Troops Patch Together A Christmas
For 1,200 American troops to properly celebrate Christmas in Bosnia, the drill is to follow orders - and improvise.
If you’re artilleryman Richard Sausedo of Fayetteville, N.C., you chop off the top of a pine tree with your army knife. Then you plant the minitree on the asphalt outside your seven-man tent near the menacing howitzers and decorate it with a snuff can, wrappers from Army rations, candy bars and Christmas cards sent by a Brownie troop in Kenosha, Wis.
Paratrooper Ronald Spear, a rail-thin 22-year-old from Meridian, Miss., volunteered to play Santa Claus on Saturday for about 100 Bosnian Croat, Muslim and Serb kids after the children sang and danced for about 70 American soldiers in the mess hall.”Basically all I know is “Ho! Ho! Ho!,” said the jolly Spear, 22, who took deep breaths and practiced Ho! Ho! Ho-ing before
Spear borrowed a reporter’s heavy coat to stuff inside his Santa suit. He tied a white plastic bag around his chin so it looked like a beard - sort of.
The contrast was stark as bulky soldiers tapped their heavy combat boots on the concrete floor and bellowed Christmas choruses with the children.Services are scheduled on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for Protestants and Catholics. But without another Mormon, O’Gollaher, a full-time public relations officer with the Idaho National Guard, will pray alone with his Bible and the Book of Mormon.
Before Sgt. Manuel Guerrero of Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, left his paratrooper base in Italy, he explained to his 9-year-old daughter why Bosnia beckoned.
“I explained to my daughter that people talk about peace all over the world and that we can actually do something about bringing peace to Bosnia. And then my daughter wrote me a letter explaining that she understood why I had to be here. I will read her letter again on Christmas,” Guerrero said.
Pipe-smoking Capt. Hugh Shoults of Spokane missed out on midnight Mass at the Vatican with his girlfriend and on a planned skiing vacation with her in Austria. But, believe it or nor, Shoults is looking forward to a military-style Christmas dinner, perhaps because he has no choice.
“Probably the best meal I’ve ever had in my life was Thanksgiving dinner in Saudi Arabia in 1990, and I’ve eaten in some five-star restaurants,” Shoults said.