War-zone duty is frozen hell for Westwood soldier

COLT BASE, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Through a white void of fog come headlights and the roar of diesel engines. It's 1:45 a.m. and a convoy has just arrived at Colt Base, Bosnian headquarters of the 4th Battalion of the 67th Armor.

Spc. Eric Hines, 23, of Westwood wheels his 5-ton truck carefully down the icy road onto the base. Signs warn of land mines on either side of the 16-foot-wide road.

Spc. Hines jumps down from his heated cab into the subzero temperature of the night. While soldiers unload parts for the huge weaponry and trucks on the compound, he makes his way past shadowy outlines of armored vehicles, to a warm tent.

"I look like hell," he says, brushing the plastic covering and coming into the tent. "I look like a soldier."

Spc. Hines' face and hands are covered with grime. His brown eyes are bloodshot. When he takes off his Kevlar helmet, his short blond hair stays matted to his head.

During his two weeks "in-country," Spc. Hines has had six brief showers in makeshift army stalls - his last shower was three days ago. He is dressed in U.S. Army full battle dress: black boots, camouflage fatigues, fragmentation vest and a web belt with straps carrying two canteens, two pouches of ammunition, gas mask and first aid kit. An M-16 automatic rifle, locked and loaded, is slung over his right shoulder.

He has been up since 7 a.m., hauling supplies from the Sava River, about 7 miles north of this desolate place, to U.S. supply depots throughout northeastern Bosnia. He has stopped only briefly at Colt while his truck is unloaded, then he will be back on the road. He expects to crawl into his sleeping bag at about 3 a.m.

"You can't really call it a mission without a long day," he smiles.

Days blur here. Before Bosnia, Spc. Hines' unit was stationed in Germany. On a weekend there he would be out at a restaurant or a bar with friends. Now Saturday is like every other day - dreary, filled with work.

These first few months of Operation Joint Endeavor - NATO's plan to enforce the Dayton peace accord and bring an end to almost four years of war in Bosnia - have been frantic for the U.S. Army. The military is working to set up bases for as many as 24,000 troops, most of them in destroyed villages in the mountains of northeastern Bosnia or on the flat floodplains south of the Sava River. Another 40,000 troops from other countries, including Great Britain, Italy, and France, are spread throughout Bosnia.

Most of the troops are concentrated in ZOS, the 2-mile-wide Zone of Separation that snakes through the Balkan country and separates Muslim-backed Bosnian government and Bosnian Croat armies from the Bosnian Serb forces.

The success of this year-long mission no longer depends on world leaders or generals, but on soldiers like Spec. Hines - grunts hauling equipment and creating livable, defendable bases in desolate, dangerous territory.

It is nothing like they show on CNN, Spec. Hines says, shaking his head. "Cities around here are really destroyed. I couldn't believe it."

Through his truck window, Spec. Hines sees the war's destruction every day. In this part of Bosnia, Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Serb armies battled over villages, and whole towns are abandoned and pillaged.

He can't escape the devastation even when he rests. Hines and several other soldiers in the 4-67 are staying in an abandoned hotel in the city of Odzak, northeast of Colt Base. Nicknamed "The Emerald City" by the troops - for its ghostly appearance from afar - Odzak had a population of about 20,000 before war erupted in 1992 Today, about 100 people live there. Almost every building was destroyed and ransacked during the war.

"They took everything out of there - pipes, electric wires, toilets, everything," Spec. Hines says. "Nothing left but shells."

Spec. Hines and his fellow soldiers expect to be moved to Colt in several weeks after engineers finish sweeping the surrounding fields for mines. The scenery won't change; Colt is set on an abandoned crop-dusting airfield next to a destroyed meat packing plant. When it is possible to see, the horizon holds only a few destroyed farmhouses.

He was scared about being deployed to Bosnia, Spec. Hines says. In training classes back in Germany, troops were given lessons on the history of Yugoslavia's collapse and the war in Bosnia. He learned about snipers, the slaughter of civilians, other horrors of the conflict. Now that Bosnia is a reality for him, he is no longer afraid of snipers firing on his truck. Through talks with interpreters, Hines has come to feel that the people in this area, mostly Serbs, are sick of war.

Now his fear is of the war's hidden vestiges: an estimated 6 million land mines planted throughout Bosnia, a nation of only 4.3 million people when the war broke out.

"I don't think I'm ever going to feel comfortable here as long as there are land mines around," he says. "You have to be careful on icy roads, not to drive off the road."

During snowy weather in the last several days, accidents have become a problem for transport convoys. For soldiers driving 10 or 12 hours at a time, staying focused on the road is a difficult test.

Only one American soldier, Sgt. Donald A. Dugan, 38, of Ridgeway, Ohio, has been killed so far during Operation Joint Endeavor. He died when he walked off the road into a marked mine field and picked up an explosive. The death reminded every soldier here that simple acts, if taken for granted, can be dangerous.

His brief time in Bosnia has made Spec. Hines miss his home. "I miss a lot of things, to tell you the truth," he says. He smiles and laughs as he talks about Cincinnati. He already has received mail from his family, friends and even a 4th grade class from Northwest School District where he was a student not many years ago.

"I will write them real soon, I promise," he says. "I've just been so busy since I got here."

He hopes the Reds send him a signed baseball; he'll miss the season this year. He tries to keep up with his favorite basketball team, the UC Bearcats, in delayed copies of Stars and Stripes, the Army's newspaper. He is missing their season too.

He misses Gold Star chili, which he favors over Skyline, and Snyder's of Hanover pretzels and Grippo Potato Chips.

Then he stammers. He frowns and moves his left hand to one of his ammunition pouches. "Tell my son that I love him," he says, referring to Brandon, 6, now living in Cincinnati with the boy's mother. He then blurts out greetings to all of his family and frowns again. "Actually, this is it for me," he sighs. "I'm getting out (of the army) after my tour is up. I'm up in the fall, and I'm coming home to Camp Cincinnati."

Saying this is awkward for Spec. Hines, who joined the army at 19. He looks at the ground. All through childhood, he played soldier with friends in the fields of Cincinnati's west side. In Germany, he had told his father he was thinking about re-enlisting. Now he says the hardships and ever-present dangers of this mission have made him decide to return to civilian life.

"I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do," he says. "But I'm leaving." Spec. Hines adjusts an ammunition pouch. Several shiny, sharp bullets have popped out of a clip. In slow motions that reveal his fatigue, he clicks the ammo back in, one by one.

Then he straps on his helmet, adjusts it, pulls back the tent flap and heads into the night. His gray form floats through the fog toward the growl of the truck engines.

Published Feb. 19, 1996