relief workers prepare for reality at a 'you are there' site in Germany

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Joachim von Hippel, a former German soldier familiar with the dangerous world of Bosnia, Afghanistan and Somalia, has a vivid imagination. Recently, he turned a mountainous area in central Germany into one of the world's hot spots, a place of mass graves, thousands of German refugees and a U.N. peacekeeping force - XFOR - whose mission is to separate two warring parties, the KTU and the OSP.

The scenario may have come straight from Hippel's imagination. But the conditions are all too real in other parts of the world, and the former soldier runs a business called the PAS Team (Power, Action, Survival) that is designed to give people heading into those hot spots a feel for what could lie ahead.

Last month, 12 people from the German relief organization Humedica were the trainees in Hippel's three-day course. Like their missions abroad, the group's members had no idea what awaited them. By the time it was over, however, some were complaining that the events were just a little too real for their liking.

At the start, Hippel provided the group with very little information. He appointed one of the group's members, the paramedic Philipp Neugebauer of Munich, as the leader. He then told them that they should contact the XFOR if they had questions. Five kilometers away, the group went about the task of setting up a camp. As the team labored, Hippel provided a little music to work by, straight from the U.S. Marine Corps (”I will do what I've been told). The former soldier thought this was just what the group needed. ”That makes you aggressive,” he said.

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