G2G: How to Categorize the Cold War and Operation Joint Endeavor (NATO)

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to create appropriate categories for these military operations/events. I thought to create the categories but could not even figure out what parent categories to use.

Cold War - In 1998, the US Secretary of Defense approved awarding the Cold War Recognition Certificate (CWRC) to all members of the armed forces and qualified federal government civilian personnel who faithfully and honorably served the United States anytime during the Cold War era, which is defined as Sept. 2, 1945, to Dec. 26, 1991, are eligible.

Of course, any military service person from a number of countries could have served during this period.

Operation Joint Endeavor (OJE) - A 32-nation, NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1995 to 1996. The operation's purpose was to supervise the ceasefire in the Balkan civil war that broke out not long after the Former Republic of Yugoslavia disbanded. The operation was the first ground force operation for NATO, and the first joint operation with NATO's Partnership for Peace and other non-NATO countries. The Implementation Force (IFOR) was a force of 60,000 troops.

Then we had the follow on to OJE, Operation Joint Guard.

Thank you,

Answer 1

Do we have profiles? I don't spend a lot of time pre-creating categories (they take research) for possible future use. If you show me a profile, I will create the categories. Thanks!

Comments

Well yes, my profile.   But I'm all about learning so please tell me the process. I will have a few more to add for other profiles. 

If you do go to my profile I must warn you it is a messy work in progress; I use it as a testing sandbox.

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The process involves a ton of help pages, which were written before my time in the Military and War project and can be confusing. What it boils down to is that profiles are MOSTLY tagged with a regimental level unit, like 3rd Infantry Regiment, United States Army and if it's during wartime, that unit would be 3rd Infantry Regiment, United States Army, World War II.

We don't usually add all of the "operations", especially modern ones, because there are few profiles to group into a category. Also, the numbers of "operations" in a war like WWII or Vietnam are staggering and best left to Wikipedia. It makes more sense for us to group profiles into their regiments and not add every category for an operation the unit participated in. That sort of information belongs in the biography, if a PM enjoys that level of detail. There would be a few exceptions for highly important or really BIG operations such as DDay.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Cold_War_Recognition_Certificate  I did create that. It really should be applied to those who ACTUALLY receive the certificate, not just those who qualify. I qualify, but I don't have that certificate (yet..now that I know it exists, I might apply. I left service with only one medal, for good conduct), so I won't add it to my own profile nor my husband's.

I'm trying to figure out how to place Joint Endeavor in the category structure. We don't have a NATO category and not sure we need one. Our military categories are based on the countries served, not on a wikipedia-like encyclopedic structure. Still researching how to do this.

Anyway, I would recommend that if you want to learn how to categorize military personnel, that you look at the category structure that already exists and see how things have been named. The structure still needs some tweaking, as it's a bit TOO encyclopedic for our purposes, but that is a very time-consuming job.

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https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Operation_Joint_Endeavor

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There was a lot to unpack there! 

Obviously, we wouldn't add operations for WWII because it's already the name of the war/operation in itself. But for things like OJE, OJG, and so many others, I believe a category is needed . Now breaking these down further by unit is perhaps not necessary, at least until/when we have hundreds of profiles there and need to break them down.

I was doing a bit more research. Wikipedia calls these "military operations other than war" (MOOTW) which might be a good parent category and could be broken out further by country. These newer types of conflicts are the way things go these days, troops still go, serve, have hardships, and die during them. In fact, because the FRY was so unstable when we first went in, initial OJE participants were given the Expeditionary Medal, until the operation was stable and renamed OJG. That's why I have that medal and qualify for the VFW.

Here are a few others since the Vietnam War:

1. Operation Eagle Pull (1975): Evacuation of Americans from Cambodia during its fall.

2. Operation Frequent Wind (1975): Evacuation from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.

3. Operation Urgent Fury (1983): Invasion of Grenada.

4. Operation Just Cause (1989): Invasion of Panama to depose Manuel Noriega.

5. Operation Provide Comfort (1991): Humanitarian relief to Kurds in Northern Iraq after the Gulf War.

6. Operation Restore Hope (1992-1993): Humanitarian mission in Somalia.

7. Operation Uphold Democracy (1994): Intervention in Haiti to restore democratic government.

8. Operation Joint Endeavor (1995-1996): NATO peacekeeping in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

9. Operation Allied Force (1999): NATO bombing campaign in the Kosovo War.

10. Operation Enduring Freedom - Philippines (2002-2015): Counter-terrorism and training mission in the Philippines.

11. Operation Unified Response (2010): Humanitarian response to the Haiti earthquake.

I'm off-subject a bit. If I understand correctly, the purpose of a category is to group people by place, event, occupation, and so forth, so we find others and make connections. Many categories are currently broken down into tiny groups, such as a little masonic lodge in "BFE" that I saw the other day  That's fine with me; if there is a category, people will eventually use it. As long as one profile holds down the category it won't be deleted and will be there for others to add to. We need to look to the future. At some point, our descendants will be looking at our profiles and interested in how many of their ancestors participated in this or that and perhaps placing our profiles into categories. Right now, I'd prefer to do that on my own profile myself. My record may not be adequately published. I have ancestors who served in WWI and WWII for whom I can't even find a unit. I'm speaking for myself but if we ALL don't build out our own bio fully and correctly, who will? 

Too many genealogists ignore their own biographies, IMO. 

And yes you should apply for a Cold War certificate.

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I get where you're coming from but all of that is time we could be spending on the profiles we ALREADY HAVE that don't have categories or other bios or stickers, etc. I just did a bunch of that with France project, finally getting a structure figured out for their soldiers of WWI and WWII. Now that they have a solid base for those, they are pretty comfortable and confident in creating other unit categories as they need them. They are going through profiles of that era and adding the categories, as well as creating new profiles.

I will think about adding Military Operations Other than War as a category. I'm going to copy the above list. Thanks.

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We have all the help we could ever need, IMO. Create a project, or a challenge and sign people up to assist with your project.

I'll help. But it will have be in about 6-8 weeks. My plate is full until then.

My list was just a partial list, btw.

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This is wishful thinking, having led a couple of projects in the years I've been with WikiTree. 

For now, I'll stick with the "add categories as needed for profiles" for military categories.

I did find a profile for Operation Restore Hope and added it to the man's profile. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Arroyo-234

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Excellent!