WARM WELCOME, COLD FEET

By ANN M. SIMMONS/TUZLA

TORRENTIAL RAINFALL PELTING DOWN ON A CORRUGATED-IRON roof jolted Specialist Jason Andrews from sleep on New Year's morning. "God, I'm still here," was the first thought that occurred to the 23-year-old from Winter Haven, Florida. "I was dreaming about a beach and warm weather," he says, "and I wake up in a sleeping bag in Bosnia."

It was not a particularly pleasant way to start the new year for any of the nearly 2,000 troops who arrived at Tuzla air base as the vanguard of U.S. peace enforcers. Over the previous two weeks, the army's hurry-up-and-wait tradition had been borne out amply and with sore discomfort as units of the 1st Armored Division were ordered to roll south on the double from Germany. First, many soldiers who arrived by dribs and drabs in Kaposvar, Hungary, had to cool their heels for a week in former Scud-missile sheds while the bridge was built over the Sava River. Now more G.I.s are actually in Bosnia, going on patrol, watching out for mines and, of course, griping about the lodgings and the cold.

Andrews, a supplies specialist who arrived in Tuzla on Christmas Eve, was sharing a drafty warehouse with about 200 men and women bedding down on green cots with shaky frames. Featuring a muddy concrete floor and diesel fumes, Building 21 is a temporary billet until tent cities are built at the base. For now, bedtime fashion consists of sweaters, wool hats, glove liners and socks. The bundling up is useful because nighttime temperatures drop below freezing, but it is not much help against drips from a leaky ceiling. Meals are still prepackaged rations of stews, mushy vegetables and dry cake--a diet that either purges the digestive system or shuts it down.

For all their discomfort, the troops try to keep in mind their mission of bringing peace to a land that has experienced unusual cruelty for almost four years. The G.I.s have been reassured by the gracious welcome they generally receive from civilians. Completion of the bridge over the Sava, which enabled the first mass crossing of tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles into Bosnia, drew crowds of appreciative Croats, who marveled at the hardware, not to mention the exotic sight of African Americans. Amid laughing children, Specialist Dustin Graciak of the 3/325th Airborne Combat Team delightedly reported, "They're asking about our weapons and trying to speak English." Mtuzove Zeljko, 14, who picked up some English watching Hollywood movies, said, "I like the Americans. It's good peace is here. No more grenades. No more shooting."

In Tuzla one morning, the 3rd Platoon of Bravo Company conducts its first patrol away from one of the 325th Airborne Combat Team's outposts. Smolje, 5, thumps the flak jacket of Sergeant Brian Hutchens, chatters excitedly and touches the M-16 rifle while trying to mouth the sound of gunfire. The boy follows the troops, in their Kevlar body armor and laden with ammunition, over the rugged, icy landscape. The soldiers walk in a tactical road march, staggered on either side of the trail and leaving 10 meters between each man.

At the gate of a sulfur mine, the track diverges from the platoon's map. A woman named Milana Cavic, who speaks a little English, explains to Hutchens that there are only muddy trails ahead. He asks her if they have been planted with land mines, but geologist Cavic and a male colleague say there are none. The soldiers take their word for it and decide to pass through. The patrol hands Cavic leaflets that say in Serbo-Croatian, "Attention: Soldiers are here to actively facilitate the peace plan." She approves of the mission. "When we lived in Yugoslavia, we had quite a good life--we were all living together," she tells the soldiers. "I hope you never have problems with our people."

The more the G.I.s come to know Bosnia, the more they accept their privations. In a season fit for epiphanies, a revelation struck Chief Warrant Officer Douglas Agee, ill with bronchitis and anxious about his possibly pregnant wife at home. From his Apache helicopter, he saw hundreds of roofless houses, shells of buildings and fields of scorched earth. He set down near the village of Tolisa and talked with two lads who had begun the war as a band of 12. "It was like talking with my younger brother," says Agee. "If being here helps them, it's O.K. I wouldn't want my country living like this."

COLOR PHOTO: RON HAVIV--SABA FOR TIME The smallest civilians are the G.I.s' new best friends [Soldier greeting child]