Читать книгу Trusted Mole: A Soldier’s Journey into Bosnia’s Heart of Darkness - Martin Bell - Страница 15

October 1997 – The Nelson Arms, Farnham, UK

‘You’ll love this one, Nix …’ I’m reading the list of instructions I’ve found in the box of pills that Ian’s given me, telling her about the side-effects – nausea, excessive sweating, mood swings and so on. I’m exhausted from the ride back from seeing Ian in Gosport, exhausted from digging up the dead.

She doesn’t laugh. ‘How did it go?’

‘It went, Nix. Hours of insane rambling and a packet of pills.’

‘They’ll do you good. Honestly they will. I’m so pleased you’ve taken this first step. Everything will get better. I promise. It will.’

‘Yeah, well, we’ll see.’

Will it get better? ‘You know, Nix, you take a rifle out of the armoury. You use it and eventually if you don’t clean it it’ll stop working. So you clean it: you pull the barrel through, scrape off the carbon, oil up the working parts, and it works. Easy. Humans aren’t any different … how do you clean this shit out of your mind? I mean, what do you use to pull your brain through with?’

‘Ian will help you do that. He’s your pull-through … you must stick with him.’ Nix was an Army officer for seven years so she knows all about pull-throughs. I’m bored of psychobabble. I’ve had it all afternoon, evening and now here in the pub. I want a rest from it. But I can’t help it and I start rambling again.

‘Wait! Milos, stop! Where does that fit in? Was that with Rose?’

‘Rose! No, Nix! I’ve already told you … with Cumming … at the beginning.’

‘Oh. Right. With Cumming.’ She’s confused.

‘That’s right. Cumming, Nix … when we were travelling around in January 1993.’ I’m getting edgy.

Nix looks exhausted – huge bags under her eyes. She’s trying to understand, but it’s confusing. I know it’s confusing – so many people, so many stories. I have to take it slowly. If she can’t get it, what hope have Plod got?

‘Right. We start touring. Brigadier Cumming, Simon Fox the driver, and me. The three of us in the Discovery plus that ridiculous little RB44 truck with the satellite dish that doesn’t work. It followed us around like a puppy. After that New Year’s Eve party on Ciovo island we were supposed to drive straight up to Fojnica where this Tactical HQ is established on one of the floors of a hotel there. But we don’t, because that day, the 4^th, we wake up to discover that someone has blown up one of the bridges on Route Pacman just north of Mostar. Pacman is the major aid route north and now no aid is running. No one’s sure how the bridge has been destroyed so we jump into the Discovery and zip down the Dalmatian coast. Absolutely spectacular – the Dinaric Alps just drop vertically into the Adriatic and this road is simply a scar on the rock, sometimes hundreds of feet above the sea. Offshore are these enormous long, flat, grey islands lying there like hump-backed whales. They’ve got names like Hvar and Brac … there are more further north, hundreds of islands. Forget Mozambique, this is the most stunning coastline in the world. At Ploce, which is a big marshy port, we cross the Neretva river and swing north following the river valley. At Metkovic we cross into Hercegovina and stick on our body armour and helmets; it’s SOP for all troops in B-H to wear the stuff.’

‘And the bridge?’

‘It was buggered. We get to it eventually after passing Mostar, which was pretty trashed itself. It’s not hard to see why; the Serbs are sitting on a massive escarpment to the south and dominating the town and the road. They can drop a shell or mortar round just about anywhere they want. The road we’re on is pitted with craters. But they don’t dominate the bridge because that’s in a tight gorge with sheer rocky sides rising hundreds of feet. We reach the bridge which is a concrete affair, one span of which the Jugoslav National Army had dropped as they had retreated over it, so the bit that’s been blown up is the wooden repair to the span which the Royal Engineers have constructed. We get chatting to the HVO soldiers there. One, a battalion commander, blames it on the Muslims on the other side, which baffles me because they’re supposed to be allies. One of the soldiers then tells me that the Chetniks (an extreme wing of Serb irregulars) came down the gorge wall at night and did it. That’s scarcely believable because it’s sheer and covered in ice and is hundreds of feet high. So how did they get back up?

‘We don’t hang around for long. Colonel John Field, the Engineer Regiment CO, turns up to assess the damage. It’s bitterly cold. This icy wind just howls down the gorge and cuts right through you, so it’s time to get back to Split.’

‘What has all this got to do with anything? What’s the relevance of this bridge?’

‘Nothing and everything. Just illustrates what it was like out there. Something blows up and the UN has to crisis-manage the problem. Secondly, the date is fundamentally important: that’s when I started working and it marked the end of the honeymoon period between the Croats and Muslims in Central Bosnia. Obvious now but it wasn’t so obvious then. We reached Split that evening just in time for the 1700 O Group. The whole HQ is crammed into the briefing room. Chris Lawton tells us that someone had tossed a grenade at someone else in Mostar that day, and then Richard Barrons briefs us on ICFY’s Vance–Owen Peace Plan, which has just been announced.’

‘Which was?’

‘Which was never going to work, in my opinion … now. But not then. I didn’t know anything about these wider plans then or their significance. But in essence the VOPP map divided B-H into ten cantons; two for the Croats, three for the Serbs, three for the Muslims, one a mixed Muslim/Croat (number ten). The last canton (number seven), around Sarajevo, was mixed and of special status, having some sort of UN/EU administrator running the place. On paper it all looks fair and square, but in practice, on the ground, different groups are all mixed up in each other’s cantons-to-be. Worse still, all three parties have completely different aspirations, none of which can be stuffed into that VOPP map. The 4^th of January 1993 is the day it all went horribly wrong.

‘The next day we start touring and travelled up to Tac stopping off at all the British locations – TSG, ‘Fort Redoubt’ on Route Triangle, the company base at GV and the main Cheshires’ base at Vitez. All the routes were iced over – vehicles and aid trucks stranded all over the place. It made operating virtually impossible.’

‘Well, we managed it in the Arctic.’ Niki had been the Assistant Adjutant in 29 Commando and had done a winter deployment to Norway.

‘You may well have done, but there’s a huge difference. You lot stopped training at –30°C and went into survival mode, didn’t you?’ She nods.

‘We’re not talking about –30° here, Niki. We’re talking freezing. It was the coldest winter for decades. The lowest recorded temperature was –67° with the wind-chill factor. Everything froze. Nothing would work. Diesel jellied up in fuel tanks, but guess what? The locals kept on fighting. We were sort of all right with a lukewarm Discovery wrapped around us. But the locals kept on at it. They’re the hardest bastards I’ve ever seen. Just beyond Fort Redoubt, on Triangle over the mountain and through the forest, there was an HVO checkpoint – big Croatian flag hanging vertically off a wire stretched high across the road. We’re stopped by this soldier, a mad longhair with broken teeth and wild eyes. He’s wearing trainers, cammo trousers and a lumberjack shirt open at the neck and with rolled-up sleeves. He’s clutching some bottle of poison and he’s waving and grinning like mad at us. And, we’re freezing inside the vehicle! We think we’re hard as nails in the Paras, but these boys are in a completely different league.

‘We’re based on the fourth floor of this hotel in Fojnica, which is at the top end of a valley. The rest of the hotel has been given over as some sort of convalescence centre. So, all you see are blokes hobbling around on crutches, legless, armless, all war-wounded – youngsters and old men for the most part. But, it’s a good location for Tac with BHC in Kiseljak only fifteen minutes away and the Cheshires half an hour. We end up doing a lot of touring around. Brigadier Cumming never failed to pop in and chat to local commanders. He was trying to assess their mood. Thus, I ended up doing quite a lot of interpreting. It is vital to get to grips with military speak when your language is virtually domestic. ‘Pass the bread, Mum’ hardly prepares you for ‘anti-aircraft artillery’. Had to learn that fast.

‘I met Nick Costello on that first trip. We overnighted at Vitez and sat in on Bob Stewart’s O Group that evening. Nick was sitting just in front of me wearing one of those green shamaghs, which he gave to me when he left. We called it the interpreter’s shamagh. Someone pointed him out to me and that evening we’re in the Cheshires’ Officers’ Mess, an ex-night club on the main road. It still had one of those glittery balls hanging from the ceiling. You could just imagine it being a sort of speak-easy before the war. The 9/12 Lancers had even shipped in their leather furniture from their Mess in Germany and everyone’s drinking from Cheshires 22^nd of Foot silver goblets.

‘On 7 January we were on the road again. Cumming wanted to get up into the Tesanj salient so we took along the Cheshires’ LO for the area, Captain Matthew Dundas-Whatley. He’d already fixed up a number of meetings to go to with all the local commanders. All for me to translate. The first was with this horrendous creep – a really nasty piece of Croat work in Zepce who at the time was making life intolerable for the Muslims in the town. He wanted them out. D-W had warned us that he was thoroughly unpleasant, but even that hadn’t prepared us for a torrent of racist invective. Brigadier Cumming was so outraged that he simply said to us all in English, which this monster couldn’t understand, ‘I’m not listening to this anymore. We’re off!’ And off we went, deeper and deeper into this salient, this light bulb-shaped bit of the front line, attending meeting after meeting. By the time it was dark my head was thumping and my teeth aching; I’d been interpreting for almost eleven hours on and off. We were in this sort of bunker quite close to the front line at Jelah and I just gave up the ghost. I remember Cumming’s question to this commander being something really simple but my brain ran out of oil and the engine seized up. The Serbs then opened up with the most almighty fire-fight which just got louder and louder. It was their way of saying “Happy Christmas” to the Muslims and Croats – “Happy Christmas … we’re still here!” That was a long day. I fell out of love with interpreting that day.

‘The next day the Serbs shelled TSG throughout the afternoon and we just tore down there in the Discovery, all over those dreadful roads and iced-up bottlenecks. That’s when we had to hole up in a Spartan with the Serbs dropping shells all around us. And the Bosnian Deputy Prime Minister was murdered. Bloody awful, the whole thing.

‘After the incident in TSG we went back to Fojnica, then down to Split where Richard Barrons had been holding the fort and fielding a barrage of questions from the UK. Cumming had to get back for that. The day after, the 11^th, while we were down in Split, the storm breaks with a vengeance. The bubble burst in GV where the HVO and BiH went for each other’s throats with poor old B Company 1 Cheshires caught in the middle of it. We were getting horrifying reports from Split: one hamlet after another around GV was being obliterated, mostly by the Croats. The worst of it for us was that the Main Supply Route to Vitez and Zenica went right through GV which meant that nothing – no aid, no convoys – could get up country using that route. GV became a “hard” area; i.e. no “soft-skinned” vehicles allowed through unless escorted by a couple of Warriors and only then if the situation permitted. At the GV base itself only “armour” was allowed out in an attempt to mediate, assess the damage and help wounded civilians.’

‘But I just don’t understand why they started fighting. You’ve told me they were allies fighting the Bosnian Serbs.’

‘We could scarcely understand it ourselves at the time. It didn’t make any sense. They needed our aid but by fighting each other they were depriving themselves of that. We were naïve. But now I know why it happened. Two reasons. First, the Bosnian Croats wanted Hercegovina for themselves. They even called it Herceg-Bosna, claiming Mostar as their capital. This had all started long before I got there. In October 1992 they’d hoofed all the Muslims out of Prozor which is on the route to GV. They hadn’t just asked them to leave. They’d forced them out. It was a scary place to drive through – some homes intact, others bullet-ridden and burned out with Nazi swastikas and the Croatian Ustasa “U” daubed all over them. Secondly, I reckon they interpreted the VOPP as a green-for-go: “This’ll be a Croat canton. We don’t want the Muslims here, so, let’s fuck ’em off before we have to put pen to paper.” Well, that’s what it looked like at the time, on the ground at any rate.

‘I remember we were in the BBC house in Kiseljak once. We used to pop in there either for tea or supper, courtesy of the BBC, if we were passing through. We’d meet the lot of them that way. That’s where I’d first met Martin Bell. He’d just come out of Sarajevo where he’d finished making a Panorama documentary. He’d been badly wounded there in August 1992 but he’d gone back into that hellhole four months later. He’s the only one of them to have got under the skin of the bigger issues. The rest of them were quite content to hang onto the coat tails of the British Army. We were having supper there one night with some of the UK press when Cumming just ups and says, “Why don’t you get yourself down to Prozor where the Croats are pitchforking to death the Muslim farmers around the town whom they failed to cleanse out in October.”’

‘And did they?’

‘Don’t know. Doubt it though, because it’s not worth it for them. The editor in London would probably have said “Too difficult. Give me Serbs doing bad things. We can’t sell this mess to the public, they’ll never understand.” So the Croats crack on wielding their pitchforks and no one knows.’

‘And you were in the middle of all this?’

‘The UN was but I wasn’t personally. For some of it I was in Split with Brigadier Cumming. I went where he went. But others were and paid dearly … two days after it blew we got our first casualty. Not a helicopter but a real live human being. The 13^th of January – even the date makes my skin crawl. We’re in Split and we start to get this sitrep through – a Brit casualty in GV, no more than that. That’s the way initial sitreps are, and usually wildly inaccurate. We didn’t know who it was, what’s gone on or where. We’re all in the Ops Room listening to the reports as they come in. Cumming is extremely anxious. They’re his boys you know, and he cared for them because they were his responsibility. And, as these reports come in he looks more and more shaken. He’s close to tears. We’re all close to tears. And then it’s confirmed …

‘… Dead, Nix. Corporal Wayne Edwards. Shot in the head and killed … and do you know what he was doing? … he was driving his Warrior through GV escorting an ambulance full of wounded civilians. He was doing his humanitarian duty and some bastard shot him. When it was confirmed the whole Ops Room went silent. It’s bad enough in Northern Ireland where there’s a real threat, but not on a peacekeeping operation where you’re trying to help people and save lives … the only thing worse than being shot at by the enemy is being shot at by people you’re trying to help. I loathe the lot of them – Serbs, Croats, Muslims. Taking our aid and goodwill wasn’t enough for them. Wayne Edwards, Warburton, all the others. They had to have our lives as well.’

Niki is looking at me in horror.

‘I remember seeing his coffin in a hearse outside the Officers’ Mess block. It had a Union Flag draped over it and I remember thinking, “What on earth do you tell his parents?” The strangest thing about his murder was the reaction back home.’

‘I think I remember it.’

‘No! Not the public – the politicians. They sweat buckets over casualties. We get this daft question from JHQ to answer, “Why was Corporal Edwards killed when he was in a Warrior?” Shall I tell you where that one came from? It came from the very top, from the Secretary of State for Defence who ups and asks someone on the 6^th floor of the MoD just that. You can see it now, “You’ve told me Warriors are impregnable to small arms fire. So, why was someone killed in a Warrior?” I mean for God’s sake! Anyway, this question bounces all the way down the chain of command and instead of someone in Wilton fielding it, it’s passed out to us and lands on some watchkeeper’s desk.’

‘But why was he killed?’ Sometimes I think Nix spent the whole of her Army career skiing.

‘Simple, Nix, the driver’s the most vulnerable person. The commander and gunner can get their heads down and see everything through sights and periscopes. Blokes in the back are safe unless they toss a rocket up your arse. But the driver has to see where he’s going, so he’s got a bit of his head up, that’s all. Someone was a good shot equals deliberate shot equals murder in my book.’

‘Don’t you think you’re being a bit harsh on people? In a way, if you don’t know what you know it’s not that unreasonable a question.’

‘Maybe,’ I mumble. ‘But there were other stupid questions: “How many tonnes of aid were moved today?” would land on the watchkeeper’s desk at 3 a.m., just so that some Minister could be told at his or her morning briefing. But who is the poor old watchkeeper going to ring at 4 a.m. local? Everyone in UNHCR is asleep because they’re human beings who need their sleep … it’s not doing me any good all this, Nix. I mean, talking just makes me furious. It doesn’t help.’ I am furious. I’ve half forgotten these snippets, but somehow, starting at the beginning, it all floods back.

‘I suppose the fighting put a stop to your touring then?’

‘Did it hell. We were up country and back down again like a bloody yo-yo. If it wasn’t visiting the troops or BHC then it was always because we had a visitor on our hands. They flocked out from the UK, and they weren’t small fry either – three-star and upward. Two-star downwards? Forget it – too junior, wait your turn. The other UN contingents thought we were crazy. The Spanish battalion in Mostar was just sent out for a year and told to get on with it. No one came from Spain to visit them. Visiting is very much a British pastime. We were the most visited people in the Balkans.’

‘Like who?’

‘Like everyone. PM came out at Christmas clutching a little plastic carrier bag of CDs to give to the troops. Then we had Chief of Defence Staff, Field Marshall Inge, who I remember was accosted on Route Triangle by a chainsaw-wielding Sapper who came staggering out of the woods like something out of the Bosnia Chainsaw Massacre all wild-eyed, buzzing and billowing plumes of blue smoke. To the inevitable question he’d said, “Enjoying myself, sir? This is fookin’ great – in Germany you can’t snap a twig without getting bollocked, I’ve just chopped down twenty-five trees this morning!” And with another “fookin’ great” off he charged back into the forest trailing smoke. Next in the queue was CinC UKLF, a mere four-star, General “Muddy” Waters. That one was a horror story. It nearly went horribly wrong.’

‘How?’

‘First of all, he’s a man with a fearsome reputation. Bob Edge was his house sergeant for years and told me one horror story after another. They didn’t care in the least what the situation was like on the ground. They were coming out regardless. General Waters was due to fly into Sarajevo on the airlift on 17 January and would be met there by Peter Jones whose four-man team of “loggies” was in the city assisting UNHCR. BRITDET Sarajevo was the jewel in the crown of the whole operation. You’ve got this “Reputation” flying in and Peter has to meet and entertain him until Brigadiers Cumming and Cordy-Simpson, and Victor Andreyev, the BHC head of UN Civil Affairs for B-H, can get in from Kiseljak to pick him up. The plan then is to whip him around Sarajevo, out to BHC and thence to Vitez to overnight with the Cheshires. It nearly didn’t happen.

‘We’re in the foyer of this monstrously overcrowded and over-multinationalised hotel-cum-UN HQ. The three of them are about to hop into an armoured Land Rover and disappear off to Sarajevo. But, there’s a flap on from hell. Waters is about to land at Sarajevo but the mad women of Hadzici don’t care. They’ve decided that the 17^th is the day they want to do their sit-down protest.’

‘Who? Mad women of where? Why?’ I’ve thrown her.

‘Look. Let me explain. You’ve got to understand the geography. This beer mat is Sarajevo and the lighter is BHC in Kiseljak. Right?’ She nods. I dip my finger in my drink, join them with a wiggly line and slash it in two places, one near the lighter and one even nearer to the mat. ‘In between is Serb-held territory. The mat is Muslim-defended Sarajevo and the lighter is the Croat-held Kiseljak pocket. Well, this is how it goes …’ my finger starts moving from the lighter, ‘… this is the only way into Sarajevo by road for UN vehicles, convoys and the like. It’s only twenty-one kilometres but it’s a fearsome drive. First few kilometres east out of Kiseljak are okay. Then after some tight, uphill S-bends you hit an HVO checkpoint, Kilo 1, “K” for Croat, logical eh? Usually no problem there and you sail through into a very quiet no-man’s-land. Simple. Then round a sharp left-hander you arrive at Hell, Kobiljaca, the first Serb checkpoint, Sierra 1. The most obnoxious, obstreperous and difficult people. They haul over convoys, rip through possessions, confiscate “illegal items” just like that. They hold up convoys of food or wood for weeks. Nightmarish. That’s S-1. It’s a bit like Dungeons & Dragons. Then, if you’re lucky, you proceed down the road for about ten kilometres to a Y-junction at Hadzici – Sierra 2 – sometimes activated sometimes not, depending on whether they want to trap convoys between S-1 and S-2. Get through that and a bit further on you’re into this vile hornets’ nest of a place called Ilidza, a Serb-held suburb of Sarajevo full of people who hate everyone, including all the other Serbs on account of them being virtually isolated. Once you’ve braved the insults, abuse, stones and gob it’s right and down a horribly bumpy and long alley to Sierra 4 …’

‘Where’s three?’

‘Funny, but I can’t really recall there being an S-3. Must be in Ilidza somewhere … anyway, S-4 is the last and it’s about half way down this alley. Once through and to the end and you hit a T-junction. Right takes you to the airport. Left takes you through a really dangerous no-man’s-land with a destroyed T55 tank and recovery vehicle. Before that there’s a French UN checkpoint, an APC blocking the road. It drives back two metres, lets you pass, and then forward two metres blocking the road again. Most interesting job in the world, eh? And then you drive as fast as you can along this totally exposed road with trashed houses, I mean completely levelled, on either side. After about 700 metres you hit BiH lines, scoot down a tight right-hander which loops you around a tiny cemetery to the first BiH checkpoint under Stup flyover. And then you’re in. That’s what it’s like normally.’

‘And what about abnormally? Sounds bad enough as it is.’

‘Abnormally, anything can happen – hi-jackings, severe fighting and mad women! As it was that day. The mad women of Hadzici decide it’s Protest Day and they all sit in the road at S-2 with their kids and babies and won’t budge until their demands are met. Nothing goes in and out of Sarajevo all day long. Convoys are stuck on both sides of these women. It’s the most effective way of blocking a road. Soldiers are no good for such a showdown because you can always shoot them or, as Brigadier Cordy-Simpson did once, when one of these oiks pointed his weapon at him, fly into a rage, grab ’em by the scruff of the neck and shake them to bits. But with women and kids you can’t do that, certainly no one from the UN is going to run them down, particularly as they’ll always have their own press there to record the event.’

‘Why were they doing it?’

‘We didn’t know. But there’s a huge flap on; nothing’s moved in or out of the city because of these women, and we’re staring at the prospect of Waters being stuck on one side and us on the other. The fastest way of screwing up your career is to stuff up a visit programme for one of the Brass. He won’t blame the women; he’ll blame you. Cordy-Simpson turns to me and says, “You’d better come along and earn your pay today.” I was supposed to be left at BHC – too junior. So, I’m sitting in this closed-up vehicle and wondering just what I’m supposed to do about all these women. Eventually, the vehicle stops and we all hop out and there they all are – all these women dressed in black and sitting in the middle of the road screaming that they won’t budge until they get word that their husbands and sons, who are POWs in a Muslim prison in Tarcin, are alive.’

‘What did you do?’

‘It ended up with me and Victor in a tiny room with their representatives. We made a deal: only our vehicles in and out in return for Victor promising to get the International Committee of the Red Cross to look into the matter immediately. Sounds easy, but it required a load of play-acting, sympathetic nodding, and, basically, grovelling. But we did it and got to the airport to find Peter chatting to the “Reputation”. Did he look relieved! There were no more flights out and he’d have had to look after an irate four-star all night in the PTT building’s more than squalid accommodation.

‘We jumped into the vehicles and zipped him around Sarajevo. I remember that tour because I saw nothing, being in the back of an armoured Land Rover. We were told not to stick our heads up through the hatch because somebody would shoot them off. But, we did stop at this cemetery by Kosevo hospital, called the Lion Cemetery. It’s a regular feature on the Balkan tourist route, a staggering place brimming with graves. There are Muslim head and foot stones, but they’re not stones, they’re coffin-shaped wooden boards. And just as many Christian crosses. But the spookiest thing is that all the graves are freshly turned, hundreds, thousands, and they’ve even started in the corner of a football pitch below. That place leaves you with a huge lump in your throat. You only have to see it once and you’ll never forget it.

‘The rest of the visit was pretty straightforward. We overnighted in Vitez and the next day tried to get Waters through GV by Warrior, but the fighting was too severe. It was good for him to see that plans do go wrong simply because the locals couldn’t give a damn about your visit programme. We took him the long way to TSG instead, via Kresevo, Jablanica, and Route Square. We slept at TSG and the next day two 845 NAS Sea Kings picked us up and tried to fly us into the warehouse at Metkovic. They damn near succeeded as thick fog forced them to fly along the Neretva river, but even then it was no good as the fog was sitting on the water. So we aborted and flew up the coast past those whale-shaped islands to Split where he eventually met as many members of the Gloucesters as they could find. You know, Nix, the funny thing was that throughout the trip Waters never said a single word to me. Never once even acknowledged my presence. But, just as he was stepping into a car to be driven to Split airport he turned to me, and do you know what he said?’

Niki shrugs.

‘He just ups and says, “Thanks for getting me through that checkpoint. Don’t go native out here. We don’t want to lose you.” His very words. He completely floored me. Wise old bird. He knew. He knew what might happen and was the only one to see that danger.’

‘And did you go native? Is this what this is all about?’ She’s looking at me anxiously.

‘I hate that expression “going native”. It’s dirty. It belongs to the last century, to the Raj. Going native – what does it really mean? You tell me.’

‘Well, I suppose it means …’

‘I’ll tell you what it means. To my enemies, to my detractors, to most people who don’t know me, including these Keystone Cops, it means “siding with the Serbs”. That’s what they’ll tell you because it’s a natural conclusion, a racist one, to jump to. Being partisan. That was and is their spin. But!’

‘Milos! Keep your voice down.’

I hardly hear her. ‘But to me it means something else. Sure I did go native, I admit it, native as they come. But it’s not entirely my fault and it’s not what people think. I went native all right, but in a weird way. You won’t ever understand. You’re English. You can’t understand … it’s all to do with parcels and history …’

‘Parcels? History?’ She’s lost again.

‘Look, the parcels came first and our family history fed the process of “going native”.’ Niki is just staring at me. She probably thinks I’ve finally flipped.

‘You can listen to this, but you’ll never ever understand what I’m going to tell you – simply because you’re English. You come from a country that was last invaded in 1066. No invader has ever set foot in Britain since. Sure, the Spanish and Germans have tried in the past. It’s madness to try and invade this island – first you’ve got to brave hideous seas, then you’ve got to overcome treacherous rocks and cliffs, and, if you manage all that, you’ve then got to deal with 60 million people with “bad attitude”. So, none of you know what it’s like and your family has always lived in England.’

‘So what?’ Now she’s getting angry.

‘So a lot. You’ve had your last civil war nearly four hundred years ago. You’ve got the oldest and most respected democracy in the world. It’s a democracy which has come about naturally through evolution and not revolution. You people don’t even know what you’ve got here! You take it all for granted. But, remember, no other country in Europe has got what you’ve got …’

‘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.’