'Hold Your Line! Hold Your Fire!'

摘要

It started with serbs spitting at the Americans. Soldiers of the 82d Airborne Division were emerging from a building in Mitrovica, Kosovo, that they'd just searched for weapons. A crowd gathered. "Come on, shoot me, you cowards," one Serbian man shouted, baring his chest. "You can't bomb us now," another sneered. Capt. Mark Pratt ordered the 132 men of his Bravo Company to stand shoulder to shoulder. "Hold your line, Joes," he and his noncoms shouted. That was easy enough. "And hold your fire!" That was harder.