The peace crusade: on the road with Clinton.

On a cold and foggy December 2, 1995, President Bill Clinton told the 4,000 soldiers of the 1st Armored Division lined up in military order on the parade ground of the U.S. army base in Baumholder, Germany: "For three years, I refused to send our American forces into Bosnia where they could have been pulled into war. But," he went on, "I do want you to go there on a mission of peace." Behind the troops in more random formations stood families. Women jiggled strollers, little boys played tag, and, because this is the new army, husbands held babies who, after the speech, would be nursed by their corporal and sergeant mothers. Calling them "iron soldiers," Clinton evoked the division's nickname, Old Ironside, and the generations who served on World War II battlefields in North Africa and Italy, on the front line of the cold war, and more recently in Desert Storm. This time America summoned them "not with a call to war but a call to peace." They would help implement a peace accord signed by the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia. "They need that help," the president explained, "because after nearly four years of terrible brutality, trust is in short supply in Bosnia, and they will trust you to do the job right."

The word peace echoed through this small part of America set up like a toy town under the Christmas trees of the German forest. Yet within weeks, these mothers and fathers would kiss their children good-by and go to the worst killing fields in Europe since World War II. More than 250,000 killed and 2 million displaced, in just three years. Bosnia-Herzegovina may sound more exotic than Rome or Athens, but it is closer to Baumholder than either city. Start out on the autobahn in the morning and you can be in Sarajevo by night.

As eloquently as the president spoke of peace, he got cheers only when he promised that the force would be heavily armed, and have "robust" rules of engagement; he assured the troops that "when America comes to help make the peace, America will look after its own."

Later conversations with some of the soldiers made clear that they did not cheer heavy weapons out of a surging militarism, but because they had feared they would be asked to forgo self-protection in favor of the politically motivated restraint many imagined had hamstrung the UN peacekeepers. A good offense still seemed the best defense. One twenty-year-old soldier welcomed the chance to go to the aid of Bosnian children. "I followed the story of that little girl [Zlata Filopvic] from Sarejevo who wrote the diary. Kids shouldn't have to face stuff like that." Clinton had mentioned Zlata in his speech. He had met her at Dublin airport after two days in Northern Ireland where the crowds in Belfast and Derry celebrated the crucial role he played in a peace many imagined never could come "in our lifetime."

In Dublin, as if refuting his critics back home, Clinton had departed from his prepared remarks at a press conference with Prime Minister John Bruton. He pounded the podium as he extolled the Irish for never refusing peacekeeping duties because their national interest was not at stake. National interest measured in dollars or oil could not be the only motivation for sending U.S. troops to Bosnia. "War raging in the heart of Europe" could not be tolerated.

At Baumholder, the soldiers accepted this, if they could shoot when threatened. No one wanted to be killed, that was not what they'd signed up for. For many, the army was a job--more opportunity than the depressed economies of their hometowns or the mean streets of the city offered. Did they ever expect to go into a combat situation? "No," said three young mothers, part of a support unit heading to Tuzla for a year. They were sending their babies home to their parents for the duration. "He won't even know me," one said sadly.

Raise such situations with their officers and they are impatient to assure reporters that they are working on the childcare situation. What they really want to talk about is the unprecedented military task about to be undertaken. Twenty-five nations, including the Russians, are sending troops for the 60,000-member force united under one command. "It's historic." Indeed, the very fact of this coalition might itself be the best deterrent against future conflicts. The kind of thugs who wreaked havoc in Bosnia, in what a worker with the International Rescue Committee called "a war of opportunity," cannot be allowed to kill and rape with impunity.

On December 14, the peace accord was signed in Paris. Alternating with reports on the pageantry and speeches there were reports on the lukewarm support represented by the votes of Senate and House in Washington. Do Americans hesitate to back the president because the call to peace is more elusive than the call to war? Traditionally, nations have set armies marching by screaming for the blood of their enemies. Risk-taking for peace is harder to sell.

Speaking in Paris, President Clinton wondered why skeptics were so sure "that Balkan hearts were too hard for peace." In South Africa, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland, he said, people are "turning from hatred to hope." Here gathered under NATO command were countries who had long been enemies now working together for peace. Clinton asked for God's grace. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, head of the UN, invoked the "commonweal" three times. "We are all servants of the commonweal," he said.

Admiral Leighton W. Smith, the NATO commander, will take over command from General Bernard Janiver, who headed the UN peacekeeping forces. Smith will be in charge of the largest ground force sent into action in Europe since World War Il. He has already made his mark with the troops. A Navy jet pilot himself, he is the man who refused to give up on finding Captain Scott Grady, shot down by the Serbs in June 1995. Smith ordered the rescue in which sixty men put themselves at risk to bring one home.

The trip from Baumholder to Mostar in Western Bosnia takes less than a day. The sixteenth-century Mostar bridge, along with the old town's unique Turkish architecture, was shelled and destroyed during the fighting. An ugly iron bridge has replaced it [see cover]. It is dusk and the winter darkness blurs the ruins. Nobody walks through the once-teeming streets. The glass front of one small shop has been replaced. Through the door a man is working at an easel. With his back to the iron bridge, he paints the old bridge from memory. He is serving the commonweal; the soldiers of the 1st Armored Division are on their way to help him in this endeavor.

Mary Pat Kelly, writer and filmmaker, traveled with the press corps covering President Clinton's visits to Ireland and Germany,from where she traveled to Croatia and Bosnia.