POLICE CHIEF Ellis to return to work after serving in Kosovo

The soldiers guarded a section of the boundary between Serbia and Kosovo.
AUSTINTOWN -- The township police chief, who just returned from a year with the Ohio Army National Guard in Kosovo, gives credit for a successful operation to the soldiers under his command.
Gordon Ellis, a lieutenant colonel, officially returns to the police department helm the first week in April and remains on military duty until then.
He returned to the United States about a week ago.
"They were just exceptional," said Ellis of the 500 troops under his command in Task Force Shield. "They displayed the best of American character."
The force included infantry and combat engineers from Ohio, Kentucky and South Carolina.
Smuggler search
The peacekeeping troops patrolled a 53-mile section of the administrative boundary between Kosovo and Serbia, looking for smugglers and illegal wood cutters. It's called an administrative boundary rather than a border because Kosovo is still considered a province.
Because power outages occur frequently, people cut wood for fuel on one side of the border and may sell it on the other. It's prohibited because the wood may be state-owned and the cutters are usually armed.
People smuggle everything from weapons and drugs to people.
The soldiers' boundary patrol coordinated with that of the Serbian Army, the first synchronized effort with Serbia since the NATO bombing campaign in the 1990s.
"Patrolling with a former Soviet military was interesting, but we had a good level of cooperation with them," said Ellis, chief since 2000.
Ethnicity
He had to learn to be conversant in both Serbian and Albanian, the two ethnic groups living in Kosovo. If you address an Albanian with a Serbian greeting, or vice versa, you won't be acknowledged.
Most residents base their identity on their ethnicity.
Albanians are typically Muslims and Serbians are usually Orthodox, and part of the troops' duties included guarding buildings and landmarks of religious significance to keep them from being destroyed.
Members of the police department and the community sent care packages to the chief while he was gone, and he was able to keep in touch via e-mail.
Comforts of home
Although he missed his wife, Jennifer, and their four children, Sarah, Rachael, Rebekah and Aaron, most, he also longed for some other aspects of home.
"When I got back, my wife asked me if there was anything in particular that I wanted to eat," the chief said. "I said that I wanted pizza. She asked me why, and I said because I hadn't had it in a year."
Even though tensions between different factions remain in the Balkans, Ellis said the Americans are regarded as even-handed by all sides.
"They know that we're not for one side or another," he said. "They may not like that we're seizing weapons, but they understand and appreciate that we're seizing weapons from everyone."
His deployment taught Ellis to appreciate life in the United States.
"The power goes out there just about every day," he said. "And there's no garbage collection except in the larger cities. Unemployment is about 65 percent. In comparison to us, it's a very poor place."