I AM the Witness
Life on the Front Lines in Bosnia
Dear Mark, Anna, Michael, Amy, Orion, Alita, Lotus, Mikaela, Abigail, Tara, Purity, Rosemary, Samora, Sara, Marley, Mr. Cole, and all our other friends at Thomas More School,
Thanks so much for writing! It sounds like Montana has been pretty cold. It also sounds like you have a small school. At least you know everybody in it. We don’t get much mail at all and there just isn’t any way to tell you how much it means to all of us to know that people in America like you are thinking about us.
It’s dangerous here in Sarajevo; three Italians and two Portuguese soldiers died here from a land mine recently and an American soldier was shot in the neck. The HUMMWV (jeep-like truck) I ride in now has a bullet hole through the hood. So it really helps keep our spirits up knowing that you are thinking about us. Mail is slow, if it comes at all, and there are no long-distance phone lines working yet. We don’t have TV here yet and since I like science fiction, I really miss watching The X Files and Star Trek. I like Friends, too. There is a lot going on here and you might like to see it on the news.
You had some questions and I’ll do my best to answer them. My name is Steve Larsen, I’m a captain in the Army, and for the next year I will work and live in Sarajevo. This is primarily the French sector and the majority of the Americans (about 19,000) are mostly northeast in Tuzla. A brigade (1,500 soldiers) of Italians are working for the French securing Sarajevo. The French are focusing their efforts on Mostar, which is seeing some serious fighting between Croats and Muslims (I’ll explain who they are later). Sarajevo is primarily occupied by British, Italian and Turkish soldiers but protected by the Italians of the “Carbinieri Brigade.”
The situation in Bosnia is very complicated. There are three warring factions in Bosnia: the Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), the Serbs (Orthodox Catholic) and the Croats (Roman Catholic). They have been fighting periodically for hundreds of years. There are no easy solutions to the problems here. All sides are guilty of terrible crimes. And all sides have been victimized. Thousands of kids just like you have been killed here. Now NATO countries, including the U.S., are here to stop the fighting so that the people here can build a peace. We hope they can. So our country needs people with special skills and training like me to come here and help out.
Although I am a mechanized combat engineer by training and experience, I am currently assigned to the 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne). I grew up in Minnesota near the Mississippi River by Saint Paul. My Army unit and my home are in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Previously, I have been stationed in Germany with VII Corps before the Berlin Wall came down and then at Fort Riley, Kansas, with the First Infantry Division “Big Red One” as a mechanized combat engineer company commander. Combat engineers blow things up, which is really dangerous but a lot of fun. “Mechanized” means that we ride in armored personnel carriers, providing support to main battle tanks.
But a year ago, the Army decided I needed some more time in an airborne unit and some work over here in Europe since I speak fluent German and Russian. My bachelor of science degree in Civil Engineering comes in handy in areas that need much repair. These skills make me valuable to our Army during missions like peacemaking in Bosnia. The language spoken here, Serbo-Croatian, is a Slavic language very similar to Russian. Most of the words are almost exactly the same. People here understand me when I speak Russian and I understand most of their conversations, as long as we keep it simple and speak slowly. Many Croatians speak German, so if a Russian word isn’t understandable, a German word might do the trick.
We came to Sarajevo two weeks before Christmas. There are no long-distance telephones working well in Sarajevo yet. Communication with friends and family is through the Army postal system only or sometimes through an Army satellite telephone system called DSN.
I can tell you that all of us really miss our families and friends. It is especially hard on soldiers who were deployed for six of the last ten Christmases (in Panama, Grenada, Haiti, Somalia, Saudi Arabia-Iraq and now Bosnia). We have soldiers here who have spent only one or two Christmases with their families. I really don’t know why we keep getting deployed during the Christmas season, just unlucky I guess, and it sure hurts our morale. But knowing that sacrificing our Christmas will allow many Bosnians to have a future makes it all worthwhile.
Many of the people here are very thankful for us coming to Bosnia and give us kisses on the cheek. Especially the older people. The kids think we’re cool because of all the American movies and TV they watch.
What we’re doing here is simply this: separating the three warring parties so that peace can take hold and the Bosnians can stop their own civil war. Stopping the war will be difficult because there is so much hatred here. Many people want revenge, not peace. As I mentioned, the three warring factions are the Serbs, the Bosniaks and the Croatians. In Sarajevo it’s mostly Serbs and Bosniaks. All parties have deep hatreds that go back for hundreds of years.
It is important to know that most Bosnians don’t want war, that this war is caused by influential people who use their power and influence to try to gain more power by destroying those around them. They do this by inflaming ancient hatreds. These leaders are evil. Hundreds of thousands of people have died here over the past four years, many of them your age. We see the graves of children by the hundreds every day.
At a cemetery near where we live, a Muslim boy showed me the grave of his fifteen-year-old brother, who was shot in the head by a sniper while he was returning home with some much-needed water. It was really sad seeing how much he missed his brother and how painful it was for him knowing that his brother died so brutally. This same cemetery scene happens every day with people from all sides.
Whole towns are laid waste and are completely abandoned. We are astonished at the complete and systematic destruction caused by the warring factions. Armed military gangs gutted towns so thoroughly that they even removed the door jambs and window frames before they burned all of the homes.
Forty percent of Bosnia is covered with land mines. Removing mines takes much longer than emplacing them and it’s infinitely more dangerous. There are so many mines here that if one thousand people were locating and removing mines 24 hours per day, it would take thirty-five years to remove all of them. Because food was scarce during the war, people grew all of their own food in gardens at home. To protect the gardens, people removed land mines from nearby minefields and placed them around their family gardens. Every day children are maimed and killed playing at home because of these mines.
Since it is always possible that some party or person may choose to attack us, we practice the tightest security that I have experienced in ten years of Army service. Whenever we travel, we are very heavily armed, wear heavy protective clothing, including armored vests, and drive very offensively. We take no crap. Despite our warlike posture, all the warring factions have been very receptive to Americans because we’ve never fought here, bring no political or historical “baggage,” and treat all sides evenhandedly–and we will shoot their lips off if they try anything against us, and they know it.
At the beginning of the operation last December, I was working in Stuttgart, Germany, preparing to print a newspaper for IFOR, the peace implementation forces here from NATO. Our newspaper is designed to provide information to the Bosnians regarding what IFOR is doing and why. Our newspaper is called The Herald of Peace, or Vesnik Mira in Serbo-Croatian. We have found that by keeping people informed, there is much less risk of misunderstandings, which can cause tragic incidents that both the civilians and the military will regret.
Late one night, the boss told me to pack and get on a courier flight to Sarajevo via Tuzla. The flight was aboard a C-130 military cargo plane. I rode in the cockpit against the rear bulkhead on a bench. The entire cockpit was lined with Kevlar bulletproof armor. We wore armored vests and helmets during the flight to prevent any injury from what we call “indisciplined small-arms fires” while landing. It seems that the people here like to fire their weapons in the air during celebrations, a very dangerous practice. The landing itself is very steep, what the flight crew calls a “slam-dunk.” This landing technique limits our exposure to enemy fire while landing.
I was picked up at the airport by fellow troops who had arrived earlier and was driven through Sarajevo to Zetra Olympic Stadium, where we live and used to work. Sadly, the stadium, like Sarajevo itself, is completely gutted. For many months, Zetra housed refugees, was bombed repeatedly with mortars and artillery fire, and is now burned out.
Sarajevo looks worse than any photo of World War II destruction I have seen. We call Sarajevo “Hiroshima West.” I have no idea how people could live here without shelter from the cold, no water or electricity, no traveling for fear of getting shot (and many did get shot) and very little food. People ate mostly cabbage–at every meal, every day for four years. There is only electricity in the town center, no water, no sewage, no trash service, little public transportation (occasional trolleys, called trams, and busses) and no gas service (no heat).
The suburbs we drove through were filled with rubbled homes. The roads are pockmarked from impacts. Cars are burned, gutted shells crushed against the buildings. Every intact building is fortified. Every first floor is bunkered. All standing walls have artillery holes and shrapnel scars. You can count the number of intact windows in the whole city on one hand. You can identify the buildings people live in by the plastic sheeting on a window or two. All road intersections are bunkered. Zetra Stadium is ruined.
To make the best possible shelter from the winter cold for us, we use everything available. The three-tiered podium where the Olympic champions stood and received their medals now holds up reinforcement for the heavily damaged roof. It is hard to imagine that American skater Scott Hamilton won an Olympic Gold on the arena floor where we eat.
On a very positive note, the food is provided by NATO, prepared by the British Army and is the best food I have ever eaten in the Army. We are all worried about getting fat. We look forward to each meal and I have never been so satisfied eating Army chow. I particularly like eating the meats and sausages. Really yummy stuff. The British will be moving out soon and a Turkish army field kitchen will take over. I can’t even imagine what we’ll be eating then. I suppose if it’s inedible, I can always sit out on the road holding a sign that reads: “Will command for food.”
Our troops sleep with the British troops in the Olympic rifle range, which is shellproof. There is no heat in Zetra Stadium. We sleep wherever we can find space. Our living conditions are improving daily. We were missing a wall in the first room we lived in (it was blown away) and replaced it with a wall made of sandbags. It leaked very badly, so now I stay in the basement, next to the showers, and, most importantly, next to the toilets. Since we don’t have running water, we have to bring water in a bucket to the toilet with us and pour it in to flush the contents. Going to the bathroom in a room that stays about 35 degrees is no fun.
The room I sleep in is warm and secure but damp and small. We’ve got four officers sleeping in a room that’s 18 feet by 6 feet. It was starting to smell like a locker room until we found a small electric heater that knocks the moisture out of the air.
Conditions for the enlisted soldiers are about the same. Outside the basement sleeping rooms it’s cold at night, but not too bad. We brought all of our “snivel gear” and are staying warm. We set up our military support equipment, which gives us hot showers, a warm place to sleep and good lighting. We have bottled water and plenty of MREs also. MRE is short for “Meal Ready to Eat.” They are the brown meal packets we use as field rations. They taste bland, but they’re edible and pack 3,000 calories per packet.
I work in Psychological Operations, or Psyop, as we call it. It is designed to influence the attitudes and behaviors of specific target audiences. We do that by providing truthful information about who IFOR is and what we are doing. It is not propaganda. Propaganda achieves similar results through exaggeration and lies. To ease people’s minds, we call ourselves IFOR Information Campaign rather than Psyops. It seems that people think of Joseph Goebbels and Nazi propaganda when you mention Psyops. And that’s not what we do.
I’m no longer working on the newspaper since that is now produced in Zagreb, Croatia, where the printer is. My new job is to start a TV station. And, as you can imagine, that’s a tough one for me. The learning curve is steep. But we have the best people here, so it should work out just fine.
I talk with some Bosniak and Serb kids often. Some speak pretty decent English. Two of the boys showed me healed bullet entrance and exit holes in their legs. The exit holes were really big. Since there was little medication and no anesthetic (painkiller) here, these kids must have suffered terribly. And judging by the number of freshly dug graves, they are lucky to be alive.
During the war with Iraq, I was at Fort Knox learning to be a tank company commander. A tank company has fourteen M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks. Although I am a combat engineer, we expected heavy losses in Iraq and there was a possibility that I would be needed to command a tank company instead of an engineer company. It is not unusual for engineers to be trained as infantry or armor leaders. The Army feels that even if we return to engineer units, as I did, our understanding of infantry or armor tactics will be very useful since armor and infantry don’t go anywhere without engineers.
Since the Army is downsizing, many of us are working in fields of expertise other than our basic military occupational specialty. The mission of the Army has not changed and we are now required to do more with less people. This requires the Army to have officers who are skilled in two or more jobs. So after a whole lot of schooling, I am skilled in engineer operations, armor operations and psychological warfare operations. That means the Army can put me in many different positions. This helps make me more valuable as an officer. I look forward to many years of future service to the Army and our country in the hope that because our Army is so good, we won’t have to use it in war too often.
Sadly, we are continuing to document events in a Sarajevan subdivision (near the airport) called Dobrinja (Doe-breen-yuh), scene of extremely heavy urban warfare for the entire four-year war. Dobrinja is further divided into smaller sections and the entire area is under contention by Serb and Muslim residents and authorities. Conditions there are beyond description, but I’ll do my best.
The area was the Olympic Village, an area of large concrete apartment buildings built as a showcase of Yugoslavia. When the war began, certain apartment blocks were occupied exclusively by Serbs or Muslims and the fighting lines were established literally between apartment buildings, which made these apartment buildings the front lines. And, if you can imagine, the original families living in the apartment buildings were trapped there because the fighting erupted so quickly. The adults felt compelled to defend their very homes and families; the children brought ammunition forward under fire and carried messages between buildings.
To protect the child messengers, the people dug elaborate subterranean tunnels from building to building. Sometimes the tunnels of opposing sides intersected each other, and brutal fighting erupted below ground. Meanwhile, above ground, tank and artillery duels lasted as long as the ammunition held out. All grassed areas were and still are heavily mined. Every first floor became a labyrinth of bunkers, also heavily mined and booby-trapped.
Now the whole area is completely devastated. The buildings appear as concrete skeletons devoid of glass. Many are devoid of walls. Yet these buildings are still occupied by these warrior families. The people act very strangely. They were cut off from everything for four years, lived like animals below ground and had little food, heat or electricity, if any at all. They lived only to survive and fight. The children now play outside but only on the safe asphalt or concrete to avoid mines. When we travel through the area, the children point toward the grassed areas and yell “Mina!” warning us of the mine threat. Worst of all are the human bones lying all over the grassed areas and at the bottoms of exposed tunnels which have now collapsed.
Our work in Dobrinja puts us in constant contact with people who are highly skilled, conditioned killers. Despite the children playing and the widespread belief that these people were defending their homes and families, we are not blind to the fact that many are ready to continue killing for vengeance’ sake. There is much hatred here.
The work that we are doing in Dobrinja is vital and will have long-lasting positive effects, but I must admit that it is very depressing and we are now limiting the amount of time we work in the area each day to prevent any psychological or spiritual harm to ourselves. It is very clear that it will take years to repair the damage here. We expect that more than one generation will pass before the hate subsides and these people can live together in some sort of distanced tolerance.
We have much to be thankful for in America. But there is the danger that ethnic hatreds could grow beyond our control. Hate, like a cancer, has thoroughly consumed the people of the former Yugoslavia. We must always guard against hate. Let what has happened here be a lesson to those who think that political ideologies based upon hate could never survive in the modern world. They do survive and are being nurtured here in Bosnia every hour of every day.
As you hug your children, think about Bosnia. As you drive down the street where you live, think about Bosnia. When you share some act of kindness with a total stranger, think of Bosnia. As you attend Sacrament meeting and gain strength through the fellowship of the Church, think of Bosnia.
If you want to write again, and I hope that you do, or have more questions, you can reach me at: Captain Stephen C. Larsen, IFOR Information Campaign, Sarajevo, Operation Joint Endeavor, APO AE 09780. Take care and write soon–your letters are important. And thanks again.
Your friend,
Captain Larsen
Copyright © 1996 Church Universal and Triumphant. All rights reserved.
Pearls of Wisdom®, the Pearls of Wisdom® masthead, Keepers of the Flame®, The Summit Lighthouse®, The Summit Lighthouse® logo and Church Universal and Triumphant are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All rights to their use are reserved.