Last week, Specialist Gonzales, 21, and two superiors–Staff Sgt. Christopher Stone, 25, and Staff Sgt. Andrew Ramirez, 24–were seized by the Serbs somewhere near that ill-marked border. They turned up on Serb TV with their faces bruised, threatened with trial by a Yugoslav military court. Though it wasn’t announced where they were being held, the three soldiers seemed to bear their ordeal bravely. Relatives said they were determined young men who had enlisted in the Army for the challenge as much as for the paycheck. But by the end of the week, it still wasn’t clear whether they had strayed–or were somehow pushed–across the border. Nor was there definitive word on who had captured them or how they had been separated from the relative safety of their armored Humvee.
After their original assignment ended, the GIs continued to do what they did under U.N. auspices: run small patrols close to a border that was suddenly a lot more dangerous because of the air war. Patrolling the same ground over and over made them vulnerable to abductors, and they had no significant backup in case of trouble.
Washington insisted that the three were prisoners of war and that the Geneva Convention prohibits putting them on trial. The Yugoslavs disagreed, and, for now, possession seems to trump the law. The notorious Serb paramilitary leader known as Arkan told the BBC that the three men were “being treated well.” He dismissed their bruises as signs of a struggle by “brave soldiers” who didn’t want to give up. To some relatives waiting anxiously at home, bruised faces weren’t the worst thing that could happen. In Riley Center, Mich., Stone’s sister, Dawn Reliford, said, “It’s better to see him beat up than dead.”
