Veteran shares Army stories

RITZVILLE – Jeff Kissler enlisted in the U.S. Army two weeks after graduating from Ritzville High School in 1994.

For the next 23 years he served in wide-ranging deployments from Europe to the Middle East to Southeast Asia to duty stations in Georgia and Texas.

"Here I am, age 46, and sometimes I wake up and can't believe I put my body through all that stuff," he said. "Sometimes, I'm surprised I'm still here.

"I had a lot of close calls on my deployments. It's given me perspective about what's really important."

After spending his early childhood in Odessa and Tacoma, Kissler came to live with his mother in Ritzville in the fall of 1989.

"She supported me in all my high school endeavors - football, baseball, wrestling, FBLA and ASB," he recalled. "Mom had a tough upbringing. She taught me to be resilient and optimistic.

" That really helped me through all my years in the military. In hard times, you just pick yourself up and keep moving forward."

Those hard times were just beginning when Kissler joined the Army in 1994.

After basic training in Georgia, he learned to drive a Bradley armored personnel carrier, a vehicle weighing more than 27 tons. The Bradley, armed with a turret-mounted 25-mm cannon and an antitank missile launcher, carries a three-man crew and up to six infantrymen.

At his first overseas duty station in Vilseck, Germany, Kissler served with the 1st Infantry Division.

From there, he was deployed with the second wave of U.S. forces to conduct peace-keeping operations in Bosnia.

"We heard about horrible things happening during the Yugoslavian war, especially under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic," he said. From 1997-2000, Milosevic served as president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He was arrested by the Yugoslav government in 2001 and tried on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

"We were peace enforcers for the elections," Kissler said. "At that time, there were different warring factions, including Croatian Muslims, Serbians and other minorities. We estimated there were two mines for every person in the country.

"We saw a lot of kids with missing legs."

To set up a base, the infantry commandeered an old M60 tank, installed a "mine roll" (a mine-clearing device), and drove it to the middle of a field. From there, they maneuvered in circles from a central point and set up routes in four directions.

"That's how we formed our base," he said. "We guarded the roads and no one messed with us. After all, our base was in the middle of a mine field."

In Bosnia, Kissler was a team leader.

He managed soldiers, conducted ground patrols, and guarded a bridge to prevent the Serbians from causing problems in Croatia.

After returning to Germany, his unit was deployed again, this time to Kosovo.

"We entered via Macedonia and served as peace enforcers there, as well," he said. "The Serbians had done some horrific things to the people there, and pockets of Serbians were hiding in the towns. We wanted to ensure that the Muslims didn't retaliate."

Kissler recalled a group of children tagging along with his team in Kosovo.

"Those kids knew five different languages, which they learned from watching television. They had seen horrible things, but just wanted to be kids," he said. "They didn't have anything. I remember one family collecting rocks from a river to build a one-room home for their family with nine kids."

In the winter of 2003, he was deployed to Iraq for a year.

At first, Kissler's team spent time in Kuwait installing armor plates on the sides of their vehicles to protect against rocket-propelled grenades.

After Christmas, the brigade headed north to Balad Air Base, 40 miles north of Bagdad, a place called Camp Anaconda.

"The base was getting hit by mortars all the time," he said. There the team spent nearly two months conducting "clean-up missions," including ambushes and village raids.

From Camp Anaconda, Kissler's team relocated to Mosul, Iraq, arriving at the end of February.

They were situated at a forward operating base on the Tigris River.

"After being there two weeks, we received our first RPG attack," he said. "An RPG hit our slat armor and broke apart. It almost took my head off."

Kissler recalled roadside bombs and close calls. "Sharp shooters were taking shots at us all the time," he said. "You never forget the first time you hear a bullet flying past your head."

- See Part 2 in the Dec. 21 edition of The Journal.