My whole experience with the beginning of the New Millennium was weird. It started a little over a month before when notification came that I was to deploy to Bosnia for six months on the Sunday after 
Thanksgiving. As military families typically do, we quickly planned to combine holidays and celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas at the same time. This was probably the hardest deployment for me because it was the first long one since my then three year old twins were born, but after a world wind ThanksgivingChristmas, I found myself on a plane traveling to join the G2 section of the 10th Mountain Division at Task Force Eagle, Tuzla, Bosnia - Herzegovina.
The weirdness began a few days after I arrived when it started
snowing and didn't stop for about four to five days. It snowed so hard
and so fast that those who were ending their tours couldn't leave. 
Let me tell you...feelings and tempers get very intense when there's
any delay in redeployment, especially around Christmas when everyone
had plans and this delay was open ended. My memory may be
exaggerating, but I swear there was 4 feet of snow on the ground. The
Army hired gangs of unemployed Bosnian men to come on the compound and
shovel paths so we could walk to work and this caused the snow to pile
up even higher. When I walked around, the snow on both sides of the
paths were over my head. To complicate matters even more, once the
snow stopped falling, the weather turned very cold which kept the snow
around for a long time.
Things quickly settled into a routine - a routine of 16-18 hours a days every day seven days a week. It wasn't as intense as soldiers have it in Iraq today, but the hours were as long and they tended to grind by. Most people were in a down mood because the approach of Christmas made people think about what they were missing with their families. Some tried to infuse the Christmas spirit in people, but it's been my experience that most just want to ignore the holiday and the long busy days helped somewhat.
In the days leading up to New Years Eve of 1999, the threat of terrorism was on everyone's mind around the world and it was on ours too. This relatively small American force was positioned between three warring factions who literally hated one another, but because of the deep snow and intense cold, reporting indicated the bad guys were content with staying out of the elements. The only real threat was something called "celebratory fire." Instead of fireworks, the locals would pull out their weapons and fire into the air as a new years celebration. There was a fear people might get hit when the bullets came down so we were instructed to stay inside at midnight.
Since things were so quiet because of the weather, we spent the last day of 1999 watching all of the New Years celebrations around the world on TV. Every hour the New Millennium would appear somewhere in the world and the TV networks were there to make sure we saw it. Mainly we were watching to see if Y2K would grind the world to a halt, or to see if terrorists would find a way to spoil the moment. Thankfully none of this happened and most people were able to enjoy a unique point in history.
As the clock struck midnight in Bosnia, however, things got pretty exciting. The celebratory fire was so intense at times it sounded exactly like a huge pitched battle just outside of the Task Force Eagle fence line. I can't really remember how long it lasted, but it seemed like forever. It was a weird feeling hearing all of these weapons firing so close to us and watching the New Years celebrations in Europe on TV at the same time. Luckily no American soldiers were hurt from falling bullets, but I do recall hearing about a few Bosnian civilians who weren't so lucky.
This is how I spent the last month or so of 1999. I haven't thought about this event for a long time, so when I saw the Carnival of Genealogy topic I was excited by all of the interesting memories that came back to me. I'm sure many people had a lot more fun bringing in the new millennium than I did, but I have to admit it was a pretty unique experience.
