Guard's 49th Division home from Bosnia
by Master Sgt. Bob Haskell
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Oct. 10, 2000) -- More than 750 Texas National Guard soldiers returned home during October's first week following a spring and summer of peacekeeping duty in Bosnia.
"The time went fast; a lot faster than I thought it would. But it still feels good to be home," said Sgt. Ross Wellen of Temple, Texas, Oct. 5, about 12 hours after landing at Fort Hood with 164 other citizen-soldiers in the 49th Armored Division.
The Guard's Lone Star Division commander, Maj. Gen. Robert Halverson, returned at 10:45 the night before, signaling the end to a high-profile mission.
The National Guard division had commanded the American sector in northern Bosnia -- including soldiers in the active Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and an 11-nation multinational force that included Scandinavian, Russian and Turkish troops -- since early last March.
They helped prolong nearly five years of peace among Serbs, Croats and Muslims in that part of the Balkans before turning the mission over to the Army's 3rd Infantry Division.
The Texans, coincidentally, returned to their homes on the same weekend that President Slobodan Milosevic's 13 years of autocratic rule ended in neighboring Yugoslavia.
Milosevic, believed to be a key player in the bloody three-year Bosnian war, has been indicted for murder and crimes against humanity in Kosovo by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at the Hague.
The Serbian strongman's fall may not alter the need to maintain a peacekeeping force in Bosnia, cautioned Halverson, who worked closely with local civilian officials. "I don't think it's going to have as big an effect as some people would hope," he said. But it did, at least, hold out the promise for a lasting peace in that war-torn part of the world.
Meanwhile, the 49th remained under the Army's microscope as the first Guard division to be given charge of active-duty troops since the Korean War.
Job well done, praised Lt. Gen. Leon LaPorte, the Army's III Corps commander who welcomed many of the citizen-soldier who returned to Texas in early October, sometimes at 2 a.m.
A 1st Cavalry Division band and honor guard that carried the U.S. and Lone Star state flags greeted planes filled with soldiers that touched down at Fort Hood's Robert Gray Army Airfield.
"I think it will have a tremendously positive impact," said LaPorte of the effect the Army Guard-commanded rotation will have on the ongoing integration of reserve and active-duty forces. "General Halverson did a tremendous job of leading U.S. soldiers."
Halverson credited his soldiers, especially the junior noncommissioned officers and company-grade officers, with the mission's success.
"I'm very proud of every one of these soldiers," he said. "They did everything I asked them to do, and we brought them all back safe and sound."
The duty in Bosnia included making sure that an additional 85 square miles of playgrounds, fields and roadways were clear of land mines, a division spokesman reported.
Tough training, including a demanding mission rehearsal exercise at Fort Polk, La., last November, was a key to success, the Guard soldiers stressed.
"It was very realistic," said Master Sgt. Lawrence Tucker of San Antonio, a seasoned veteran of Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. "The train-up kept us on our toes for what we should be doing while were we were there."
"The training was harder than the actual mission," said Sgt. Jon Copple of Austin, Texas, even though 12-hour duty days were not unusual at the 49th's Eagle Base headquarters in Tuzla.
That Bosnia seems to be steadily prospering from nearly five years of peace validated their mission, the Texans observed. For example, 8,000 families returned to their pre-war homes, a division spokesman added.
"A lot of displaced people returned to their homes while we were there," said Copple, who worked in the division's intelligence section. "There was also new construction even though, sometimes, you had to look for it. But the old blown up stuff still leered right out at you."
Master Sgt. Jerry Huff of Mount Vernon, Texas, said he believes the diversity of America's military people, including the National Guard, can be a model for Bosnia's ethnic communities.
The Vietnam veteran has had two tours in Bosnia to reach that conclusion. Huff belonged to a 46-soldier artillery fire support element from the Texas Guard that was assigned to a Swedish battalion there from August 1997 to March 1998.
"They can see us all -- black, white, and brown soldiers -- working as brothers," Huff said during lunch. "They're all white. I have to believe that if we can get along, they should be able to get along, too.
"Sure, we have our differences in this country. But, for the most part, we don't grab guns and start killing each other," said Huff before venturing back into the Texas afternoon to savor the mesquite, the cedars and even the burned, brown grass of home.
(Editor's note: Master Sgt. Bob Haskell is a staff member of the
National Guard Bureau public affairs office.)
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