How the Troops See It

By Richard Lacayo

When he left for Mogadishu last December, Army SPC Glenn Follett imagined he would be going there as part of a salvation army: soldiers distributing food to starving children. Instead, he spent much of his four-month tour of duty fighting scorpions and ducking fire from the gunmen of local warlords. "In the first two weeks I was in Somalia, I saw more combat than during six months in Saudi ((Arabia))," says Follett, a recently discharged Gulf War veteran who is now back in Watertown, New York. "As soon as we stepped off the plane, we were getting shot at."

American troops back from Somalia say they weren't surprised by the physical hardships: poisonous snakes and malarial mosquitoes, wilting heat and foul water. What came as a shock was the sniper fire against bulldozer drivers trying to clear roads for food convoys. And the viciousness of the clan warfare they found themselves caught up in from the moment they arrived. And the sight of their comrades going home in coffins.

When Captain John Anderson flew into Kismayu last December, the door of his C-141 air transport opened to admit a blast of foul air. "It was the smell of rotting flesh," he recalls. Not far from the airstrip was a pile of partly dismembered bodies in a shallow mass grave, victims of a local warlord. In some places, Somalis who at first welcomed the Americans became resentful when they realized that the U.S. would not simply wipe out the warlords who were terrorizing them. At the same time, soldiers found themselves in mortal danger whenever they seemed to be taking sides in even the pettiest disputes among rival clans. Sergeant Kevin Anderson, a military-police officer, recalls sitting by in frustration as clan-vs.-clan arguments turned into free-for- alls. "Pretty soon," he says, "rocks would be flying back and forth from these David-and-Goliath slings they used. Then someone would go get a small- caliber weapon. Then someone from the other side would get a bigger weapon, and all hell broke loose."

In general, soldiers assigned to the countryside found duty more gratifying and less perilous than those who were dumped into the chaos of Mogadishu. When Captain Ted Campagna and his infantry company arrived in the city of Jilib, an average of 60 local people died each day, mostly from gunshot wounds. "After we were there," says Campagna, "the death rate dropped to three or four a day." That was a morale booster. So was the eventual sight of villages coming | alive again and fields being put back into cultivation. "As we were pulling out," says Sergeant Donald Grimm, "and you started to see all the crops, you'd say, 'We made a big difference in Somalia.' "

For soldiers lucky enough to see such progress -- even some, like Sergeant Roy Malasig of the 362nd Engineer Company, who were wounded -- the Somalia mission has seemed worthwhile. Last month, just days after arriving in Somalia, Malasig's right leg was peppered with shrapnel when his unit was attacked by gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades. Recuperating at home near Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Malasig is eager to return to his unit in Somalia. But if he does return, he knows it will be to a place bedeviled by bloodshed and paradox. "It's like this," he explains, "I was driving down the road one day, and there were these two little boys. The one on the left side was waving and smiling. The one on the right side threw a rock that broke my mirror."

With reporting by Elaine Shannon/Washington and Lisa H. Towle/Raleigh