THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 27, 1995 TAG: 9512270066
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DEROCHI, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
After traveling more than 14 hours along winding roads in eastern Croatia, about 180 Navy Seabees arrived late Christmas Day at a muddy field along the banks of the Sava River.
Pelted by a driving, cold rain, the Seabees unloaded their gear and began building tents in the first phase of what eventually will be a tent city for 2,500 U.S. Army troops stationed outside Zupanja, Croatia.
``We're here to get these guys out of the mud,'' Lt. Cmdr. Bill Spann, a Navy spokesman, said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
``Our job is to give them good quality Navy housing with wooden floors and heat and light. That's our Christmas present to the U.S. Army.''
The Seabees, members of the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 133 from Gulfport, Miss., have been tapped to build four such tent cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina in support of U.S. troops deployed to the region as part of the NATO peacekeeping plan.
The first is near a staging ground where American troops are struggling to build two bridges across the Sava River into Bosnia-Herzegovina. The bridges are critical to the NATO peacekeeping plan and will be used to carry thousands of U.S. soldiers and tanks from Croatia into Bosnia.
The Seabees - the name comes from the abbreviation ``CB'' for construction battalion - arrived in the region last week after flying from Rota, Spain. They stopped in Hungary, where they were housed in a giant missile bunker while undergoing mine-awareness training.
On Christmas Eve, after holding a church service in the bunker, the Seabees loaded their gear into 65 trucks and headed for Croatia. They arrived at the site at 9 p.m. Christmas Day.
Their orders are to construct 250 tents that can each hold 10 soldiers comfortably. They also will build latrines, a mess hall and a medical clinic. The project is expected to take a couple of weeks.
``It's not going to be Club Med, but it's going to be nicer than what they're living in now,'' said Spann.
When they are finished, the Seabees will cross the bridge into Bosnia and head for the Tuzla region to build three more compounds. They expect to be in the region from two to three months.
Spann said morale, so far, has been good.
``The holidays are all about peace and goodwill and that's what we're doing,'' Spann said. ``We're giving peace to an entire country. These guys are really proud of that. They're only 19 years old and they get it. They understand why we're here.''
KEYWORDS: OPERATION JOINT ENDEAVOR BOSNIA by CNB