UXO

There's a whole lotta junk here. The Russians left in a hurry so their stuff is everywhere in big piles, it's actually kind of sad to see acres and acres of stripped and destroyed tanks, knocked down billets, and abandoned equipment. When you see one tank or plane that isn't stripped out even though its surrounded by gutted tanks or planes...it's booby trapped, stay away, no cool poser pictures. Pilferer's and looters here figured that Russian trick out the hard way. Alot of times the Russians built in convenient places where we'd like to rebuild...but there's lots of unexploded ordinance and mines around. But we have to survey buildings so we can get a starting point for renovating/rebuilding. As we were doing one building survey..."Hey look! A rocket!" Not a little 40mm firecracker but one of those big rockets that knock down multi-story buildings or blow up a couple tanks...and its been fired, ripped through a couple walls and stopped here in this room, for some reason it never went off...it's just sitting there peacefully on the floor..."uh, lets leave and let EOD deal with this" as we slowly back out. We've even seen a couple 500lb and bigger bombs stuck in the ground with their fins pointing towards the sky.
There's tons of mines here and lots of people working on removing the minefields, but in many of the rural ares people just send herds of goats out to graze, eventually the place is clear...minus a few goats...remember that practice drive-by scene in 3 kings with the cow? Poor goats.