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

You might think that was quite a number, but anyone who had contact with the locals had to have an interpreter. Not just Bob Stewart. The Quartermaster had to negotiate the purchase of materials, hardcore and so on. Every single liaison officer, all Cheshire captains, had their own ‘patch’ and were responsible for liaising with local commanders. The BRITBAT area of responsibility was huge. Each of these LOs needed an interpreter. So did the battalion Padre, Tyrone Hillary. Most of these interpreters, of varying ability, were held in a pool. There was even a tiny office, a sort of standby room, where the door might suddenly open, someone would shout, ‘Need an interpreter’ and one of these boys or girls would jump up and go. For the most part though, each LO had his favourite with whom he’d work permanently. The best, of course, were retained for the difficult interpreting with the CO and the company commanders.

I had a small room at the bottom of the captains’ house and shared it with one of the local interpreters, Edi Letic, a Muslim from Novi Travnik. He was an outstanding linguist, a brilliant guitar player and singer and all he ever wanted to do was to drive around the world in a battered Renault 4 with his guitar. He had qualified as a civil engineer at Sarajevo University and spent most of his time working for the QM or the Engineers. The Padre also had a room downstairs. The rooms at the top were occupied by the doctor, Captain Mark Weir, and a couple of LOs. I had nothing to do so latched on to Martin Forgrave, the LO for Travnik, Novi Travnik and Turbe. Each day we’d jump into his Land Rover and go visiting and chatting with the local commanders.

The first thing we had to deal with was the mysterious death of two British mercenaries, who had been killed in Travnik. The whole place was mad with suspicion. Something very odd was going on right across Bosnia and Croatia at the time.

The war was so accessible. It was only a two-hour hop from London. The fighting attracted a bizarre collection of people who flocked down to the Balkans: aid workers, go-it-alone journalists hoping to make their names and, inevitably, mercenaries. Some were genuinely ex-services, others were bluffers and Walter Mittys and some were just utterly naïve and lost. They came from just about every country in Europe and beyond. When I left Split, Bob Edge was dealing with the local police over the case of a Brit in the HOS who had been found with his throat cut. The police reckoned it was something to do with drugs. I’m not so sure. Another three British mercenaries were found dead in Mostar that week and then we had these two in Travnik to deal with. For some reason the locals were popping off British mercenaries.

These two in Travnik weren’t dogs of war or anything like that. All they were doing was running first aid courses for the BiH 7

Brigade in Travnik. One day they’re found face down in a field, hands tied behind their backs and riddled with bullets … from behind … an execution.

Who knows what the motive was. My guess is that they’d been seen coming to the camp at Vitez once or twice for a meal or a chat or whatever. Someone put two and two together and came up with five … British spies, and bang, executed. Martin and I flapped around for a few days trying to track down the bodies. They’d been taken to the mortuary in Zenica but we couldn’t find them. We spoke to Djemajl Merdan the BiH 3

Corps Deputy Commander, who didn’t know where the bodies were. And no one knew exactly what the status of these people was anyway. What was Britain’s obligation to dead mercenaries? We weren’t really interested in that and all we felt at the time was that they should at least have a Christian burial. We looked around the cemeteries and graveyards of Zenica and eventually found them in graves with Muslim head boards. Bob Stewart and the Padre and one or two others went up there and Christian crosses were placed at their graves and they were given a proper send off. Bloody sad. That’s what it was like there – the place stank of suspicion and death.

In the evenings I’d sit in the Mess drinking and chatting with some of the interpreters. We fed off each other, explaining the intricacies of idioms in both languages. There wasn’t really a pecking order amongst them but the best two, Dobrila Kalaba, a Serb from Novi Travnik who had studied English at Novi Sad University, and Ali, a Muslim from GV, whose home and family were being trashed by the Croats there, were the best. They worked almost exclusively for Bob Stewart. Then there was Edi Letic my roommate, who was almost their equal and was also Dobrila’s boyfriend. They’d been childhood sweethearts. Finally, there was Suzana Hubjar, half-Serb, half-Muslim from Travnik. She was exceptionally bright and brave. She’d been in her final year of medical studies at Sarajevo University, had returned home to Travnik to cram for her finals and bang, war – no finals, no qualifications and she winds up working for us. Tragic, all of it.

It was Edi to whom I got closest. We’d spend hours in the kitchen chatting, him strumming his guitar and telling me what it was like to grow up in Yugoslavia. I learned a lot from him. He had a mouthful of the world’s most rotten teeth, but he was a real window into the mentality of the locals. I remember him saying, ‘Here was I, a Yugoslav, born to Muslim parents, never stepped into a mosque in my life, never considered myself to be anything other than a Yugoslav and then suddenly this war comes and I’m pigeon-holed “Muslim”.’ He horrified me once when he told me of an incident back in October 1992 when the Croats and Muslims of Novi Travnik started fighting, ‘I’m in this trench with a radio and with a whole load of other Muslims. The Croats are charging us, firing, and we’re firing back and then suddenly something snaps. Everyone around me leaps up screaming and shouting, mad with red rage. They drop their rifles and charge forward with axes, knives, meat cleavers and bayonets and they hack away at each other. That’s what it’s like here. It’s not enough to shoot. Better to make a real job of it with axes and knives. I just cowered in the trench and thought “fuck this” … that’s why I’m an interpreter.’ The Padre used to sit and listen to us rambling on but I think it was all beyond him, the mentality I mean.

As for what was going on in the rest of Bosnia at the time I didn’t have a clue. When you’re back in one of these valleys that’s your frame of reference. You meet the locals, the commanders in Travnik, like Commander Kulenic – young, charming, very bright, terrific sense of humour and an expert ski instructor from his JNA days. He’d point up at this enormous mountain at the head of the valley which we called the Vlasic feature. The Serbs held it and looked down on the whole valley. Kulenic would say, ‘I know that mountain like the back of my hand. I’ve spent my life skiing it. It’s as much mine as it is theirs. One day I’ll ski it again.’ He used to slap me on the back at parties and his eyes would twinkle, ‘Ah, Mike, ti si nas, you’re one of us, I know.’ He knew. He was no fool. You can’t hide your soul from these people. But as for the rest of Bosnia – I hadn’t a clue what was going on behind the scenes. All I knew was that valley; you could feel this terrible tension hanging over it. Croats and some Muslims in Vitez, Croats and Muslims in Novi Travnik and in Travnik and it was all going to blow sky-high. The Lasva valley was a giant pressure cooker waiting to blow. And there we were, sitting in the middle trying to keep the lid on things, but knowing secretly that something was coming our way. It was just a question of time.

Then one day in February this enormous 25-kilo parcel arrives for me. It’s from General Jackson in London. There was a note too, ‘Well done for delivering the parcel. Here’s another. This is your own personal humanitarian mission.’ So that was it. I became Postman Pat but the problem was, how to get it into Sarajevo. Although it was nearer than Split it was harder to get in. You had to have a damn good reason to go into that French colony. You couldn’t just hop off to Sarajevo and besides, apart from their Mortar Platoon, the Cheshires rarely went in there. So the parcel stayed in Vitez.

In the meantime I had to go up to Tuzla and cover the Op CABINET crossings while Nick Costello was away on R&R. The Cheshires had just acquired a new 2IC, Major Bryan Watters, who had come from commanding the Jungle Warfare Centre in Brunei and he and OC HQ Company, another major, wanted to visit Tuzla, so, the three of us drove up in a Land Rover. The journey was indescribable, horrendous – them in the front with a heater and me in the back shivering in a sleeping bag – along the worst routes over the worst mountains in the world. At one point the route comes within sight of the Serb front lines at Bomb Alley, which you have to scoot along as fast as possible while they fire mortars and cannons at you. Monty, a lieutenant in the 9/12 Lancers, was the first to return fire at them from his Scimitar and just hurled 30mm shells back at them. But most of the time the Serbs had the upper hand – Land Rovers and aid trucks don’t come furnished with 30mm RARDEN cannons.

Tuzla was a real break from Vitez. First off, it was B Sqn 9/12 Lancers all on their own up there in a few blocks at Dubrave military airfield. They shared this with the BiH who operated their Hip helicopters from there and thus attracted Serb artillery fire. The airfield was overlooked by a hill called the Vis feature about ten kilometres away. The Serbs were on that too – the name of the game in war is ‘grab the high ground’. This airfield was huge, flat and had plenty of redundant runways. Tuzla itself was half an hour’s drive away. Most of the aid agencies were up there trying to help this rather large and beleaguered town. The centrepiece was the Tuzla hotel, home to all the internationals including the press.

Conditions at the airfield were spartan. There was no fresh food as there was no refrigerator, so we were all on compo permanently. B Sqn were a very relaxed and professional bunch. Captain Tim Hercock had been left in charge while Alan Abraham was on leave. Dave Bennett was the Ops Officer and Mark Cooper was the LO in Tuzla and knew the place and ‘smells’ inside out. But the weird thing was there was no work for me there either. Not a single convoy was crossing the front line at Kalesija. One day the Mayor of Tuzla, Selim Beslagic, just ups and says, ‘We’re not accepting your UN aid until you do something about our Muslim brothers in Cerska. We can’t accept your aid while they’re being ethnically cleansed by the aggressor.’ Just like that. It floored us. Each day we’d drive down to Kalesija to escort an aid convoy from Belgrade across the line and each day zip, nothing. The BiH refused to let anything cross into their territory. Clever tactic, but they had a point – morally they couldn’t allow food aid convoys from Belgrade, transiting Serb-held territory, to enter Tuzla, be unloaded and then scoff the food while Muslims in Eastern Bosnia were being cleansed out of their homes.

This didn’t come out of nowhere. It had its origins back on 7 January. The Muslims weren’t just holed up in Gorazde. There was an enclave in a deep valley at Zepa and another in a valley at Srebrenica. On 7 January a BiH fighting patrol hoofs it out of Srebrenica and trashes a number of Serb villages along the Drina. Then the Chetniks in Sarajevo murder the Bosnian Deputy Prime Minister. Serbs in Eastern Bosnia go wild at the trashing of their villages which triggers a wave of ethnic cleansing around Zvornik, Cerska and in a broad valley called Konjevic Polje. Most of this goes unreported simply because there’s no press to report it. So the first we really hear of it is when the Mayor of Tuzla forbids UN aid.

The UN effort in Tuzla ground to a halt. Hercock, Cooper and I popped down to the UNHCR office where Anders Levinson, a Danish ex-footballer and now head of office in Tuzla, shows us his plan to relieve the town. I’m not sure he’d quite grasped what was going on. They didn’t want our food. His plan horrifies us because he’s planning to fly Herc-loads of food into the airfield, just like that. None of this has been cleared with anyone and it would have ended in disaster. The Serbs would have shelled the shit out of the airfield, destroyed the aircraft and claimed that the UN was gunrunning for the Muslims. At Sarajevo there were Serb inspectors, who checked the aircraft and the aid, but at Tuzla there were none. You just couldn’t up and do an airlift into the place, and even then you can’t force people to eat your food.

After a week of this there’s no point me hanging around Tuzla so, one night, Mark Cooper and I hoof it down to Vitez in his Land Rover. He’s off on R&R. A lot starts happening very quickly. We’re into the beginning of March now. The snow has begun to melt, Nick and Alan Abraham come back from R&R and that night we’re having a huge dinner in the Bosna restaurant because quite a few of the Cheshires’ officers are leaving early, posted to other jobs in the UK. Either Nick or I have to go back up to Tuzla; we agree that it should be me. But the next morning Nick’s up before me. I’m in tatters and not ready to catch the transport but Nick’s not bothered. He likes it up in Tuzla and agrees to take my place. That was pure fate. That’s how delicately your life hangs in the balance. Anything can affect the course of events including a hangover!

Meantime, because of the business in Srebrenica, General Morillon’s touch paper has been lit. He blasts off from the Residency in Sarajevo, comes screaming out of the city like an Exocet, turns right and disappears up to Tuzla and Zvornik, trailing hot gasses. He grabs Alan and Nick and they probe south through Serb territory, trying to make contact, to halt this wave of ethnic cleansing. Without Nick and Alan he somehow makes it into Srebrenica with his interpreter, a giant Macedonian/Frenchman called Mihajlov, and his British MA, a fluent French speaker called Major Piers Tucker. Once in Srebrenica he hoists the UN flag over the small PTT building, promises solidarity and pledges that Srebrenica will never be abandoned. Very brave, but he’s marooned there with no contact except through the Muslims’ ham radio. C130s then start dropping food aid right across Eastern Bosnia, mainly into Gorazde, Zepa, Srebrenica and Cerska.

Confused reports start coming out of Srebrenica. No one’s quite sure what Morillon’s status is there. BHC is in a flap and there’s a rumour that Morillon and his gang are actually hostages of Naser Oric, the BiH commander in the pocket. Another report suggests that Morillon, who has been in there a week or so by this time, is in dire straits – no food, nothing. And then this little message slips out of Srebrenica, ‘Send more Davidoff cigars!’ Cool! But you’ve got this general stuck in this pocket barking for more cigars while down in Split there’s this unit of French Special Forces all set to bust into the valley and rescue him. Madness! After about nine days he makes it out and reappears in Zvornik where the enraged population goes insane, kicks his car, spits at him and screams, ‘Morillon is a liar!’

He fails to get back into Srebrenica so returns to Sarajevo to plan the relief of the pocket. I remember driving up to BHC one day with Bob Stewart who tells me that one plan is to drop paratroopers into the enclave. He asks me what I think. I’ve already looked at the map and tell him, ‘Madness! Only if you want them all to get broken legs. It’s a steep-sided and heavily wooded valley, not a frigging drop zone. Can only be done by free-fall or by steerable “squares” but then not in sufficient numbers. Plan’s barking!’

In and amongst this little lot, I’ve still got Jackson’s bloody parcel to deliver. Again, the opportunity comes out of nowhere on the back of the PWO’s visit. Lieutenant-Colonel Alistair Duncan and some of his staff who’ll be taking over from the Cheshires in May are out doing their recce. One day Bryan Watters takes his opposite number, the PWO’s 2IC, Major Richard Watson, into Sarajevo. BRITBAT had a responsibility under the UN withdrawal plan called Plan 006 whereby the route through the Sierras into Sarajevo would be held by them while the city is evacuated of UN personnel. It was a distant prospect but the plan existed. Brian and Richard decide to go in and review the plan with whomsoever in HQ Sector Sarajevo. I offer to go with them as interpreter for the checkpoints. Neither of them has been into Sarajevo before. The day before, I grab the SQMS and liberate the stores of as much food as I can stuff into my bergen: whole Edam cheeses, blocks of UHT milk, bags of sugar, coffee, tea, matches, candles, just about anything I can lay my hands on. So I’m sitting in the back of this Land Rover, bergen weighing a ton, the parcel hidden away under a blanket. We bluff our way through the Sierras and get into Sarajevo.

As before, Peter Jones takes us all to Ulica Romanijska, where the Pijalovics live. I’m hoping Minka Pijalovic will be in. Bryan Watters insists on accompanying me up the stairs. This time they are in. A plump, middle-aged lady with a sweet face opens the door, sees me, and starts wailing, ‘My Aida! My Aida has come!’ We’re in her tiny kitchen and she’s hugging me, wailing and crying, asking me one question after another. We’ve only got a few minutes so I’m unpacking the bergen like mad, dumping everything on the floor. Minka is crying her eyes out. Her husband, Munir, a thin man, is weeping silently and all the while Bryan is just standing there shocked and shattered, gawping. There’s no time to hang around and we depart but not before she’s given me a bottle of Slivo and a letter for Aida. We leave them crying over the pile of food on their kitchen floor and the parcel. The experience was gut-wrenching. That’s the first time I met Minka and Munir Pijalovic and we didn’t even have time for a proper conversation. Shortly after that yet another parcel came out to Vitez and sat there until I could deliver it. Peter Jones’ BRITDET were leaving on 30 March and he’d invited me to their leaving party on the 27

. That offered me an opportunity to deliver the parcel, but whether I’d be able to get into Sarajevo was another matter.

We’re now into the second week in March. The Lasva valley pressure cooker is bubbling away. Up north Alan Abraham, Nick Costello and a few 9/12 Lancers have managed to get into Konjevic Polje where there are some 2,000 Muslim refugees holed up and on the run from the Serbs who are closing in. They’ve got into the valley, assessed the situation and got out again. UNHCR is desperate to get aid to them and a second trip in is planned. Meanwhile the Army system has caught up with me. Despite all this madness, the cogs of the wheel have been grinding on and I find myself having to report to Split on Friday 12 March to sit the Staff Selection Test exam on the following Monday. I’d sat my Promotion Exams in Umm Qsar in Iraq. I’d passed them but failed the SST and now had to re-sit the paper. There were about five British officers across Central Bosnia who were in the same boat, among them Ken Lonergan, a Cheshire, Lee Smart the PInfo captain, and Dave Bennett from Tuzla. Exams don’t stop for any war, so we jump on this Sea King at Kiseljak and hop down to the sunshine in Split straight into a disaster.

All hell has been let loose over the last forty-eight hours in Konjevic Polje. Nick and the others have got back into the valley but the situation has changed dramatically. The Serbs had closed in and the Muslims are desperate and panicking for their lives. Naser Oric is there too with some of his fighters and they’ve surrounded all the UN vehicles with bales of burning straw and the group has been held hostage like that for nearly two days. Oric has told Nick and Sasha Vassiliyev, a Russian Special Forces/UNMO major, that if they’re to die then the UN will die with them. Nick and Sasha have been out of the vehicles trying to calm the crowd and negotiate. They’ve been doing this for nearly two days. Eventually the thing splits open and the Serbs start shelling the valley. People are dropping everywhere. Simon Mardell, a WHO doctor, assisted by WO2 ‘Jock’ McNair, the medic interpreter, whom I’d first met at Wilton, is conducting roadside surgery and amputations without anaesthetics. The shelling intensifies. A Muslim woman rushes up to Nick and tries to make him take her decapitated baby, only seconds before a shell fragment removes her own head and leaves Nick splattered with blood and gore. And I’ve just walked innocently into the Ops Room in Split at the height of this tragedy. The only link with them is with Major Alan Abraham giving regular sitreps from a Spartan APC. Cumming is just standing there, tears of frustration in his eyes as he listens to his men dying more than a hundred miles away. And there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it except listen.

I escape from the Ops Room. I can’t listen to it. I can’t listen to Nick dying, knowing that if I’d been able to get up that morning I’d be there instead of Nick. He was due to get married in a couple of months’ time. I’m sick inside and go up to the Mess where I sit and wait. An hour or so later I can’t help myself and I return to the Ops Room. The atmosphere has changed, relief mixed in with nervous tension. Cumming is shaken. They’d got out … just, and in appalling circumstances. As the shelling had intensified the crowd had disintegrated, an opening had been formed and the vehicles just went for it, driving like mad. Nick and Sasha were nearly left behind along with a destroyed Spartan and a recovery vehicle. I remember Cumming swearing blind that he would never again allow any British troops to be abandoned in a situation where they couldn’t be reached, helped and supported. He swore blind and he meant it.

Shortly after that we had a minor drama of our own in the Vitez area. Bob Stewart was concerned about complaints made by the BiH and HVO in the Tesanj salient that the Serbs were using their helicopters in defiance of the No Fly Zone, Op DENY FLIGHT. He tasked John Ellis, his LO for the area, to take in a patrol and establish an OP to confirm this. It fell to me to go along as the interpreter since it was unreasonable to expect any of our locals to sleep out for a week.

We set off after lunch on Saturday 20 March – John and his driver, with me and a Fusilier, Corporal Stone, in the back of the Land Rover. Behind us was a Spartan APC with a few more blokes. We got through Novi Seher, but just short of Tesanj we were met by the HVO liaison officer to the BiH, Colonel Josic, a former JNA Naval officer. Despite the dramas in GV and elsewhere the HVO and BiH in the salient were still rock solid. They had to be for mutual survival, just as in Tuzla. Josic was hugely charismatic and made a point of wearing boots with no laces to show he had no intention of running away. He told us that it was too dangerous for us to drive through Tesanj as the town was under heavy shell and rocket fire. More than that, the entire ‘light bulb’ (we called it that because of its shape) was being pressed on all sides. That same day some 600 shells impacted in Sarajevo and Tuzla was also being shelled. The war had gone mad. We could hear it all going on and just sat it out and waited all afternoon.

At twilight the shelling eased. Josic scooped us up and we scooted through Tesanj, the gateway to the ‘bulb’. Then the shelling started again and we were effectively trapped inside this ‘light bulb’ which measured about ten by ten kilometres. They wouldn’t let us select our own OP, but told us exactly where to put it and even provided us with two young military policemen to ‘watch over us’. It was quite dark when we occupied this bit of high ground and parked the vehicles up in some bushes. We set up the HF radio, a PRC 320, but couldn’t get through to anyone because the allocated frequency numbers were too ‘high’ for night-time transmission. After much bleating and repositioning of the wire we finally got through to Tuzla and gave them our exact grid reference. In fact we gave it to everyone in the world because UN comms were not encrypted. We had no choice: tell no one or tell everyone.

By this time, the shelling had intensified. One landed about 500 metres from us, and that was enough for me to get a bit flaky and to suggest we dig a couple of deep four-man trenches. That didn’t go down too well. Soldiers don’t like digging and this lot were keener to take cover in the Spartan. Shades of TSG, and I told them so in no uncertain terms. After much muttering and dragging of shovels and picks from the vehicles we set about split-locking and de-turfing the two trenches. There was little enthusiasm for the work until something exploded ferociously above our heads and we found ourselves hugging the ground. The two policemen roared with laughter, ‘Luna rocket – Tesanj!’ they howled just as this missile impacted and the town glowed orange. The rocket had just passed overhead going supersonic. It was enough to galvanise the men into frenzied, mole-like activity. We worked like slaves. I remember begging Corporal Stone to take a spell holding the torch and let me do some digging, ‘No, no, sir. I’m just fine down here, just fine.’ He was scooping up dirt like crazy and hacking away with a pick like a man possessed. He’d been blown up twice in Northern Ireland and had recently been trapped for hours in an overturned Warrior surrounded by leaking battery acid and ammunition. This probably explained his stutter. I wondered then if I’d picked the right bloke to share a trench with.

After a night spent listening to shells landing and staring at the stars from the bottom of our trenches, we awoke to discover that the OP location was absurd. It was too far away from any front line for us to be able to observe anything accurately with a pair of binoculars and we had no proper surveillance equipment with us. We could hear the helicopters but couldn’t see them. Colonel Josic wouldn’t allow us to move the OP so it really wasn’t worth staying there. Konjevic Polje was still uppermost in my mind and John Major wouldn’t thank the UN if we all got killed or trapped in this ‘light bulb’.

It seemed pointless to stay up there for a week, as Bob Stewart had ordered. John Ellis didn’t want to disobey his CO, but at the same time we were risking the soldiers’ lives needlessly in the pursuit of nothing. During the day we watched Luna rockets landing in the town of Jelah a few kilometres away. They didn’t really explode so much as produce a huge orange mushroom cloud. Could have been incendiary or it could have been chemical and we had no NBC equipment. That night John and I sat on the hillside smoking and watching the world burning. The whole rim of the ‘light bulb’, especially around Teslic in the west, was burning as fighting and fire raged through the forests. We agreed then to get the blokes out the next day. It seemed that the shelling of Tesanj eased around lunchtime, presumably while the Serbs had their lunch. We’d do it then.

The next day we informed Josic that we had heard but not seen the helicopters and that we’d report that fact. The two Muslim policemen smirked as they watched us fill in the trenches, carefully replacing the squares of turf – just as we do on Salisbury Plain – and, in extended line picked up every scrap of litter. We left the place just as we’d found it. They probably thought we were off our heads.

At midday we shot through Tesanj like rabbits and popped out of the neck of the ‘light bulb’ mighty relieved at having done so. That night I was back in the Mess chatting to Edi Letic. The log fire was burning merrily and I was hugely relieved to be out of Tesanj.

Out of the blue a runner came into the Mess and handed me a scrap of paper, ‘Sir, from the Ops Officer.’ I read the message: ‘For Mike Stanley. Report to BHC tomorrow at 1700 for a briefing. Helicopter evacuation of Srebrenica wounded planned for Wednesday 24 Mar 93. You’re to go along as interpreter for 845 NAS.’ That was it. Nothing more. What did this mean other than the para drop option seemed to have been sensibly abandoned? I showed it to Edi. He chuckled. I remember it so well. Then he threw his head back and laughed, muttering darkly and shaking his head, ‘Srebrenica, eh? Helicopters is it? Joj, covece, ti ces ostaviti kosti na Balkanu – Man, but you’re going to leave your bones in the Balkans!’

NINE Operation Grapple, Bosnia (#ulink_ce548e50-c4c7-5d37-8de6-0f866fbc331e)

Tuesday 23 March 1993 – BH Command, Kiseljak

The plight of the Muslims in Srebrenica had finally and unexpectedly come to a head. Somehow, General Morillon had managed to cut a deal with the Serbs to evacuate Srebrenica’s wounded by helicopter in exchange for the authorities in Tuzla allowing 240 Serbs to leave the town and move across to the Serb side. The Serbs themselves had agreed to silence their guns and co-operate.

The plan was relatively simple. Four Super Pumas from the French DETALAT, already in position at Tuzla airfield, would lead in the first wave, land at Zvornik and submit to an inspection by the Serbs, who were paranoid that the UN would use the opportunity to smuggle in arms and ammunition. Concurrently, three of 845’s Sea Kings, commanded by George Wallace, would transit to Tuzla and make for Zvornik once the French had departed the town for Srebrenica, from where the wounded would be flown direct to Tuzla. The Brits would then do the same and the staggered, triangular routing, including the Zvornik inspection, would be repeated until all the wounded had been transferred to Tuzla. The first wave would also take in Lieutenant Colonel Jean Richard, DETALAT’s CO, along with 845’s Royal Navy MAOT, Lieutenant Tim Kelly. They would remain on the ground on the football pitch at Srebrenica, which was the designated and only HLS in this steep-sided valley town. They would maintain a constant radio link with inbound aircraft and with ‘Magic’, the AWAC aircraft over the Adriatic. At the same time they would run the HLS and organise the wounded into groups for extraction.

The evacuation completed, Alan Abraham’s B Squadron would escort the 240 Serbs from Tuzla over the front line at Kalesija and hand them over to the Bosnian Serb authorities. The operation would last a day and we’d be back in Kiseljak by the evening. It all seemed pretty straightforward particularly as the French had successfully conducted a number of proving flights up to Tuzla airfield over the past few days. Serb artillery had remained silent and bombardment of the airfield had ceased. In general, confidence was high and it appeared that the operation would go ahead. The world’s oldest, boldest and smelliest names in international journalism had flocked to Tuzla, commandeered the hotel and were waiting with bated breath and whirring cameras at the airfield. What could possibly go wrong?

Unbeknown to us in Kiseljak, the authorities in Tuzla had already announced that they’d only be releasing forty-six Serbs. General Morillon felt let down. Worse still, although the Bosnian Serb political and military leaders had given their blessing to the operation, no word had come back from their staff HQ with details as to how the operation would be conducted. There was, therefore, some niggling doubt as to whether Dr Karadzic and General Mladic would be able to exercise control over the local Serbs besieging Srebrenica. Despite this lack of firm commitment and guarantee of control, a view prevailed that the plight of the wounded civilians was such that the operation could wait no longer.

George Wallace, the Squadron boss, didn’t share in the general euphoria. His mood was sombre and serious. The consummate professional, he was not prepared to hype up feelings. The small briefing room in the bowels of the hotel was packed with aircraft commanders, pilots and crewmen, about twenty in all including the standby crews. They’d spent the past hour hunched over their notebooks intently scribbling down details of the operation. Wallace let it be known that he considered it an extremely high-risk operation. There would be two Air Commanders, himself and his French counterpart. If either commander felt it necessary to abort the mission, the other followed.

The O Group broke up and crews shuffled quietly out clutching sleeping bags, looking for a space in which to sleep for the night. I asked George exactly what he wanted me to do. He nodded at the two loudhailers I had managed to prise from the Danish stores: ‘You come in my aircraft and sweet-talk the Serbs at Zvornik. As for Srebrenica … God knows what we’ll find on the ground, but if we’re swamped by a rabble desperate to escape from the enclave, then you just bellow at them through those things …’ He added with a smile, ‘… not that it will help much.’ He lit a cigarette, picked up his papers and wandered out of the room in search of a bed.

0945 hrs, Wednesday 24 March 1993 – Dubrave Airfield, Tuzla, Northern Bosnia

It couldn’t have been a more perfect day for it: warm, a cloudless sky, crystal clear visibility. As the airfield broadened to fill the view from the cockpit, I strained to look over George’s shoulder and could make out the Vis feature, barely ten kilometres away. Atop it sat Serb forward observers watching our every move, the same who had relentlessly brought down artillery fire onto the airfield. Vis was what the military call Vital Ground – you couldn’t take a piss in the trees without the Serbs knowing about it.

‘Will you look at that!’ The intercom between pilot and commander hissed softly.

‘Every man and his bloody dog! Look at them!’

The helicopter was close to the ground now, heading into a concrete dogleg, a dispersal pan, at 90° to and halfway down the main runway. Measuring some 100 metres wide and 400 metres long, it was surrounded on three sides by thick walls of towering silver birches. To our left were UN vehicles, a couple of Warriors, a Spartan command vehicle and an assortment of jeeps, French-type, bristling with antennae and surrounded by groups of UN troops. I strained to see if Nick was amongst them, but they were too far off. Members of the press were at the far end and beyond them a fleet of ambulances, parked off to one side, waited to whisk the first evacuees off to hospital. This was a big scene. Judging by the size of the press corps, it was also the only show in town.

‘And where are the bloody Pumas?’ crackled the headset which was clamped over my ears.