower oil. We ate because hospitality is a kind of safety too, and Todd said, ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch, he will ask for something’, I was trying to reassure them that he seemed like a good guy, when the helicopter came back, and the shepherd asked for a free ride to Tirana! We laughed! Rules are rules, and the military has a no hitchhiker policy.
Another day taught me how fast stupidity bleeds. We were near the border, marking a dangerous area, and a local engineer came to brief us. He spoke with confidence, but what he said did not match the land. I pointed to the paths the farmers used, I pointed to pressure plates half buried in the dust, and he did not like a younger man talking hard to him. He walked away to urinate, and we heard the explosion and saw the smoke lift like a curse. I told John and Todd to stand still, I ran the path I had traced in my head, I reached the man and put on a tourniquet, and with a farmer who knew the soil we dragged him back to the safe ground.
Lessons are cruel in our work; some are taught screaming. We saved his life that day.