THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 13, 1996 TAG: 9601130288
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
They are living on cold, pre-packaged foods and ``have had one shower since Christmas,'' one said Thursday, but a group of U.S. Navy builders working in Bosnia are safe and making good progress on a series of tent cities for troops enforcing the new peace in that country.
``It's harder than we expected,'' said Lt. Dean Hoelz, a chaplain in Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 133.
In a telephone interview from the Seabees' camp just south of the Sava River in northern Bosnia, Hoelz said the 165 men and women in his group have had more trouble with snow and mud than with any armed enemy since their arrival just before Christmas.
Indeed, the Americans have been warmly welcomed by Bosnian Muslims and Serbs, he said, though some U.S. soldiers have found unnerving the frequent firing of guns by both sides in celebration of the peace.
Hoelz said the cold, snowy conditions they encountered initially and the fields of deep mud that they've had to work in since the snow started melting have taken a heavy toll on the Seabees' trucks and other equipment. Heaters in their tents didn't work properly at first, he said, limiting them to field rations for several weeks.
And it's sometimes hard to come by spare parts for the damaged equipment, though the Seabees have been able to find what they need by bartering with the Army units for whom they're building tent cities.
In all, several hundred Seabees from the Louisiana-based unit are erecting four tent camps along a road leading from the Sava to the U.S. headquarters in Tuzla. Some Seabees also were pressed into service to help Army bridge-builders whose tent camp was flooded by the rising Sava.
Hoelz said a group of Seabees worked all night to help set up new tents for the Army engineers, who lost essentially all their spare clothes and equipment to the flood. According to Hoelz, when he visited some of the exhausted workers later, one told him, ``we wanted to stop but we couldn't. They (the Army) had nothing.''
Still, Hoelz said morale is high and the Seabees feel they're doing something worthwhile. A small group of the Navy builders was ordered to Tuzla this week to help refurbish several bombed-out buildings that will be used by the staff of Adm. Leighton Smith, NATO's commander for the peacekeeping operation. Ten Seabees there are expected to be among the troops who will meet President Clinton when he visits Tuzla today.
The builders are the Navy's only direct contribution to the peace-keeping effort, though several thousand sailors and airmen are patrolling offshore in the Adriatic as a reserve force in case of trouble.
Hoelz said that though conditions are tough, the Seabees' biggest complaint is the lack of any mail delivery.
``We keep missing it,'' he said.
Mail for the Seabees reportedly arrived at a camp just north of the Sava soon after they had left to work on projects to the south. Hoelz received word that it had been forwarded to Tuzla and he was planning to travel there Friday to get it.
He has made the 40-mile trip before, Hoelz said, encountering groups of friendly, waving Bosnian children along the way. by CNB