U.S. Troops Get Pep Talk From Clinton : Bosnia: President tells soldiers in Germany that without them, ‘the peace will collapse, the war will return, the atrocities will begin again.’ Some respond enthusiastically, others are resigned to deployment.

President Clinton came to a chilly, fog-swept parade ground Saturday to tell 4,000 troops of the 1st Armored Division and their families why he is ordering the U.S. Army unit to Bosnia this month: “Without you, the door will close, the peace will collapse, the war will return, the atrocities will begin again.”

The soldiers, who turned out in camouflage to hear Clinton justify the much-debated mission, cheered when the President added, “I know you will not let that happen.”

Mirroring the ambivalence of relatives at home, some soldiers and their families responded with enthusiasm to the speech, others with stolid resignation.

“I’d still feel better if he had been in the military himself,” said Spec. Brian Moore, a 27-year-old communications technician from Rochester, N.Y. “But I thought he brought out a lot of points about why we’re going over there that I hadn’t thought about before.”

Clinton aides said the President wanted to speak to the troops because he thought he owed them a face-to-face explanation of the mission--and because he hopes that their willingness to shoulder the duty will rally support at home.

“This is a different kind of audience than he had in Dublin or Belfast,” one aide said, referring to the adoring crowds that greeted Clinton in Ireland and Northern Ireland last week. “These are the people he has to look in the eye and explain why he is sending them to Bosnia.”

Standing before the troops, with tanks and armored vehicles nearby, Clinton boiled the issue down to one sentence.

“Your mission: to help people exhausted from war make good on the peace they have chosen--the peace they have asked you to help them uphold,” he said.

The President told the soldiers, both men and women, that they would be “heroes for peace” and that their goal of establishing order in Bosnia-Herzegovina is “clear, realistic and achievable in about a year.” And he stressed that the mission, which will involve about 20,000 U.S. troops, is risky but will be “as safe as it can be.”

But the line that drew the loudest cheers from the “Old Ironsides” division, whose combat history runs from World War II’s Italian campaign through the Persian Gulf War, was a promise that they will be allowed to fight if their officers choose.

“You will be heavily armed,” Clinton said. “If you are threatened with attack, you may respond immediately and with decisive force.”

“Hoo-aah,” the soldiers roared in the armored division’s trademark cheer.

For some soldiers present, however, virtually nothing the President could have said would have altered their opposition to the mission.

“Wouldn’t the $2 billion be better spent at home?” wondered Spec. Christopher Aiken, whose job in Bosnia will be to fire mortars. He said he joined the Army to serve America and its allies and isn’t comfortable protecting a country that has no close ties to the United States and that “has been fighting longer than any of us can remember.”

“You can rebuild [Bosnia] and you’ll just waste money,” Aiken predicted. “It will just fall apart again.”

But most other soldiers were more willing to consider Clinton’s message.

“Instead of getting into the political side of it, he got into the human side of it,” Moore said. “I’m glad he didn’t talk about the need to keep NATO from collapsing, because for a soldier that’s just not a real priority.”

Many soldiers said they were most impressed with the President when he talked about a meeting he had, while still in Ireland on Saturday morning, with Zlata Filopovic, the Bosnian girl who became internationally famous for writing a diary about her difficult life in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. Filopovic is now 15 and lives in Ireland, and she met Clinton briefly at the airport in Dublin.

“I told her I was on my way to visit with all of you,” Clinton told the soldiers. “This is what she said: ‘Mr. President, when you’re in Germany, please thank the American soldiers for me. I want to go home.’ ”

Spec. Chris Colligan, 23, of Long Island, N.Y., said that for him the reference to a suffering young Bosnian girl made Clinton’s speech come alive.

“You think, ‘What if it was your kid?’ ” said Colligan, who as a communications technician will be among the first U.S. soldiers to arrive in Bosnia. About 700 American logistics and communications personnel are expected to leave Germany and other European countries this week to help set up operations for the rest of the soldiers, who are scheduled to begin arriving after the Bosnian peace accord is formally signed in Paris on Dec. 14.

Colligan has an 8-month-old son and said that his wife has been crying herself to sleep every night at the thought that her husband will have to spend the next year in Bosnia.

Other wives attending the speech said they are less worried.

“This is his job, and he knows he can take it,” said Tame Farrar, 30, of Mesa, Ariz., whose husband, Sgt. Carl Farrar, is a crewman on a multiple rocket launcher.

“I’ll be OK,” she said as her 8-year-old twins, Corey and Alexandria, clung to her. “We’re used to it. He did one smart thing. He bought a battery-powered foot warmer to deal with the cold.”

In addition to addressing the troops, Clinton ate a turkey dinner in the mess hall with a group of about 150 soldiers and family members, and met with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to discuss Bosnia and the prospects for an expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

After a little more than six hours on the ground in Germany, Clinton flew Saturday evening to Madrid, where he is scheduled to meet with leaders of the 16-member European Union. The leaders will talk about European economic and political cooperation as well as the Europeans’ role in the Bosnian peacekeeping mission.

Clinton also used his weekly radio address Saturday to stress the importance of the U.S. role in leading the Bosnian mission.

“American leadership for peace matters,” Clinton said. “American leadership is necessary in Europe.”

Giving the Republicans’ response to Clinton, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said that while many Republicans oppose sending U.S. ground forces to Bosnia, Congress will not try to stop it. To do so, he said, “would be to discourage the fine young men and women who will serve there.”