"I won't even be able to get close to it, not even if I wanted to. The people who did it, killed the girl, are beyond reach, they're behind the lines .. . it's only to write a report."
Four.
He started to write after lunch. Henry Carter had clear handwriting, and much to be thankful for to a schoolmistress who had presided with an iron fist over a primary class more than fifty years before. He had never lost the art of legible copperplate handwriting. When he had completed the text, when the supervisor had gone for her mid-afternoon rest break, he would slip the sheet to Penny, a nice girl and respectful, and Penny would type it for him. The typed sheet would go with the file when he was ready to present it for transfer to the disk. It was always necessary, Henry Carter believed, to have background. One couldn't say when the file would be called for, when the material would be summoned up. It might be next year, but then it might not be for a decade. It might be that the person, young man or young woman, who would call up the file was now in short trousers or ankle socks. The war might be just history when the file was called for. He brushed the crumbs from his table, and he swirled his tongue round his mouth to try to lose the tang of the cheese and pickle. What surprised him .. . oh, yes, he could still sometimes surprise himself .. . was that he had stayed with the file right through the statutory one hour of lunch break, he had not even taken the RSPB magazine from its postal wrapping. Onto clean paper, with a sharpened pencil, he wrote briskly. It would be good to have the background, helpful .. . OUTLINE: Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, amidst a wave of optimism for the future, the ethnic groups of the empire demanded again the nationhood that had been suppressed since the establishment of communist regimes after WW2. Communist centralism had failed significantly to blunt such demands. YUGOSLAVIA: Always artificial, originally dominated in part by the Ottoman empire and in part by the Austro-Hungarian empire. Achieved a bogus national identity between 1918 and 1941 which fractured on the German invasion. WW2: Pro and anti-Axis feelings polarized the principal ethnic groupings. Croats (RC and Europe-orientated) took Nazi side. Serbs (Orthodox and Slav) formed principal resistance (Chetniks and Partisans). Muslims (obvious) tended to regard this as others' quarrel and engendered both factions' hostility. Characteristic of Serb resistance v Croat fascism was horrific cruelty? 700,000 Serbs killed by the Croatians. TITO: Main resistance leader, communist Josip Broz Tito, by charisma and ruthless rule, bound the infant Yugoslavia together. The Serb majority were over-rewarded with bureaucracy jobs, plus internal security and military. Tito's death, can of worms unlidded again. POST TITO: Problems of different cultures, different ambitions, are not solved, nor much effort made in that direction; the adhesive is communist discipline. POST COMMUNIST COLLAPSE: Slovenes (less important) and Croats (critical) are anxious to achieve statehood. Croats are encouraged by Germans (sticky finger in the pie again), and name a date. No thought given to the fears of the several hundred thousand Serbs living within the area claimed for new republic of Croatia. Inside Serb-Croat population were strong memories of WW2 atrocities, also the knowledge that privileged status would end. Bosnia problem not dealt with, irrelevant to this file. THE WAR: Serb-Croat population formed Territorial Defence Force (ragtag militia) and was aided by Serb-controlled JNA (regular army). Principal Serb-Croat population areas were taken in military action, followed by 'ethnic cleansing' (removal or killing of Croat population in captured areas). Main effort of the war 6? lasted 5 months, cease-fire in January 1992, when 22 per cent of new Croatia had been lost to Serbs. (NB: DOROTHY MOW AT killed in December 1991 when Serb militia and JNA overran the Croat village of Rosenovici, Glina Municipality.)
Heart of Danger Page 6