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

As we drove east along the main drag towards downtown Sarajevo the geography of the city both in terms of terrain and buildings changed markedly. The valley became narrower and the buildings older. For the most part, Sarajevo is a prime example of the dreariest Communist high rise architecture and reminded me vividly of the buildings I had seen in Minsk and Moscow, where the Army had sent me to learn Russian in the 1980s. There was scarcely a single building that remained unscathed. On the left – a grotesque concrete battleship, the TV building. Further on, the Holiday Inn hotel, a foul-looking six-storey square of yellow. Three-quarters of it was still functioning for the press, to whom rooms were charged at pre-war prices. Behind it were the twin UNIS tower blocks of glass, miniature versions of New York’s World Trade Centre. Both were virtually gutted with not a single pane of glass left unbroken. On the right – a huge oblong skyscraper, which had served as B-H’s parliament. Now completely gutted, it was home to snipers and sharpshooters. In some instances buildings had ceased to exist at all. Peter tried to explain the layout of the front lines but it was too confusing to absorb. I remember being surprised when he said that the Serbs not only held the hills around but also parts of the city where the line came down almost to the River Miljacka, which paralleled the main drag east-west through this long and thin valley city. Where the front line cut into the city, as it did opposite the Holiday Inn, the threat from snipers was greatest. Here ISO containers had been stacked upon each other as a barrier to view if not to bullets.

From the gutted parliament onwards the architecture became nineteenth-century Austro-Hungarian – much more pleasant on the eye, though just as battle-scarred. We were now driving along an embankment. To our right, the Miljacka was spanned at intervals by small, arched bridges. We drove over the spot where Archduke Ferdinand had been shot dead by Gavrilo Princip in 1914. On the left was the famous Europa hotel, now a grotty refugee centre. On the right, over the river, an area of tight, winding, narrow alleys and rocket-shaped minarets. This was Bistrik.

At the end of the embankment the city virtually stopped dead at the narrowest and oldest part of this steep-sided valley. High to the right – Serbs. High to our front – an old Turkish fort, and higher yet, an Austro-Hungarian barracks, both of which were Muslim-defended. At the extremity of our journey the road virtually looped back on itself, curving tightly to the left. In the centre of the loop stood the most beautiful building of all, the Vijecnica, or Public Records Library, which until August 1992 had been maintained in the Austro-Hungarian style. Like so many other buildings, it was now a hollow burned-out shell. Even its great marble pillars had cracked and splintered in the savage heat which had devoured its precious contents.

We were now heading west again. The area between the embankment and us – Bascarsija – was the oldest part of Sarajevo and the heartbeat of Bosnian Muslim tradition. To our right a number of tight alleys led uphill. Suddenly, we swung right up one of them. Peter slowed and checked the map on the parcel. He stopped the vehicle. ‘Ulica Romanijska, Apartment Block 2. This is it. That’s your entrance. We’ll wait for you. Good luck.’

I stepped out of the vehicle clutching the package. The armoured door closed with a clunk and I suddenly felt very alone, teetering on the cusp of two cultures. One lay in the Land Rover. Up some steps and through a dirty glass and metal door lay another. My heart started pounding.

Trudging up several flights of cold stairs I could have been in any one of hundreds of thousands of examples of hastily built ‘people’s accommodation’ which littered Eastern Europe. At the top of each flight was a small square landing. To the left and to the right, blue apartment doors, each with a small brass plaque. On the fifth floor the door on the right bore the plaque engraved ‘Pijalovic’. I banged on the door. My heart started beating even faster. What do they look like? What shall I say? No answer. I banged again. Still no answer, no sounds of movement from within. I was about to give it a third try when a woman poked her head around the stairs from the floor above.

‘They’re not at home. They’re both out …’ Her voice trailed off when she saw me. Her hand flew to her throat and her eyes bled confusion. The two aliens stared at each other. I realised I was still wearing the flak jacket and helmet.

I cleared my throat, ‘Er … I’m looking for the Pijalovics … for Minka Pijalovic … I’ve got a parcel from her daughter in London …’

‘Aida!! You know her? Where is she? How is she? … quick, come upstairs.’ She beckoned urgently. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I couldn’t admit defeat now. Hesitantly, I followed her upstairs and into her flat. Who is Aida? Is that her name, the girl in London?

‘How do you know Aida? How is she? … they haven’t heard word from her since the start …’ She had recovered her composure somewhat, ‘… I’m sorry, but … well, we’ve never had a visitor from UNPROFOR here before.’ There! She does think I’m an alien!

‘Well, she’s fine … I mean, I don’t know her … all I know is that she’s the au pair to one of our generals in London … this package is from her, I’m only the postman here …’

‘And Arna? Where’s she?’ Who the hell is Arna? I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head, ‘Fine, I suppose …’

We were standing in her tiny kitchen. It was sparse and bare. The window had been smashed in and replaced with a sheet of plastic. The walls and ceiling were gouged and pitted in several places where shrapnel had flown in. How can people live like this?

She promised to deliver the package. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know her. How could I trust her not to keep it for herself? She told me her name was Greta and that she was a Serb. The Pijalovics were Muslims. Could I trust her? I had no choice and handed the package over. She looked up at me. There was hurt and sorrow in her eyes. It was as if she’d read something in mine.

‘You see. The war has even touched you. The first demon of war is suspicion … we’re all friends here in this block. We look after each other … we have to …’

I felt sick at having been exposed. Guiltily, I fished out a cigarette. It didn’t occur to me to offer her one. She was middle-aged, proper looking, clean and smart. She didn’t look like a grubby smoker, but her eyes followed my cigarette with a desperate hunger.

‘Do you mind if I have one of your cigarettes?’ Her voice was small and hollow.

I was shocked and suddenly, for the second time in as many minutes, embarrassed. She was embarrassed for asking and I was embarrassed because she was, ‘… I haven’t had one for … I mean … we have nothing … I can’t offer you coffee … I can’t even light this fire … we’ve nothing …’ Her voice started to quaver and I could see her eyes beginning to mist over. Shame engulfed me. All these trinkets I had, these guaranteed comforts of life, all taken for granted by me were gold dust to her, and she had been reduced to begging for a cigarette.

I dropped the packet and the cheap plastic lighter on the table. ‘Please, have these, I’ve got plenty more.’ I dug around and found a box of matches in a pocket. What have I got in my wallet? I fished it out. Only 40 Deutschmarks! But I dropped those on the table as well. I wished then I’d had more. She stared at the fortune on her table, but she didn’t reject it. If it was probably the most humiliating moment of her life, it was my most shameful. I wished I’d had more to give her.

‘You’re one of us … one of “ours” … I mean, the language.’ Ti si nas! One of ours! Am I? What does she mean … one of ‘ours’? What shall I tell her? I can’t lie, not to her.

I told her straight. I told her the truth. I couldn’t be bothered to lie, not to a woman who had almost burst into tears in front of me. As I explained, the blood drained from her face, replaced by a look of horror.

‘Don’t ever breathe a word of this!’ She was breathless, eyes pleading and concerned. ‘Don’t tell anyone … it’s not safe for you here. You’re from over there. You don’t know what we’re like here.’ Her voice became sad, ‘… they should never have sent you. Go home and save yourself!’

‘They didn’t … I sent myself. It was my choice.’ Her words had echoed my father’s. Are they all that wicked here? All of them? Have I missed a trick here?

‘Here!’ she announced triumphantly as she rummaged about in a cupboard and fished out a bottle of something pink. ‘We’ve got no coffee, but we’ve all got drink. That’s something we’re never short of. At least I can offer you some cherry brandy!’ She was laughing now. At least they still had their dignity and sense of humour. We started drinking and chatting.

There was a bang on the door. Greta looked startled and suddenly frightened. Cautiously she opened the door and caught her breath. ‘More UNPROFOR!’

Peter and David stood at the door, Peter looking both worried and relieved at the same time.

‘Mike! We were worried about you … thought you’d been kidnapped or something.’

I laughed, looked at Greta and then at her pile of gold dust on the table. ‘I have been, Peter … in a manner of speaking.’ I finished the drink, kissed Greta on the cheek and left her. I didn’t see her again for two and a half years.

Peter continued his guided tour, this time up to Kosevo Hospital and the Lion Cemetery for David’s benefit. I didn’t register the rest of the tour (my mind was elsewhere) but eventually we found ourselves back at the PTT building. We dropped David off; he was going to overnight there and catch the airlift down to Split in the morning. The Civil Adviser and Simon Fox were still in the building somewhere and David promised to make sure they caught the last APC shuttle back to Kiseljak. Peter offered to drive me back in the Range Rover. He had something to buy in Kiseljak and added that it would be useful for me to see the Dungeons & Dragons route through glass.

As we drove he told me about the difficulties of the job, how he was stretched having to deal with problems in the city and with difficult people on the Serb side. ‘You’re wasted in Central Bosnia. This is where you should be … you’d be most useful on the Serb side unblocking problems there. This is where you should be …’ He’d just planted the idea in my head. I mulled it over – This is where it’s at … where it’s really happening. But how?

‘Peter, why don’t you mention it to Brigadier Cumming. He’s at Kiseljak now. I can’t ask … besides he’ll say “no” anyway.’ I also knew that I was shortly to be posted up to the Cheshires in Vitez. Bob Stewart had been asking for me for several weeks now. He needed both Nick and me, one of us up in Tuzla to cover the Op CABINET crossings, the other in Vitez to cover the Op SLAVIN crossings. As it was Nick was having to dash between the two. Stewart had a point, and within days, in fact on the back of the Minister for the Armed Forces and the Adjutant General’s visit, due to happen on 8 February, I’d go up country for the last time and be left in Vitez. It didn’t appeal much. But the idea of working in Sarajevo did.

We sailed through all the Sierras. Even S-l was no problem. The bearded monster recognised Peter, broke into a huge, toothy smile and forced a glass of Slivovica onto us. The penny dropped – the key to all this is the personal contact.

Predictably, Brigadier Cumming said no. He could read us like a book – two naughty schoolboys, plotting. ‘No, he’s needed in Central Bosnia … and he’s still my asset.’

At half-six Peter departed as the Sierras closed down for the night at seven. There was still no sign of the APC shuttle or of the Civil Adviser and Simon. Unbeknown to us Sarajevo was being subjected to an intense and sustained barrage. Both men were trapped in the PTT building and were consequently being subjected to an all-night barrage of red wine from Peter. Somehow he’d made it back through the shelling. That’s what he was like.

‘Driver’s let us down! Stanley! You’re driving, let’s get back to Fojnica.’ Cumming wasn’t bothered. He would have been had he known I’d never driven a Discovery before and certainly not on iced-up roads in the dark.

It had started snowing again. We stopped for an hour or so at the BBC house in Kiseljak where Martin Bell, ‘the Man in the White Suit’, entertained us. We fell into deep conversation. I wanted to know more about the place.

We arrived back in Fojnica before midnight. I’d driven in silence and listened as the Brigadier told me how the conference had gone. It had been something of a jamboree during which it had been discovered that the British were the only contingent in theatre with the command and control assets – radios – necessary to effect a UN withdrawal. As we drove somehow I knew we wouldn’t be leaving. I pictured Greta in her flat, in the dark, in the freezing cold, with no future and only despair for companionship. We wouldn’t be going. We couldn’t abandon them – the Little People.

EIGHT Operation Bretton (#ulink_89ceb6c9-dae7-5539-98f5-56e88dc4b567)

October 1997 – Ian, UK

‘So, that’s it, Ian. You stand on the cusp of two cultures. You cross that bridge to the Little People and you’re hooked. Like Caesar and the Rubicon, there’s no going back. Once you’ve done it, you’ve done it …’

Ian’s listening carefully. I’m calmer this time round. He says I look calmer. Perhaps it’s the pills. Sixteen days have dulled the edge off the ‘shock of capture’. I’m starting to get this stuff out, bashing Niki and him with it. In a way it has started to help and very slowly I’m beginning to climb that rope which Ian has dropped to the bottom of the pit I’m in.

It didn’t all happen at once. I wrote to General Jackson in London to tell him that the package had been delivered successfully, that Aida’s parents were all right and that she was not to worry. I didn’t tell him about Greta. Aida would only have flapped. I’d taken Greta at face value and trusted her. Fortunately, I wasn’t wrong. I didn’t hear anything from the Jacksons for another few weeks. In fact I pretty much forgot about the whole thing. Events in Bosnia just moved on as they do.

I’m laughing now. An absurd image has entered my mind. The British really are the most peculiar people. They might find themselves in the most God-awful situation, but they’ll always make the best of it; they’ll ignore what’s going on around them and cling to their culture and their ways.

I’m thinking about Burns Night, 25 January, in Split. The entire canteen has been converted into a dinner night. Brigadier Cumming and his replacement, Brigadier Robin Searby, and one or two other visitors from JHQ, are sitting on a high table on the stage. Searby is over here on his recce. He’s a brigade commander in Germany and he and his HQ are to take over from Cumming in May. He’s another cavalry officer, 9/12 Lancers. I’m looking at him and feeling a bit scared. He looks as dangerous as a shark and he’s as mad as hell because his luggage has been lost. We’re all sitting there eating haggis, swigging whisky and listening to the bagpipes. Young officers and sergeants stand up and recite Robert Burns. Weird, because you’re also aware that fifty miles away people are slitting each other’s throats and burning and raping each other out of their homes.

The next day we take Searby and the others up country – TSG, Triangle, we even get through GV, and on to Vitez. I wasn’t in the Discovery but in the backing Land Rover TDi and I’m giving a running commentary to this lieutenant colonel from Wilton who runs the G3 Ops desk in JHQ, Jamie Daniel. He became Rose’s MA in 1994. We reach Vitez, get a brief from Bob Stewart and that evening we leave Daniell and the others in Vitez. I’m back in the Discovery along with Cumming and Searby and we’re driving along the Busovaca valley to BHC. It’s dark outside and we’re negotiating one checkpoint after another. All along the valley, high up on both sides, houses are blazing away, chucking sparks and smoke into the night sky. It’s straight out of Dante’s Inferno. We drive to Kiseljak almost in silence.

In the foyer of BHC people are scurrying around in a panic. Apparently, the ‘Mujahideen’ are on their way to do the place. The Muslim-owned pizza restaurant has already been blown up. Searby’s standing there puffing on a cheroot and he turns to me and growls out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Is it always like this?’ I assume he’s referring to this picture of multinational madness. A helmeted and flak-jacketed Danish guard races past us with two weapons – a G3 rifle slung over his shoulder and an MG42 machine gun, its ammunition belt trailing along the floor. ‘Yes, it is, sir. This HQ is an utter nuthouse.’ ‘I don’t mean this …’ he snaps back, ‘… I mean that – the valley, the burning houses. Is it always like this?’

It’s weird. We’ve just driven down a valley of burning houses. To me it’s no more than that, a valley of burning houses. But to him, to a fresh pair of eyes, it’s horror. We’d got used to it; we’d already become slightly desensitised to it. It hadn’t occurred to me until Searby had said that. I’d only been there a month.

That was pretty much the last event with Brigadier Cumming. I stayed in Vitez. I didn’t really work for Bob Stewart, not directly and then rarely as an interpreter. He had his own and some of them were quite outstanding.

The whole business about interpreters is interesting. When the Cheshires arrived in mid-October 1992 they selected a schoolhouse at Stara Bila just outside Vitez as their main operating base. No one knew then that the road running through the Lasva valley would become the Muslim-Croat fault line, and this schoolhouse was right on it. You wouldn’t know the place was a school. The blockhouse or schoolhouse was furthest from the road. It was a two-storey concrete affair, long and squat with its flat roof now bristling with antennae. Between the schoolhouse and the road was a playing field, which had been converted into Portakabin accommodation and a Warrior/vehicle park. Originally it had been tents but the Royal Engineers had put down hardcore and built a mini Portakabin City, with a fine canteen. A one-way

circuit for the vehicles surrounded all this like a moat. Along the left side of the circuit were civilian houses, some occupied by the locals, others hired by the UN. The UKLOs had one, the doctors and medics another, the lieutenants yet another and the one nearest the road and the mess was the captains’ house. It was all pretty chaotic. Electricity was supplied by a camp generator, but that was it. There was no heating in the houses save wood-burning stoves. If you wanted a bath you had to wait for hours while a huge galvanised iron bucket of water heated up on the stove. There were even some houses outside the wire and on the other side of the road – the CO’s and the PInfo house. It was all fairly strung out, but no one was fighting when the place was set up and the mission was to escort aid convoys. The Cheshires and Engineers set all this up but none of it was any good unless you can speak to the locals. Almost immediately, therefore, the Cheshires recruited a pool of local boys and girls who spoke good English, some of them quite superbly. They were recruited on an equitable basis – Serbs, Muslims and Croats – all locals from Vitez, Novi Travnik, Travnik and Turbe down the road. Without them there would have been no operation. There must have been about fifteen of them.