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

‘You 1 PARA? Oh, well, that’s okay then.’ Instantly they were mollified and we were all suddenly the best of friends.

‘So, what was it like then?’ I asked our original assailant. I was curious to know.

He looked at me. The drunkenness in his eyes seemed to evaporate. They became focused and intense. ‘It was shit,’ he said evenly. ‘It was pure shit … you’re lucky you weren’t there.’ And then he was gone, staggering off to order his ‘fookin” Big Mac and mega large chips.

His answer had floored me. What had he seen and done that had been so terrible as to humble him in that way, to knock the bravado out of him so completely? I remember feeling pure jealousy at that moment, jealousy born out of a weird frustration that we now had nothing in common. He’d seen his elephant up close.

The majority of people in the Army have never seen an elephant. There are senior officers, even generals, who haven’t got a single campaign service or operation medal. Some only have a Queen’s Jubilee Medal. It’s not really their fault. Put it down to fate or luck. It doesn’t make them any less professional or useful to the system. But it is a source of personal frustration. So much training, so many years learning your profession and yet never been tested. So, it’s not at all surprising that we were all gripped by a horrid fascination to get down to TSG as quickly as possible, in case we missed seeing the elephant.

By the time we’d passed through Gornji Vakuf, skirted Lake Prozor, crawled up the ‘mountain’ beyond, shaken ourselves to bits on the winding and hellish Route Triangle, darkness had fallen. At a UN checkpoint, the last British outpost along the route before TSG, a burly Sapper corporal waved us down outside a small cluster of Portakabins in a bleak, rocky and windswept landscape.

Cumming stuck his head out into the freezing night air.

‘Sir, you can’t go any further. There’s heavy shelling in TSG,’ the corporal informed us gravely.

‘I know,’ answered Cumming without a hint of frustration in his voice, ‘that’s why we’re here.’

‘Sorry, sir, I’ve got my orders. No soft-skinned vehicles beyond this point.’

‘But I’m the Commander. No soft-skinned vehicles? Not even me?’ I could tell Cumming was highly amused by the proceedings. The corporal was adamant.

We were saved by the shrill ringing of the car phone.

Evidently, from the conversation which followed, it was someone on the phone from TSG. An arrangement was made to proceed as far as the Croat checkpoint at Lipa in the Duvno valley. There we’d cross-load into an APC for the final couple of miles to the NSE (National Support Element) logistics base.

At Lipa the Brigadier and I donned helmets and leapt into one of two 432 APCs. Corporal Fox would wait at Lipa and only proceed to the base once summoned on the radio. As we clattered along in the APC I felt faintly ridiculous, surrounded by all this armour. Ten minutes later we rocked to a halt in 35 Engineer Regiment’s part of the NSE to be met by the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel John Field. It rapidly transpired that the shelling had ceased some time ago.

We could see little in the darkness but were given a quick guided tour of the warehouse and the offices where some of the windows had been blown in. Colonel Field described the events of the day. The Serbs had ‘walked’ their artillery fire around the town and it was believed that they had been targeting a Croat gun line which had been set up behind the UN base. A total of one hundred and forty-eight 152mm shells had been counted. A number of buildings in the town had been hit, some of the NSE’s ‘B’ vehicles – soft-skinned trucks and Land Rovers – had been damaged, but no one in the base had been injured. Very lucky. Well-rehearsed drills in the event of such an attack had paid off. The ‘loggies’ next door had had the luxury of taking cover in a huge bunker, while the Sappers had had to seek protection inside their armoured vehicles.

I spotted Corporal Fox emerging from the shadow. ‘How the hell did you get here?’

‘Oh, I came in with you … followed your APC in. I wasn’t going to miss this sitting at that checkpoint!’

‘Nothing here to miss. It ended hours ago.’ I think we both felt a bit deflated. Worse still we were now ‘war tourists’, hanging on every word of those who had undoubtedly seen their elephants that afternoon.

As there wasn’t much else to do, Seb and I found a patch of concrete to kip down on in the TV room. I bought a box of Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles in the canteen for the journey back the next day and then wandered off to the TV room where CNN was reporting another crisis in Iraq.

The sweep of the second hand jolted me back to the present … twelve seconds … frantic heavy breathing in my ears. It was infectious, unnerving. Others’ terror compounded your own … thirteen seconds … it was hopeless. We were helpless. Unable to do anything to influence fate, to save ourselves. We were completely at the mercy of the Serbian gunners and their thunderbolts, which hammered the earth around us … fourteen seconds ... shit! I felt myself slipping into unchecked panic, muscles taut and trembling … fifteen …

The shell hissed in and missed. We were still alive and not burning to death. Intense relief.

The corporal was still doing his thing up front. ‘Think I got a fix on ’em that time,’ he shouted. ‘Be able to confirm it next time.’

Next time! He was barking mad. But he was keeping himself together by occupying his mind. I doubted I could stomach much more of this. I had to do something quickly. Anything. The fruit pastilles! I clawed at the crushed box in my pocket.

‘Anyone want a sweetie?’ I produced the box in the red half-light expecting to be told to sod off. Absurd really. The reaction was quite the opposite. Hands appeared from nowhere. Passed down the APC – even the corporal got one – the pastilles were feverishly devoured. The chewing seemed to help and at least brought some saliva back to dry mouths. It was a short-lived respite.

‘Here we go again! ’nother one incoming. Should get a fix this time.’

Another fifteen seconds of clock-watching, bowel-churning gripped us. I was raging. We had nothing to fire back at them with. Where was DENY FLIGHT? Where were the jets that were supposed to be somewhere up there? Why couldn’t a couple of Sea Harriers whip off Ark Royal in the Adriatic, zip over here and drop a couple of cluster bombs on the bastards?

It then occurred to me that this was only my tenth day in theatre. Snuffed out on day ten by the Serbs of all people. My parents would love that one! Day bloody ten. This hadn’t been part of the plan at all. Mentally, I cursed my youth, my wretched impetuosity, and my pig-headed unwillingness to listen to my father, whose dire words of warning were spinning around in my head – ‘Son, listen to your father. You don’t know what you’re getting into. You don’t know the mentality of the people there … all of them, they’re rotten, rotten, rotten … dangerous people and they’ll get you, they’ll kill you in the end just for what you are.’

I hadn’t listened to him. And now that arrogance had led me up this blind alley and there was no way out.

I felt myself slipping off the edge of sanity. Again the earth rocked. Another miss. Someone grunted in relief, another whimpered. Perhaps me.

‘They’ll send a runner round soon.’ The staff sergeant sounded as though he was being strangled.

‘A what?’ A runner! He must have cracked. A runner, round all the vehicles? During the shelling?

He nodded. ‘They did it this afternoon … to find out who was in each vehicle in case one of them got hit.’ It sounded mad but also made sense.

‘Right, I want everyone’s ID card now. Pass them down.’ I got out my notebook, stuck a Maglite torch in my mouth and started scribbling down numbers, ranks and names. At last I was doing something positive. It was a great tonic and, I’m convinced, stopped me from losing it. As I scrawled my mind retreated a step or two back from the edge of panic. There was one card missing.

‘He hasn’t got one. The boilerman’s a local.’ The staff sergeant nodded towards the youth next to me.

‘Kako se zoves? What’s your name?’ The boy was trembling. He half whispered something, Darko, Dario, Mario or something. I couldn’t quite get it so simply wrote down boilerman – local.

The shelling continued sporadically, the gaps between the salvos increasing. Five minutes passed. Nothing. Another couple of minutes. Still nothing. For the first time I noticed it was freezing in the vehicle. Suddenly the door lever sprang upwards. A helmeted soldier poked his head in.

‘Who’s in this one?’

‘Here you go. It’s all there, if you can read it.’ He grabbed the slip and tore off into the night.

We sat there in silence waiting for the corporal’s words to throw us into terror. They never came. Eventually, the door was opened. It was the runner again.

‘All clear,’ he announced cheerfully. ‘It’s all clear. You can come out now.’

I was stunned. All clear? Just like that! ‘I suppose someone’s rung up the Serbs and asked them if they’ve finished for the night!’ I quipped, more out of relief than sarcasm. But he’d already disappeared.

Stiffly we eased ourselves out of the Spartan. I expected devastation. There was nothing. The sky was cloudless and the moon had risen higher, casting its chilling rays, illuminating soldiers who were clambering out of other vehicles and walking slowly back to the warehouse clutching their sleeping bags.

‘Well, I don’t know about you, but if they do it again I’m not taking cover in that fucking thing – it’s full of petrol.’ I was shocked at what we’d done. The staff sergeant mumbled his agreement. There was more to it than just the petrol and the exposed position of the vehicle. The worst of it had been the claustrophobic and narcotic effect of being in close proximity to other people’s terror. We’d all set each other off.

Next to the boiler room door stood a large square chimney running up the outside of the building but offset from the wall by about two and a half feet. Where it disappeared into the ground, between wall and chimney, was a concrete-lined well about four feet deep. Perfect for two people. That’s where we’d be going next time.

Together we found a couple of hefty slabs of concrete, a manhole cover and some sandbags, enough to create some form of overhead cover against splinters. Twenty minutes of grunting and heaving warmed us up considerably. I was pleased. The chances of a shell actually landing on us were slim. Satisfied that we knew where we’d be going next time, we retraced our steps into the warehouse and parted company.

In the warehouse I spotted Brigadier Cumming, Colonel Field and his RSM, Graeme Furguson. They were chatting and laughing, an encouraging sign. Someone had produced an urn of sweet tea. There was plenty of nervous chatter and laughter, a strange but perfectly normal reaction to stress. I asked the Brigadier where he’d got to.

‘Oh, I had a marvellous time. I was in the command APC. They even made me a cup of tea!’ He seemed quite relaxed about things. I recalled the 432s clustered somewhere round the back of the building. At least he would have been spared the running commentary and the clock-watching.

The CO and RSM were doing their leadership bit, moving among the soldiers and chatting. It all helped. It was time to try and get some kip so I wandered back to my sleeping bag only to be confronted by a disturbing sight.

Standing in the half-shadow, just beyond our bergens and sleeping bags, were three soldiers. With them was a young Sapper lieutenant supported by two others. He seemed to be trying to get away from them. But, they weren’t so much trying to restrain him as calm him. One was holding his left arm and patting his shoulder while the other was attempting to soothe him. He seemed oblivious to them both. His eyes, unfocused, wild and staring, said it all. His lips trembled slightly. Occasionally he’d gulp hard and nod his head, but his eyes just kept staring. He’d had it. Genuinely shell-shocked.

‘He all right?’ I asked, approaching.