U.S. Troops Show Colors on Road to Tuzla

In a symbolic show of force, the United States deployed combat forces in the Bosnian countryside for the first time Tuesday, marking a military milestone in the Balkans peacekeeping mission.

After crossing the Sava River by raft, a military convoy of 19 heavily armed vehicles, including six Bradley fighting vehicles, drove through the still-contested Posavina Corridor, an area along a key strategic supply route that military experts say could be a hot spot for peacekeepers in the American sector of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

As the convoy moved slowly through the countryside, passing minefields, bombed houses and primitive bunkers, U.S. soldiers called out greetings to solemn Serbian civilians and uniformed soldiers.

At the end of the day, the six Bradleys and 24 soldiers remained in the Posavina Corridor, at a checkpoint delineated by rolls of barbed wire and the Bradleys’ gun barrels.

“It’s good military action and, of course, there’s symbolism attached to everything in the Balkans,” Lt. Gen. Michael J. Walker, who oversees the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, said before the convoy set out.

The Americans crossed the swift-flowing Sava River, a natural boundary dividing Croatia from Bosnia, on a raft pushed by two high-powered boats.

Arriving at the southern bank of the river under a driving rain, Humvees and troop transporters lumbered through deep mud to reach the narrow road that leads to Tuzla, where about 1,500 U.S. paratroops are already stationed.

The endeavor was intended as a symbolic and strategic show of force demonstrating that U.S. troops stationed in tent cities in nearby Zupanja, Croatia, are poised and ready for action.

Before the end of this month, military officials plan to install a pontoon bridge over the Sava River to serve as a gateway allowing American forces into Bosnia.

The bridge installation has become more complicated because the river has risen almost 10 feet in the past week, forcing military officials to revise their plans.

Once the bridge is complete, U.S. forces will speed up their deployment, flowing south into Bosnia.

In the weeks ahead, military officials hope to use Zupanja as a staging area to deploy most of the 20,000 U.S. troops slated for the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.

As the convoy reached Lepnica, the site of a former Bosnian Serb checkpoint 220 yards from the line of demarcation, Lt. Col. Greg Stone, a squadron commander in the 1st Cavalry Regiment, directed the troops to halt so he could chat with uneasy-looking Serbian soldiers.

“This is a small step,” Stone told one of the Serbs, Sgt. Lt. Marinko Srden, as he explained that the Bradleys and the personnel to operate them would remain, even though the rest of the convoy would move on. “This is the start. The American presence will grow over the next days and weeks.”

Srden seemed startled by the U.S. soldiers who encircled him. But as Stone explained their intentions, Srden recovered his composure.

“We’ve been waiting for you to come so we can go home,” he said.

Despite Srden’s words, the tension between the long-warring factions was palpable.

After trying to communicate using a soldier as an interpreter, Stone gave up and called forward a Croatian college student whose voice quavered as she spoke to one of the men long considered an enemy of her people.

When Stone turned away, Srden asked the interpreter what village she came from. The interpreter, dwarfed by her Army-issue helmet and flak vest, turned pale and declined to answer.

As the officers chatted, other soldiers also tried to communicate.

When asked how far his M-16 rifle could shoot, Spec. Joe Duch of San Antonio told a scraggly-looking Serbian counterpart that the weapon could fire on an object about 880 yards away. Later, he acknowledged that its true range is actually about 500 yards.

As the convoy continued past the newly established checkpoint, Duch called out the window of his Humvee, greeting Serbian civilians in their language, which he has been studying.

“How are you?” Duch yelled to one lone man standing in a field.

“I’m fine. I have a tank,” the man responded, gesturing to a tank parked behind him.

Deep in the Posavina Corridor, portions of fields remained unharvested, grown to maturity and left to rot. Such places, as well as those where the grass has been allowed to reclaim portions of an otherwise tidy farm, are among the areas that military officials believe were peppered with land mines.

Blackened, burned trees sat like torched sentinels next to destroyed homes. Ditches and bunkers had been carved into the hills by the roadside. Unexploded ordnance was spotted on the road shoulder. Saplings were lopped off in the middle so as not to impair visibility.

To some of the Americans, this land seemed grim and dreary.

“I expected a lot of devastation, but this is basically a no-man’s-land,” said Capt. Dan Mishket, a New York native.

As Stone and his convoy headed south, they unexpectedly met up with a convoy of U.S. paratroops driving north from Tuzla.

In the days ahead, military officials said, U.S. forces will be carefully making their presence known, patrolling roads and creating additional checkpoints.