THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 15, 1995 TAG: 9512150489
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Jeanne Daill had a memorable holiday planned - a whirlwind trip to the south of France with her 8-year-old daughter and a visit there with her husband, a Navy F-14 pilot stationed aboard the aircraft carrier America.
But like dozens of other wives and sweethearts of the America's 5,000-plus sailors and airmen, Daill spent part of this week rearranging her schedule and digesting disappointing news: The newfound peace in Bosnia will keep one of the world's most powerful warships at sea for Christmas.
``I'm going to have a quiet Christmas,'' Daill said Thursday. ``It's going to be peaceful instead of hectic.'' The Virginia Beach resident will celebrate at home and look forward to Cmdr. Kurt Daill's return with the ship in February.
``That'll be here before you know it,'' she said.
Daill canceled her travel plans Monday, after receiving word that the America will not make a scheduled visit to Marseille, France, for the holiday. Instead, the Norfolk-based carrier and its battle group, along with a Marine expeditionary unit led by the amphibious ship Wasp, will be on station in the Adriatic Sea to support NATO troops enforcing the peace in Bosnia and Croatia.
Kurt Daill is executive officer of VF-102, an F-14 squadron on the carrier. The America has spent much of its current deployment in the Adriatic; bombing in the fall by its planes helped bring Bosnian Serbs to the peace table.
Now, with Americans and other NATO forces on the ground, the ship's planes will help monitor the withdrawal of warring Muslims, Serbs and Croats from ``zones of separation'' mandated by the treaty.
Though disappointed, Jeanne Daill was able to joke Thursday about the change in plans. In 17 years as a Navy wife she'd never had to cancel a planned rendezvous with her deployed husband, she said, but she knows others who have been caught before, and so she had been careful to get a refundable airline ticket.
``You've got to have a sense of humor,'' she said. ``If you don't have a sense of humor you're not going to do very well'' married to someone in the military.
While Daill will be staying home, she said some wives of other pilots in her husband's squadron are still going to Europe in case the America gets to make a port call around New Year's Day. And if that doesn't happen, ``they'll try to have a good time anyway,'' she said.
A New Year's stop for the ship is a possibility, said Cmdr. Kevin Wensing, a spokesman for the Navy's Atlantic Fleet.
KEYWORDS: OPERATION JOINT ENDEAVOR BOSNIA U.S. MILITARY by CNB