Boogie 'til You Bounce : Lt. McMurry's Bosnia Diary

Boogie 'til You Bounce
From Green Bay to Bosnia logo

My Bosnia Diary

Introduction

Left to right: 1LT Preston McMurry, SGT Scott Argetsinger, CPT Matt Fellinger and SFC Tony Libassi.

This journal is not meant to be a comprehensive analysis of the great sweep of Balkan events since it all began in 1389 at the battle of Kosovo Polje. That would be impossible in this context. Instead it is the story of one soldier's experiences in Bosnia from January to March, 1996. It is what I saw and thought at the time.

I had two goals when I started my internet journal: One, show what kind of high-speed, can-do organization civil affairs and special operations forces are. (What other type of soldier would have thought to do the same thing?)* Two, give the public an idea of the day-to-day reality of what it's like to be in a war zone -- with all the attendant joy, despair, humor, boredom, etc.

There is no sugar-coating. An explanation of my feelings after the fact would be an attempt at justifying that which needs none. So, it is presented as it was written.

Table of Contents

Page	Chapter
1	Prologue
2	Deployment
3	Arrival in Tuzla
4	Mired in a Mine
12	Locked Down in Olovo
18	Back to Bragg
19	Epilogue
20	Dead Letter Office

My journal entries were posted to the Web on a regular basis while I was in Bosnia. I made arrangements with my friend Scott Naness maintain / update the journal while I was gone. My team team had a laptop, and I brought an ample supply of extra floppies, so I could snail mail chapters on a regular basis. I preformatted a number of different types of pages, so all Scott had to do was load the ascii files onto his web server. The icon links were hard-coded to refer to existing graphic files on my web server. The net effect was seemless. Thanx Scott!

Radio Check McMurry