En Route to Somalia, Some Troops Are Uneasy About Mission

HINESVILLE, Ga. —  The men and women of Ft. Stewart are packing up again, preparing to depart for another conflict far from home.

During the Persian Gulf War, this 279,000-acre Army post in southeast Georgia sent about 16,000 soldiers to the Middle East.

Now, amid yellow ribbons and grim faces on a dusty afternoon, the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) is loading troops and machinery for Somalia. And many here are uneasy about it.

“I don’t think we ought to be in Somalia,” Jeweline Trosha, the wife of a civilian employee at the fort, said Saturday. “We send them food and clothing and then what do they do in return? We get our boys drug through the streets dead.”

“I don’t think we should be there in the first place. said Joseph Fleming, 21, of Texas, a member of a tank crew at the base. “The U.S. has one of the biggest noses in the world, and they stick it in everywhere.”

Two hundred troops from the fort have already been deployed to Somalia as part of the buildup of military forces ordered by President Clinton; 800 more are scheduled to follow in the next two weeks.

They are among 1,700 Army combat troops being sent to the East African nation that will bring the total number of U.S. soldiers and Marines in Somalia and offshore to about 10,500.

Units from Ft. Stewart will be joined by forces from the 10th Mountain Division at Ft. Drum, N.Y., the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Pendleton and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Even at Ft. Stewart, a place already hardened by war, the sudden intrusion of this mission has come as an unsettling jolt.

Jerrie Cole tearfully complained that her wedding, planned for Oct. 16, was postponed after her fiance went to Somalia last week. “I don’t like it,” she said. “He’d already been to Desert Storm, and now this. I’m blaming the President.”

“After Desert Storm, people didn’t expect it for a while,” said Karen Gilbert, a real estate agent whose husband was away for eight months during the battle to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi invaders. “It’s just as serious for the families involved.”