A – Task Force Med Eagle

Task Force Med Eagle

When we arrived in Bosnia, April 1998, the name of the medical task force had changed several times since COL Steve Gouge had stood up the first task force on Bedrock with the 212th MASH in 1995-6. It did not make a whole lot of sense to me that everyone had to continue to learn a new name every six months. The division was not doing that. They were Task Force Eagle. Period. So why not grow up and come in line with the Task Force we were supporting?

There was also the consideration that LTC Kathy North-Wilhelm had a Task Force up in Hungary that needed a name, or a number or something. Task Force Hungary, or Taszar just did not sound as cool, and certainly was not what the main element was using. So if she wanted the number from the hospital, it was fine with me. I would take back the MED EAGLE name, it certainly was familiar and understandable to our allies.

I started my original email journal then, sending the first entries from Hungary, then Slov Brod en route to Tuzla and the Blue Factory. I have found just about all the entries from that time period between old floppies, hard copies, zip drives, and text files on back up CDs.

The only thing I have done thus far is take out most of the email formatting (address lists and dates). It is obvious as I go through them that I was mixed up on the dates at various times and that I was writing directly on line without a spell checker. Forget about the capitalization and punctuation, have not even started on that much less the grammar or coherency.

It was less than 10 years ago, but it was a completely different political reality. What seemed scary then is just blow through now. No angst, no anxiety, why even worry? That was peacekeeping, today we are embroiled in a war without an end.

I have posted these month by month as raw files for anyone who is interested. These are straight word documents. If you have problem with the abbreviations or military terms, I suggest you follow the links over to Kuwait Diary and then through to the Dictionary of Abbreviations and Phrases.

24 Feb 07– I started cleaning up with April and May. I have a long ways to go.

April 1998
May 1998
June 1998
July 1998
August 1998
September 1998
October 1998

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