Trusted Mole: A Soldier’s Journey into Bosnia’s Heart of Darkness

‘But, what’re you driving at? Get it out!’

‘All right. This is the way it is. I’m the son of refugees who’ve lost everything they had in Yugoslavia. My father began life in Britain as a displaced person, as a hod carrier. Growing up was a nightmare. There was no money. Endless arguments over making ends meet. We were the only kids at school without pocket money. When you grow up in that environment you adopt the same mentality. You become a sort of Scrooge, a hoarder. My mother won’t throw anything out, ever. She works at Dr Barnado’s and buys half the shop for herself! The house is full of rubbish; the family motto is “mend and make do”. Why? Because she once lost everything. It’s recorded in her memory banks. You become like that yourself.’

‘How does all this tie in with Bosnia and going native?’

‘Simple, Nix. Here’s the rub. You’ve got everything. Life is comfortable financially. You’ve been careful as hell and have thousands stashed away – thousands that will never be spent – just in case … and then you go out there and something massive happens in your life. Something so huge that it makes you go native …’

‘What?’

‘You meet the Little People, as General Rose used to call them. You meet these Little People because you’re in a privileged position. You speak the lingo and you have this curse of understanding, a sort of secret passageway into their minds and mentality. You have the curse because you’re born with it. You are one of them. And when you meet them you’re staring into a time warp. You’re staring at the way your parents once were. You’re looking at people who ten months previously had a life, a family, a house, comfort, electricity and gas at a flick, possessions and things that make life tick along. Everything you now take for granted. And suddenly BANG, they’ve got nothing. They’ve lost members of the family killed, the kids have been evacuated and they’re somewhere in the West – but where? They don’t know. They haven’t heard from them for a year. They’ve got no heating, no light, no gas and it’s freezing cold. They’re cowering in their miserable little flats that used to be homes. Some of the rooms they can’t go into because shrapnel and bullets come in through the window. In a dirty backroom, where it’s safer, they huddle over a jam jar of water which has an inch of oil floating on top, and a piece of string suspended in this thing is burning with a yellow sooty flame. And they’re scared out of their tiny minds because they have no future. But, they do have their dignity, which they cling to desperately because it’s all they’ve got. When you see that for the first time and you’re staring at your parents through a hole in time, you’re touched by something, which I can’t adequately explain. And it’s only then that you realise that all you have, your comfortable home in Farnham, the car, the bike, the emergency dosh – all of it is meaningless. Because you have everything and they have nothing and you’re ashamed. And these were people whom I loathed because they were “Communists”! Up close they’re just human beings who want what you and I want – a life. When that happens, you’re presented with a choice – do something or do nothing. Walk on by on the other side or cross the street … I chose to cross the street. I went native, simple as that.’

Niki has gone terribly silent. Neither of us is saying anything. A million thoughts, none of them good, are turning over in my mind. If that couple over there, sitting quietly with their drinks, minding their own businesses, could read my mind. Christ Almighty. I’m seeing them in Sarajevo, in Hell, going through what people out there go through. They haven’t the faintest idea what it’s all about. Niki breaks my train of thought, thank God.

I can feel her tugging on my arm. ‘Milos! You’re staring at those people. Are you all right?’

‘Do you think there’s such a thing as Fate, Nix?’

‘I do. I’ve always thought there was such a thing.’

‘Well, there is. I know it exists because I’ve experienced it. I sound like a bloody raving missionary. It comes out of nowhere, it leads you down a path and yet you don’t know you’re being led. And it starts with something totally innocuous.’

‘For example?’

‘Well, in my case it was a small parcel from the UK. Y’know, I didn’t just up and decide to be a do-gooder. As I’ve explained, my instincts are quite selfish. Had that first parcel not come out I’d probably have done a couple of six-monthers out there as a regular Joe interpreter. I’d have come away from that place clean, but none the wiser. I got pushed into it by that first parcel.’

‘I don’t understand this thing about parcels.’

‘That’s because I haven’t told you about it. Listen, as I’ve told you, the fighting between the Muslims and Croats intensifies throughout January. The tension spreads north-eastwards right up to Vitez in the Lasva valley. Checkpoints spring up all over the place – BiH and HVO checkpoints. They’re like dogs marking their territory, staking claim to their villages and hamlets. The road linking Vitez with Kiseljak through the Busovaca valley is riddled with these checkpoints and very shortly the fighting erupts there at a place called Kacuni. By now Bob Stewart is spending every day trying to keep the lid on all this. He’s shuttling the various commanders up to Kiseljak for talks at BHC. In front of the UN they agree to cease-fires that collapse before the ink is dry. The situation gets so bad that eventually Brigadier Cumming is summoned back to London on 22 January to attend a Prime Minister’s working supper at Number 10.

‘That morning he’s up in the MoD briefing various people and he bumps into Major General Mike Jackson, who has some job in the Ministry at the time. Jackson’s a Para. He was CO in the mid-1980s when he commanded 1 PARA in Bulford. We call him PoD, the Prince of Darkness, because although he’s English we reckon that he actually comes from Transylvania and needs at least a litre of fresh human blood every day to keep him going. We adored him, but he was dangerous – if you drink with Jackson you die! Jackson hands Cumming this small parcel. Apparently, he’s got an au pair, a young girl from Sarajevo, who was stuck in London when the war started and hasn’t had any contact with her parents in Sarajevo. Jackson gives Cumming this parcel and asks him to see if he can get it delivered. That evening he attends the supper at Number 10. They’re all there: John Major, Lord Owen, Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind, etc.

‘Later, I asked Brigadier Andrew how it went, so I’ve only got this second hand. So, they’re all there pontificating about how to make the VOPP work and banging on about “lines-to-take” and “ways-forward”. They completely ignore Cumming. Eventually, towards the end Cumming is asked his opinion since he’s the man on the ground. Cumming tells them straight, same as he told the press back in Kiseljak: “As we speak the Croats are pitchforking to death Muslim farmers around Prozor …” Douglas Hurd is incredulous and apparently says, “I don’t think we want to hear that.” Well, of course they didn’t; it blows their plan to bits. But Cumming did say that Hurd approached him afterwards and said, “Is that really what’s happening?” Even they couldn’t believe that these “allies” were turning against each other.

‘A few days later Brigadier Cumming is back and five of us drive up to Kiseljak in the Discovery. That’s the three of us plus the Civil Adviser and Captain David Crummish who is the SO3 G3 Ops in the Split HQ. General Morillon has decided it’s time for a big pow-wow on how to withdraw the UN from B-H. As you can see, we were full of self-confidence. We called it the “Running Away Conference”. Cumming and all the COs have to attend. Come the day of the conference at BHC we’re all pretty redundant so Cumming suggests that, rather than hanging around the foyer of the hotel all day long, we take a trip into Sarajevo. He asks me to take along Jackson’s parcel and give it to Peter Jones to deliver. That morning the four of us – Simon Fox, the Civil Adviser, David Crummish and myself – leap into one of the Danish M113 APCs which run a couple of regular daily shuttles between the city and BHC. And off we go along that Dungeons & Dragons route of unpredictable checkpoints into Sarajevo.’

SEVEN Operation Grapple, Bosnia (#ulink_e444b63c-c4e2-5d50-ad07-0e1fcfabc163)

Thursday 28 January 1993 – Sarajevo

She was quite the most fearsome woman I had ever seen. It wasn’t the one-piece blue camouflage ‘frontier guard’ uniform, nor the short-barrelled AK47 carbine slung over her shoulder. It wasn’t even the gruff manner of her questioning. It was the moustache, the beard and the horrible black hairy mole. I was quaking.

For ten minutes or so we’d clattered along the road out of Kiseljak. Since we hadn’t stopped we’d evidently sailed straight through K-l. The four of us were crammed into the back of the M113 along with one other passenger, a Ukrainian grinning like a maniac. Conversation was out of the question: the clattering of tracks, crashing of gears and high-revving engine all conspired to obliterate any other sound and threatened to loosen our fillings. Like rush-hour commuters we clung grimly onto leather straps as the tin can bounced and lurched alarmingly around corners and bends.

‘What’s in your bag?’ demanded the bearded woman after she’d inspected our ID cards.

‘Just personal effects … you know, for shaving and washing …’ I prayed she wouldn’t inspect it. Wrapped in a towel was the brown paper parcel. It was addressed to Pijalovic, Ulica Romanijska, Sarajevo and even had a photocopied map of the centre of town glued to it showing our destination. It was strictly against the rules by which the shuttle operated to smuggle letters or anything into the Muslims of Sarajevo. Fortunately, she didn’t seem too interested in the daysack and the door of the APC slammed shut again.

You have successfully negotiated the Bearded Woman of S-1 at Kobiljaca. Proceed to S-2!

After another twenty minutes of discomfort the APC once again lurched to a halt. We had no idea where we were. The journey in was utterly disorientating – no frame of reference, no windows. Just the incessant racket and the crazy Ukrainian. Again the door opened and this time an enormously bearded and long-haired Serbian soldier demanded to see our IDs. We were in a tight alley – S-4 – and close to the front line. As we set off, the Danish commander closed his hatch, rolled his eyes and with a sickly grin yelled, ‘Heavy shelling and fighting.’

First stop the airport. No one got out but a couple of UN soldiers squeezed in and off we sped again, racing through no-man’s-land. Even above the APC’s din the dull booming of mortar and shell rounds impacting somewhere could be heard. The APC swerved dangerously around the Stup graveyard and then accelerated down Sniper’s Alley. A couple of minutes later we ground to a halt. ‘PTT Building’ announced our taxi driver.

Stiffly we clambered out of our Tardis and blinked around at the unfamiliar surroundings. The experience had been disorientating, as if we’d stepped into an inefficient and sluggish transporter at Kiseljak. After much discomfort we’d popped out at the other end into another world. Gone were the steep sided, heavily forested, snow-covered valleys of Central Bosnia. Suddenly we were dumped into an unfamiliar world of urban warfare littered with burned-out high rise buildings, crumbling concrete, rusting and abandoned bullet-riddled trams, sagging, broken electric wires. And the incessant, dull booming of impacting shells and the popping of small arms which echoed up and down the valley that was Sarajevo.

Directly in front of us loomed a concrete monstrosity that resembled the superstructure of an aircraft carrier. Being some four or five storeys high and therefore open to shellfire damage, its windows were criss-crossed with brown masking tape. The edifice, something like an imaginery Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, was crowned with a shattered but still legible sign – PTT INZINJERING. The former Postal, Telephone and Telecommunications building was now UN HQ Sector Sarajevo.

To our left, beyond some dirty brown warehouses and what appeared to be a dilapidated cable-making gantry, rose a steep-sided hill. This was Zuc. To this clung myriad houses all with square brown roofs. With little apparent regard for town-planning, these houses had been carelessly and densely scattered across the hillside. Some were burned out. Most of the roofs sported gaping black holes which exposed shattered skeletal timbers. As we stared, one erupted in a cloud of dust. A boom echoed across the valley and bounced off the PTT building. It filled me with terror. This was worse than the valleys where the danger zones and front lines were at least known. This was completely random. A man could get killed here by accident.

We scuttled up a steep concrete ramp, past a French guard and across a raised car park filled with an odd assortment of vehicles, French APCs, armoured Land Rovers and Toyota Land Cruisers. All dirty off-white and adorned with various emblems – UN, UNHCR, UNICEF, ICRC. For such an imposing building, the back entrance was surprisingly modest: a small glass and aluminium door set into the far corner of the car park. The front, on Sniper’s Alley, was far too dangerous to use. A burly French Foreign Legionnaire Para from 2

REP blocked our further passage to safety. Patiently we lined up and showed our IDs. The fact that we were in uniform and wearing blue helmets seemed to matter not a jot. This was the land of checkpoints, of ID cards and of hard men ‘with orders’.

Once we’d penetrated this UN citadel we found ourselves in a large foyer, at journey’s end. We hadn’t a clue where to go next. All the BiH and BSA liaison offices, as well as aid agencies, had been stuffed down a narrow, gloomy corridor. I was vaguely aware of civilians scurrying between offices, ID cards around their necks. I was sure I’d find Peter Jones here. It surprised me that all the aid agencies had been isolated in such a small part of the building but I later discovered that they were engaged in a bitter defensive battle with the military. Quite simply, the French wanted the civilians out of their military citadel. It seemed to me that we soldiers had already forgotten precisely why we were in Bosnia.

We went in search of somebody to brief us. David Crummish wanted to talk to someone, anyone, in Ops. The interior of the PTT building almost defied description. A wide, square, dark central well of cold stairs ran from the top of the building right down into its subterranean depths. A hawser of cables of varying degrees of thickness, all taped together into a knotted black snake, hung down the well. It was the core of the building’s central nervous system. At each level it sprouted nerves of black worms which meandered along gloomy, wooden-partitioned corridors leading to offices, Ops rooms, and, further up, accommodation. The inhabitants of the citadel were all escapees from Blade Runner. Coal-scuttle helmeted Legionnaires, FAMAS rifles strapped across their chests, long bayonets slapping loosely against their thighs, the buckles on their boots jangling, menaced the entrances like members of a Praetorian Guard. Elsewhere in the dim corridors the camouflage uniforms of a plethora of nations vied for attention. Weaving their way between the uniforms, civilians – locals, interpreters and internationals – darted about their business. One thing united them all: everyone seemed to be clutching a Motorola walkie-talkie into which they would scream in whatever language seemed appropriate.

The Ukrainian Ops Officer’s English was limited. David Crummish nodded politely, understanding nothing. I couldn’t be bothered to listen to his gibberish. It reminded me of Kuwait. All I wanted to do was to find Peter Jones. I’d popped into UNHCR and politely asked where he could be found. I’d met a wall of hostile faces – they didn’t like soldiers in their enclave – and had been informed that he was out in a place called Dobrinja, that he’d be back in an hour or so. Eventually the Ukrainian’s English ran out. We were left none the wiser, but in true English fashion thanked him profusely for a most informative overview of the situation in Sarajevo.

Rumour had it that the Praetorian Guard had a coffee shop somewhere in the bowels of the citadel. We set off in opposite directions and I found myself on a lower level, in a narrow corridor, my path blocked by a huge Legionnaire with a lantern jaw and shaven head.

‘Excuse … me …’ I spoke no French so took it slowly, ‘… is … there … anywhere … where … a … man … can … get … a … coffee? … Café?’

‘You a Brit?’ he replied in an accent straight from the mid-West cornbelt. Dumbstruck, I nodded slowly. ‘Sure, buddy. One floor down, same corridor, turn right at the end …’ And then he was gone. Later I got to know him well – Tom Iron, ex-US Ranger, now Corporal-Chef, 2

REP.

The four of us regrouped and descended into the depths in search of the elusive coffee shop. Not there. Oops, that’s a hospital. ‘So sorry’; two Legionnaires glared at us malevolently from their card game. We were in yet another corridor, still hunting, opening doors and apologising profusely.

Suddenly, the cloistered quiet of the corridor was shattered by a wild, animal scream and a babble of desperate voices, which surged around the corner and stopped us in our tracks. Moments later a gaggle of perhaps fifteen or twenty people, some uniformed, choked the passage ahead and advanced towards us. Unsure what to do, we flattened ourselves against the walls. A young girl of perhaps fifteen or sixteen was shrieking her head off. She was howling – a horrifying animal scream of madness. She wasn’t so much being helped and supported as actually being carried. Arms and legs firmly gripped, she was carried aloft, struggling and fighting like a beserker while the crowd babbled in concerned and anguished ‘polyglot’. The mob, flailing limbs and all, swept past us and turned the corner towards the hospital. The girl’s screams echoed back down the corridor. We stood there, rooted to the spot, horrified, speechless. Something in those unhinged, feral screams had touched us all. I looked across at David and the Civil Adviser. Their eyes were staring and the blood had drained from their faces. I can hear those screams today and I can still see those ashen, horrified faces. We looked at each other for what seemed an eternity. No one moved. No one even murmured. Corporal Fox was the first to react and save us. I felt him jab me in the ribs and I could see his face in front of me. His eyes were twinkling slightly and I could see his lips, half-smiling, move in laconic slow motion.

‘You know what, sir? I know exactly what she is going through.’

‘How’s that then, Corporal Fox?’ I heard myself say.

He chuckled then laughed slowly. ‘I hate going to the dentist as well.’

The spell was broken. The screams receded. We laughed nervously and self-consciously, aware that we had been, momentarily, somewhere dark and awful. We abandoned our search for coffee and, in silence, went back up to the foyer. We didn’t know it at the time but the girl, a local, had been walking past the PTT building with her father. A mortar round had landed very close to them. It had decapitated him but had left her unscathed, splattered and standing in a warm pool of his brains, gore and blood – screaming her head off in terror … … Welcome to Sarajevo.

Cumming’s instructions had been quite specific. ‘Give the package to Peter. Tell him to deliver it only if and when he can. He shouldn’t go out of his way or risk himself.’ When I eventually located Peter he looked at the map on the package and told me the address was in the middle of town. Since I spoke the language, he said, I could deliver it myself.

We clambered into his battered old Range Rover, which had belonged to the British Ambassador in Athens. It had found its way, courtesy of Ms Glynne Evans of the FCO’s UN Department, into Sarajevo for BRITDET’s use. Until its appearance Peter and the others had only had the protection afforded by a soft-skinned Land Rover. Their job required them to cross front lines every day.

Peter Jones is an exceptional man. He is also extremely lucky to be alive. I first met him in July 1987 when we were both ‘sickies’ at RAF Headley Court, an RAF/Army Rehabilitation unit in Surrey. I was there rebuilding arm and shoulder muscles after a routine shoulder operation. Peter was learning to walk again having lost six inches from both legs after he’d fallen several hundred feet off a Scottish mountain. It had nearly killed him but he was making a full recovery. I only ever heard him complain once. Sucking on a Marlboro he whinged, with a smile, that the accident had cost him a small fortune in new uniforms! It came as no surprise to me that the ex-six foot two officer had been selected to lead a tiny detachment of three other soldiers in Sarajevo. I know of no one who could have done the job better.

In November 1992 UNHCR Sarajevo had asked the British to lend them some logistics advice. At the time Peter was the Ops Officer of the National Support Element at TSG. He was tasked to select and take into Sarajevo a team of three other logistics experts to help and advise UNHCR on the finer points of setting up a logistics operation for the delivery of humanitarian aid. He chose WO2 Don Hodgeson, SSgt Allan Knight and LCpl Caroline Cove. Together they drove into Sarajevo in a soft-skinned Land Rover towing a trailer. They were due to remain for two weeks but stayed for 110 days. For UNHCR they found three warehouses in the city and established an efficient system of secondary and tertiary distribution of aid. The aid was in-loaded from the warehouse at the airport to the city warehouses from where, in consultation with a four-man Bosnian commission, it was further distributed to eighty-four ‘communes’ (defined as a street, apartment block or area) on a fortnightly basis. In addition they strove to keep Kosevo hospital supplied with fuel oil. This brief description of their efforts does absolutely no justice to their success. On arrival they met with hostility from the local Sarajevan UNHCR staff. When they left there was scarcely a dry eye in the house.

The conditions they endured daily were far more extreme than any endured by British troops in Bosnia. BRITDET Sarajevo was the jewel in the crown. It was a flagship operation which was monitored closely by the FCO and which, rightly, accorded Peter ‘favoured son’ status in Split.