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A few years ago I signed on with a company responsible for training the Bosnian Muslim Army under the US State Department approved "Train & Equip Program."
Because they hire mostly former or retired "senior NCOs & Officers" who were once Army Rangers, Special Forces, Drill
Instructors, and or leaders who had exceptional teaching, training and leadership skills, I assumed they hired only the best, or so I thought.
And because I spent most of my military career living overseas in places like Korea, Germany and Italy, not to mention living here in Italy since retiring from the army back in
1993, I assumed working in Bosnia would be a "piece of cake," or so I thought.
Since I was an ex-Army Ranger and the Yugoslavian border wasn't far from where I
lived, I kept up with the all news reports on how the war was going.
And so when I finally did arrive in Bosnia and receive a briefing on such things as our mission, security, safety, etc, I wasn't at all surprise to find out how infested the country was with landmines.
But what really surprised me was the number of instructors who would later refuse to walk alongside their assigned Bosnian unit out in the field because of all these "unknown & unmarked landmines."
And although the company's policy clearly stated that it was up to the individual instructor to decide if he felt it was safe enough to walk with his assigned unit, I didn't give it a second thought.
After all, how can you train soldiers, lead by example, earn their respect and trust if you're unwilling to walk alongside them, you know what I mean?
Well out of seventeen instructors assigned to my training team, there were only about four of us (two ex-Special Forces, my Ranger buddy and myself) who were willing to walk alongside our Bosnian unit out in the field. And even though we sometimes did indeed encounter some landmines, thank God none of us stepped on any.
But my roommate had a close call.
Now before we could take our soldiers somewhere to train we first had to get permission from the local SFOR/IFOR unit in our area. And because they imposed some strict rules & guidelines on us, they sometimes seemed more our enemy than the damn
Serbs did. Most of the time they chose the training areas and told us what time we could depart, what time we had to be back, what type of weapons we could train with, how many, etc, etc.
In other words, they kept us on a tight leash to make sure we didn't start any trouble with the Serbs, who had positions and checkpoints not far from the Bosnian (Muslim) units that we were hired to train.
Well, at one of their approved training areas even though they told us it was safe and cleared of landmines, my roommate almost stepped on one.
He was walking alongside his Bosnian unit out in the field when his translator, who was walking directly behind him spotted a partially exposed PMA2 anti-personnel mine in front of him and stopped him just in the nick of time.
Now common "military" sense would tell you that if you find one partially exposed landmine, you're probably either "in or near" a
minefield, right? And wouldn't you think there are probably more of these critters around?
I would surely think an "experienced" Viet Nam vet would think so.
Well, when my roommate radioed our boss, a retired O-6/Colonel and Viet Nam vet (who we nicknamed "Alzheimer Joe") to report what he almost stepped
on, he radios back and instructs him to (quote), "...just go around it!"
When I heard this I said to myself, "Oh that's real smart Joe, why don't you just tell him to put his earplugs in, keep walking until he hears an explosion and then call you back."
I could not believe what I just heard him say, he's gotta be joking,
I thought - but he wasn't.
Because my roommate was a retired Sergeant Major, he knew better and immediately back-stepped and withdrew out of the area.
During the rest of his time in Bosnia he stayed on nothing but hardball roads. (Can you blame him after this?)
We later found out that a Bosnian Army engineer unit "supposedly" cleared the area of mines. Yep, they sure
did - probably "visually" from a safe distance away. So from that day on whenever the SFOR/IFOR assigned us a training area and told us it's been cleared of landmines, we always asked "Oh really, by who?"
We also found out later that good ol' Alzheimer Joe told his second in command (a retired Delta Force Sergeant Major) that the land mine was just a "toe popper" and it would have only taken off his foot.
Well gollllly, were we all relieved to hear that, thank God it wasn't something really dangerous.
When my roommate returned back home that afternoon he still appeared to be pretty shaken up and couldn't get over what the boss told him to do.
Later when I linked up with a few of my fellow instructors who were out in the field with him that
day, they said (laughing their butts off), "Rick, you should have seen your roommate, he was as white as a ghost."
I wish I had, because my roommate was black.
Another time I was teaching a class and made a comment that I would love to have the outer "fragmentation shell" from a PMR 2 anti-personnel mine, but without the inner explosives, of course.
And I explained to my students that back home I collect inert grenades, mortar and artillery shells and I just wanted one as a souvenir to remember Bosnia.
Well, because I had a terrific student-to-instructor relationship with my soldiers, most of them would do almost anything for me. So when one of them told their battalion commander what I said in class, the next day he called me in to his office. At the time I didn't know why he wanted to see me, until he opened up his wall locker and slid across his desk to me a pair of (what Alzheimer Joe calls'em) "toe poppers." I picked them up and immediately recognize they're no dummy/practice training mines, but the real McCoys - PMA2 anti-personnel blast mines.
I slid them back cross his desk, but he slid them right back to me insisting that I could keep them. And I told him, "Thanks, but I really can't, it against my company's policy." And I again slid the pair of mines back across his desk, but he slid them right back to me again insisting that I keep them.
Finally, after a few more back-and-forth sliding matches he got the message.
But he wouldn't let me leave his office empty handed, so to make him happy I accepted a Russian AK-47 bayonet that he claimed he captured from a Serbian soldier during the war.
The next day word leaked backed to my chain of command that the Bosnian commander had called me into his office.
And because I was a popular instructor with the students and "not so popular" with my supervisor and boss, they wanted to know what in the hell I was doing in his office.
They thought I was doing something sneaky behind their backs. You know, that typical army officer mentality in believing that all NCOs are crooked, up to no good and always out to screw them?
Well, I just couldn't resist being a wise ass. So I told them, "I was playing table hockey with the commander, you got a problem with that?
If so, I'll be more than happy to get you a puck so you can play too.
And believe me, you'll get a real bang out of the game."
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