Does Keeping the Peace Spoil G.I.'s for War?

By MIKE O'CONNOR
1349 words
13 December 1996
Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dec. 12 -- After nearly a year in Bosnia, American soldiers have lost some of their ability to fight in a conventional war, officers say.

While insisting that the loss of combat skills is not serious, senior Army officers nevertheless say they would like to give the 10,000 combat troops returning to bases in Germany up to half a year to rest, catch up on training and practice traditional warfare.

With the great majority of American combat soldiers based in Europe either just completing a tour in Bosnia as peacekeepers, or now assigned here, there are few available to respond immediately to a military threat.

Senior Army officers say this is a manageable consequence of the change in what is expected of the military as it tries to learn to stretch itself to carry out peacekeeping assignments while at the same time retaining its ability to fight.

But many lower ranking officers -- those with more direct responsibility for troops in combat -- are considerably more concerned about their soldiers' readiness. And even among senior officers there is disagreement over how much keeping the peace in Bosnia has reduced the Army's fighting skills.

The Army's chief planning officer in Europe, Col. Gary Goff, said soldiers returning from Bosnia would need considerably more retraining than those coming back from the Persian Gulf war, while Maj. Gen. John M. Le Moyne, head of Army operations in Europe, said the soldiers are, ''probably in the best shape of any army returning from the field in modern history.''

It is the experience in Bosnia that has highlighted the issue, as the Army confronts something new: The demands of switching soldiers from a combat force to one that has to learn the skills of peacekeeping. Then, after the soldiers spend more than a year away from much of their normal training regimen, they have to be remade into first-rate traditional warriors again.

Senior American officers in Europe say, barring a crisis, they will probably take until late May to bring all the returning soldiers back to full readiness.

''In a crisis we would still need about two months of retraining to get everyone coming back now ready,'' Colonel Goff said.

Senior officers say that if disaster were at hand and no troops were available from the United States, soldiers based in Europe could be sent into action much sooner.

''If the fate of the nation were at stake, we would be at the dock before the ships arrived,'' said Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, commander of the First Armored Division, which just completed its Bosnia tour.

With the menacing barrels of their tanks pointing down, and doing nothing more than intimidating motorists at the checkpoint they were running, a group of American soldiers said that in many ways their work in Bosnia runs counter to their traditional training.

''We were taught how to sneak around in these tanks quietly, surprise the enemy and destroy him in combat,'' said Second Lieut. Brian O'Keefe. ''But here we are supposed to stay out of combat by being obvious. To me, it's like teaching a dog to walk backwards.''

Sgt. Felipe Paul said: ''I'm a tanker, that's what I do, been one for 14 years. But let me tell you, those skills are perishable. You got to use them, and all I'm doing here is checking people's driver's licenses.''

The sergeant's arms went out like wings as he recalled what for him was the beauty of an assault with a company of tanks swooping across the lands in a coordinated attack.

''You've got to practice that,'' he said, ''but in Bosnia, we're parked.''

The First Armored Division, with some 10,000 combat soldiers, was the core of the American forces here until it was replaced by about 5,000 combat troops of the First Infantry Division last month. Both divisions are based in Germany and together they are almost all of American ground combat forces in Europe.

A brigade, about 1,000 combat soldiers, of the First Infantry Division is assigned to peacekeeping work in Macedonia, leaving in Europe some 1,600 combat troops as part of a lightly equipped force based in Italy to handle emergencies.

In 1990 there were 213,000 United States soldiers in Europe, all of them pointing their weapons toward a single adversary: the Soviet bloc. Today, there are only 65,000 soldiers, most of them not assigned to combat roles, based in Europe and responsible for possible action in 83 countries.

As they cleared out large rounds of ammunition and stowed gear in the tight quarters of their Bradley fighting vehicles to prepare for the trip home, soldiers at the huge staging area in Slavonksi Brod, Croatia, said recently that in some ways they were better fighters after being in Bosnia.

''We know our equipment better, we know how to keep it all going 24 hours a day, because we had to,'' said Specialist James Cunbee, a Bradley driver. ''And we know how to pace ourselves on a mission like this one, where you have to be ready to go 24 hours a day yourself. And then, with all that time working with your own unit, you really get to know how to work together better than in any training exercise.''

What the soldiers say they've discovered about skills acquired and skills gone rusty matches rather closely what many officers report, and what Army experts sent to study the experience in Bosnia say they too are finding.

Essentially, since the first American soldiers entered Bosnia last December, almost everyone has become better at what they do individually, or in small groups. But where the job is to coordinate those groups into the effort of a larger combat force, there are likely to be problems.

''My guys are great at driving three Bradleys down a road in a straight line and setting up an unconcealed observation post,'' said Capt. Thomas Boccardi, commander of a company of Bradley fighting vehicles. ''But when it comes to attacking a position, or holding a piece of terrain against an assault, that's where we'll need work.''

Even with thousands of peacekeepers in Bosnia, the work is usually done in small groups. The trouble that creates is that in conventional warfare the coordinated force of large units -- often combining infantry, tanks, aircraft and artillery --is what gives the United States Army its punch.

Planning and coordinating a conventional battle falls to the staffs of military units. General Nash said that because his staff officers have been coordinating a peacekeeping force, not planning battles, they are not as good at warfare as when they arrived.

He said it would take less than a month of practice using computer simulators to bring the skills back.

''Calling it a brush-up is too light, but if you called it retraining, that would be too heavy,'' he said.

Other officers, including the Army's chief planner in Europe, Colonel Goff, say that while refreshing individual units might only take a month or so, getting all the units through the limited number of training sites in Europe would take much longer.

There has been some training in Bosnia. Rifle ranges were set up, artillery and helicopter ranges were created in some open areas and most of the tank and Bradley crews will have practiced gunnery at an American base in Hungary on their way home.

But as a measure of how difficult it is to recapture even basic military skills, without that practice, Colonel Goff said, it would have taken as much as 18 months to retrain the returning soldiers.

Photo: U.S. forces among NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia use skills directly opposed to their combat training. A G.I. prepared a grill at a recent bazaar organized by the Army's morale department at a NATO base near Tuzla. (Reuters)

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