Robert Smolar knows about the racial tensions between the Croatians and Serbians
By Master Sergeant Bob Haskell, National Guard BureauRobert Smolar encountered the ethnic tensions between the Croats and the Serbs when he played ice hockey as a youngster growing up in his Chicago neighborhood.
"I would team up with a couple of the Croats," the 35-year-old Virginia Army National Guard infantryman explained in late July at Fort Benning, Georgia. Some Serbian kids were on the other team. Even in hockey, we squared off then.
Come October, Staff Sergeant Robert Smolar will be part of the NATO force in Bosnia that has kept the uneasy peace between those unfriendly factions for nearly two years.
He is a squad leader in Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry. Guarding the rebuilt bridge across the Sava River -- it links northern Bosnia with Croatia -- will be that company of citizen-soldiers mission this winter.
In one way, the accomplished civil engineer for the U.S. State Department will being going home again.
Smolar's great-grandparents moved to America from Slovakia, north of Bosnia, around the turn of the century, he explained. His great-grandfather grew up in the capital city of Bratislava. His great-grandmother came from the northern Tatra Mountains. Members of his extended family and a few friends still live there.
Preventing outright aggression against a defenseless people is the satisfaction that the intense but soft-spoken Smolar will get from serving in Bosnia.
He has certainly benefited from the American dream that his great-grandparents embraced about a century ago.
Smolar graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1984. Ironically, famed Confederate general Thomas Stonewall Jackson taught there before the Civil War. The 116th Infantry to which Smolar belongs is called the Stonewall Brigade because of its famous stand in July 1861 during the First Battle of Bull Run.
Smolar has worked for the State Department's Office of Foreign Buildings for four years, planning facilities for U.S. embassies around the world.
He has also worked for the Army Corps of Engineers. He designed the obstacle course at Fort Myer, Virginia, beside Arlington Cemetery, Smolar explained. He got to try out that course first-hand during the fall of 1990 when he attended the Military District of Washingtons air assault course.
"I wished I had made it a little easier," Smolar said, smiling.
Despite his VMI background, he has remained an enlisted Guardsman to stay close to the troops, he explained.
He has also learned much about the ethnic history of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the conflict that has divided that country. Now he is in the unique position of sharing that substantial knowledge with the citizen-soldiers from Virginia who will take their turn helping to keep the peace.