story by MSgt. Bob Haskell
A dark-haired woman driving a late-model compact station wagon discovered on Veterans Day just how seriously Army National Guard infantrymen from Virginia are protecting a bridge over the Sava River along the northern Bosnian border these days.
The woman in the white car cruised past a military police checkpoint on the paved road leading up to the bridge early on the mild afternoon of Nov. 11. She approached the north end of the bridge where she had to slow down for cement barriers that every car must zigzag around while approaching the bridge.
That was as far as the small car got. Two citizen-soldiers from Virginia's 116th Infantry, the legendary Stonewall Brigade, charged into the middle of the road from a guard tower that overlooks that end of the bridge on the Croatian side of the river and faced the woman and her two passengers down.
Sgt. Adam Crippen from Sterling, Va., and Spec. Erik Carlson from Leesburg had their M-16 rifles locked, loaded and leveled at the white car. The woman braked to a sudden stop. Then she backed the car down to the checkpoint where the driver was questioned and the vehicle was searched before the three women were sent on their way.
It ended as a harmless encounter for everyone concerned. The woman told the MPs she did not know the bridge was so heavily protected. But it said a mouthful about the resolve that 130 Virginia Army Guardsmen from Company C in Leesburg have brought to their winter's mission of guarding the rebuilt span between Bosnia and Croatia that they inherited from active Army soldiers in the 10th Mountain Division on Nov. 1.
It was the first encounter of its kind for the Virginia Guardsmen in that region, said SSgt. Joe Miller of Warrenton, Va., the squad leader for Crippen and Carlson.
It said much about the training they have received at Fort Benning, Ga., and Fort Polk, La., since being alerted for this foreign duty last May.
It said even more about their determination to do this job right now that Charlie Company has become the first reserve component infantry outfit deployed to a foreign tactical zone since Indiana rangers from Company D, 151st Infantry were sent to Vietnam in 1968.
"This is our bridge," 1st Lt. Charles Muzzi of Annapolis, Md., emphasized to visiting reporters a few minutes after the encounter with the white car.
The bridge has recently been reopened to international traffic, he explained. But every vehicle is carefully monitored because the bridge is still a vital military link between the Army's staging base in Taszar, Hungary, and camps in Bosnia where NATO forces have been enforcing a fragile peace for nearly two years.
Relations between the Serbian and Muslim-Croatian factions remain tense in the area.
"We still hear gun fire here every day," said Miller. "It's celebrity fire, for weddings and parties and things like that. At least that's what they tell us."
Sounds of a political rally carried by loudspeakers to the "Troll Village" where the Virginia citizen-soldiers have taken up residence in tents under the Bosnian end of the bridge was another sign of the war-torn area's unrest.
But these Guardsmen had seen enough during their first 11 days in the area to reinforce their commitment to help the people resume life as they knew it before the nearly four-year war reduced parts of their community to rubble.
"We see corn and firewood stacked in rooms of the houses where people are still living so they can try to make it through the winter," Mussi said.
"When you start patrolling the streets around here, you have a daily reminder of why this mission is important," he added.
Meanwhile, the Guard soldiers are making the best of their own Spartan accommodations that are considerably less comfortable than the homes they left behind.
"The living conditions aren't bad," said Miller who is a civilian map-maker for the National Imagery and Mapping Agency in Bethesda, Md. "We have our own weight room and chow hall and shower tent. "It's not home, but it's not complete misery," he smiled.
Therefore, protecting the bridge from any potential threat is as important to the Guard soldiers who live under it as it is for the people who use it and for the Bosnian and Croatian people who live around it.
"Most likely she was unaware of what was going on," said Miller of the woman driving the white car. "But you never know."