Bosnia Notes
Supreme commander visits
Taszar, Hungary - NATO’s supreme allied commander sympathized Saturday with American soldiers spending the holidays apart from their families, but told them their peace mission in Bosnia could make 1996 “a very special year.”
“I know how it feels to leave family and children behind at this very special time of the year,” said Gen. George A. Joulwan. “We go there (to Bosnia) to implement the peace agreement - it is very significant to emphasize this at this time of the year.”
Hitting close to Newt
Washington - Sometimes the human dimension of a
political dispute strikes home deeply, as when Tony Blankley, the spokesman for Speaker Newt Gingrich, saw his wife off for Bosnia the other night as an Army reservist activated in President Clinton’s controversial peacekeeping commitment.
“She was composed, and the kids were OK,” said Blankley. Only days before his wife, Capt. Lynda Davis, was ordered to duty, he had been in debate on television with Michael McCurry, his counterpart and adversary at the White House. In this, Blankley had carefully underlined the warnings of history against Balkan involvements.
“I took the boys home,” he said of 9-year-old Spencer and 6-year-old Trevor, after their mother left on Thursday night.
“When we first told them she was going, Spencer asked all the right questions,” Blankley said. “The same questions that have been posed to the president in the last few months: What’s this going to accomplish? Why are they fighting? How do we stop them? How close to the fighting will you be, Mom?”
No souvenirs
Hohenfels, Germany - As Sgt. First Class James E. Scher
leads 30 soldiers through a small patch of pine forest, he reminds them again and again not to pick up anything when they reach Bosnia because nearly any object could be a booby trap, rigged to set off an explosion if touched.
“If you want a souvenir, go to Disney World,” roars Scher, a Bloomington, Ill., native, shaking his head at a blue glass bottle leaning against a tree.
It’s all part of “mine awareness training,” designed to protect GIs against the estimated 6 million land mines in Bosnia.
The training is required for all 20,000 American troops taking part in NATO’s peacekeeping operation. The course has made the Army’s training center in this quiet Bavarian town, and another center in nearby Grafenwohr, essential stops for the GIs trickling into Bosnia.
“We have to learn that over there, you can’t pick up what you see,” Pvt. Carter A.L. Sanders of Sacramento, Calif., said Saturday under a steady rain.
In small groups with instructor-escorts, soldiers were assigned to conduct a 3-kilometer patrol mission. Along the way, they encountered a series of simulated events, from sniper fire to trip wires connected to mines.
They also ran into some GIs decked out as local wood-choppers who don’t speak English. The challenge here is to interview the woodsmen about their knowledge of any mines in the area, a feat accomplished by gestures and drawings in the mud.