by Alex Lochrie
One convoy from Scotland arrived at the last Serbian control point just before darkness fell. The Serbs did not want them on their patch overnight so pushed them through with instructions to drive straight to the airport. On leaving the Serb checkpoint at Kasindolska they had to turn right for the short 200-yard run into the safety of the airport where they would park overnight before being escorted into the city first thing in the morning. The UN checkpoint had been withdrawn for the night and, as usual, all hell was let loose between the opposing factions. The person at the head of the convoy thought that it was a waste of time going to the airport as he could see from his road map that it was only 5 miles to the city centre. When he came to the junction where he should have turned right to get to the airport, he turned the convoy left heading for the city along the stretch of road controlled by our checkpoint during daylight hours. They hadn’t gone 200 yards before they were fired on, both sides thinking that the other was making an unauthorized dash into the city. The Bosnians thought that it was a Serb attack and the Serbs thought that the Bosnians were trying to move military supplies from one area to another.
The convoy came to a sudden halt in the middle of the road nose to tail when the lead vehicle was hit. The fire was then concentrated on the last vehicle which was also incapacitated, making retreat impossible. We saw and heard the firing from the airport and knew immediately what had happened because of the non-arrival of the convoy at the airport. We therefore got on the hotline to both sides and managed to get an agreement for a ceasefire, but it took time. In the meantime the convoy was taking a pounding.
Some of our VABs had been fitted out with lights to illuminate our UN symbols and flags, to enable us to make emergency runs into the city from the airport. It was rare that this happened and only when we had a medical emergency which required us to get to the main hospital in the PTT building. Once the ceasefire was in place, and with the agreement of both sides, our VABs were sent out to recover the occupants of the convoy. No one had any idea what we would find, but fortunately the occupants of the lorries had reacted quickly and most had made it into the ditches at the side of the road. Sadly one woman from Edinburgh had got out of her lorry and tried to run back up the road, only to be cut down by both sides. She died instantly. There were a couple of other minor injuries, but considering the weight of fire that had been directed at them it was a miracle that there had been only one fatality. The legionnaires rounded up the survivors and recovered the body before heading back to the airport for the night. The lorries had to stay where they were for the time being and would be taken back to the airport at first light.
Once inside the security of the airport the survivors started to realize how lucky and stupid they had been. The incident was 100 per cent their own fault and for once neither the Bosnians nor Serbs were to blame. Rule number one: when in a war zone, do as you’re told. The lorries were recovered in the morning, but as we expected, half of them had been relieved of their contents during the night. They were so shot up that they had to be towed back to the airport and most of them ended up as scrap.
The Serbs were furious that their orders had been disobeyed and as a result closed their checkpoint to all non-military convoys for two weeks. Fortunately for the occupants of the city, most of the essential aid such as food and medicines were brought in by air. As it turned out, like most charity convoys, this one was carrying clothes that were not suitable for, and articles that were not essential to, the survival of Sarajevo’s residents. It was all very well intentioned but tee shirts and summer dresses were not what was needed there, it had been a waste of time and effort, and had sadly cost a life. This was not the only incident of its kind – others resulted in a much greater loss of life.
From contacts with families at home, we were aware that events in Sarajevo were receiving extensive coverage on French television, much more so than was being reported back in the UK. Because of this our Colonel in Chief was concerned that our families and friends back in Calvi would be worried about our safety. News of injuries could not be kept secret and we knew that rumours would be rife. To combat this he decided that a weekly news video should be recorded and sent back to Calvi for showing in the camp cinema. Families and friends would be invited to attend the screening and everyone, we hoped, would be a lot happier.
We tried to present a calm relaxed image of our lives in Sarajevo, showing footage of the men using the sports facilities we had constructed. It was important not to film anyone in the background wearing body armour and everyone in camera wore a beret rather than a helmet. The videos included shots of convoy escort duties passing through beautiful countryside and I made sure that there were no scenes of burnt-out houses or dead animals lying in fields. It could have been a film for the Sarajevo tourist board. Messages were recorded for their children by happy, smiling fathers. When I look back at these videos you could be forgiven for thinking that our mission was one big holiday and would never have known that we were in a living hell.
There was one amusing incident when a senior officer was making an introductory piece to camera while standing on the steps at the entrance to the PTT building. He was not wearing any of the offending clothing and was in the middle of telling everyone how peaceful it was, when an artillery shell screamed overhead and exploded about 50 yards away showering us in debris. I don’t know which one of us hit the deck first, but when I looked up, the officer had disappeared inside the building. Needless to say that particular footage did not make it back to Calvi. Which side had sent us the present was not clear but we had obviously been observed filming and whoever it was had decided to make their own contribution to the video. It struck me later that we were guilty of manipulating our own families through the power of the camera, in exactly the same way the press were manipulating the public – what you see on TV often has nothing to do with the truth.
Three hospitals were operating in Sarajevo: the civilian one in the city, the UN one in the PTT building and our own one at the airport. Several legionnaires had suffered minor gunshot wounds while working on airport crossing patrols and our medical staff were fully occupied every night striving to save the lives of the injured civilians the patrols were bringing in. We had an operating theatre installed in the customs warehouse and the doctors were forced to operate under less than perfect conditions. They had no choice but to perform complicated surgical procedures on cases which really required specialist surgeons and equipment. Literally hundreds of civilians had their lives saved by our doctors and Legion medics, who worked non-stop through the night, every night.
The walking wounded were taken back to their own side of the fence after treatment, but it was not unusual to be dealing with the same person shot for a second or third time, days later, such was their desperation to leave the city, and who could blame them. For every one ‘crosser’ that we turned back, twenty made it. Despite knowing that we had to perform this duty, we felt that we were putting our own lives at risk every night for something that was ineffective, and that we did not want to do. But these were our orders from the UN.
Each morning the more seriously injured were either transferred to the civilian hospital or to the UN one in the PTT building. Most ended up with the UN, simply because the civilian hospital could not cope with the demand on their services.
We were more interested in what was being brought into the city and confiscated large quantities of military hardware and ammunition. Every morning we would search the crossing area and would recover the objects that had been abandoned during the night. When they saw that they were about to be caught, the culprits would dump their weapons, hoping that someone else would pick them up and take them into the city. There was everything from assault rifles and ammunition to hand grenades, communication systems and maps showing the latest Serbian positions, to RPG7 anti-tank rockets.
One chap we arrested was a Turk who had deserted from the REP eighteen months earlier. He had not known that it was his old regiment, never mind his old c
ompany, that was controlling the airport that night, so he got quite a shock when he was brought before his former company commander. He had served for quite a few years, had been a junior NCO in 4th Company and had considerable experience in the handling of mines and explosives. He was detained and flown out in the morning to the American base in Ancona in Italy. I never did find out what happened to him after that.
CHAPTER 15
Our Darkest Hour
We had two VABs fitted out as ambulances, clearly marked as such, with large red crosses on every side. They also carried two big flags with red crosses and the UN symbols. On 11 February, one of our regular patrols was visiting the Bosnian village of Butmir when they were asked for urgent medical assistance. A woman in the village was about to give birth, there appeared to be complications and she required immediate hospital attention.
The nearest facilities were our own hospital at the airport, but under the agreement we required permission from the Serbian authorities to bring someone into the city. She would have to be transferred to Sarajevo after she had received emergency treatment. Permission was obtained and one of our ambulances was sent to Butmir to pick her up. There was an emergency entrance we could use for missions of this kind, saving a long detour through the roadblocks to get to the airport, and there was provision for exactly this kind of emergency within the airport operational agreement.
Our medical staff were standing by to receive her and within minutes of her arrival within our compound, she was whisked into theatre. I had opened a window in our command room to film the arrival of the ambulance and was intending to go across to the hospital to film our doctors helping the woman give birth. It would be nice to show that there were positive things going on in the middle of all the mayhem. The birth of a baby was always good news.
The driver of the ambulance had just parked his vehicle and was climbing out of the driver’s door when the VAB took a direct hit from a mortar. Three more heavy mortar rounds exploded beside the vehicle, one on the Portakabin at the end of our block and a fifth one hit the entrance to one of our observation posts within the compound. Legionnaire 1er Class Benco and the co-driver of the ambulance were seriously injured. The driver had several shrapnel wounds but none serious. Fortunately the others were still inside their VABs and, although concussed, were otherwise uninjured. The Legionnaire inside the observation post was protected by the sandbags but suffered ear damage from the shockwave. The attack had taken place within seconds of the woman being taken inside the building and there is no doubt that it was directed by someone inside or with a view into our compound.
I realized afterwards that I had heard the first round coming over the roof of our building, seconds before the explosion. The injured were rushed into the hospital to be treated beside the woman they had just gone out to save. She gave birth to a healthy child but sadly Legionnaire 1er Class Benco died from his injuries. Our doctors meanwhile worked hard to save the life of the ambulance co-driver, Legionnaire Novokouski. It was obvious that he needed major surgery beyond their capabilities and a special flight was laid on to take him to Paris for treatment. His life was saved, but sadly he lost his leg.
The investigation showed that the mortar rounds were fired by a Bosnian mortar battery situated not 50 yards from the home of the woman who gave birth. Despite our protests, the Bosnian authorities never accepted any responsibility for the outrage, nor expressed any sympathy for the loss of life and injuries caused. Instead, they issued a statement saying that this was another example of Serbian aggression.
This was not the only time that the Bosnians had been prepared to commit atrocities on their own people in an attempt to gain the sympathy and attention of the world press. There was the well-reported incident when the market in the centre of Sarajevo was hit by mortar fire. The market was controlled by Bosnian Mafia organizations and criminal gangs with influential connections with local politicians. The market was in full swing and was a hive of activity when several mortar rounds exploded in the square. The carnage was horrendous. When you are dead, you are dead, but the injuries caused by mortar shrapnel can be appalling. The highexplosive content is designed to fragment the metal casing into twisted chunks of red-hot metal which are thrown outwards and upwards at 30° from the point of impact. The aim of this kind of attack is to kill and maim as many people as possible. Very little structural damage is caused to property.
This incident happened at a time when things had been relatively quiet and Sarajevo was not making front-page news. There was immediate worldwide condemnation of the Serbs for the atrocity and the UN did very little to counter these claims. The twist in the tail was that because of the height of the buildings surrounding the square, it was impossible to fire mortar rounds into that location from Serbian positions. The angles of impact indicated that the mortars had all been fired on a short high trajectory and had come from an area of the city held by the Bosnians. The UN team of experts called in to examine the location submitted their report which stated clearly that the mortars could not have been fired from a Serbian position. They had no proof of who had been responsible but if it wasn’t the Serbs, and it certainly wasn’t us, then it must have been the Bosnians themselves.
Again, Jeremy Bowen says in his book that he heard rumours from the French that the Bosnians were responsible, but that he personally didn’t see any evidence of it. Even someone who was not an expert in this type of investigation and who had visited the market would have seen that it was impossible for the Serbs to have made the attack. The allegations weren’t pressed by the politicians at the time because it was felt that it was not in the public interest to do so as it would only make peace negotiations harder.
This kind of incident makes it very hard to do your job objectively. The Serbs were the public bad boys – and they were. There is no doubt that they were engaged in war crimes including ethnic cleansing, but that does not mean you have to turn a blind eye to incidents like the mortaring of the market. It is another example of where human life means nothing compared to the cause. If a few people go to meet their God, so what - after all, it is an honour for them to have died for their cause. It’s just that no one told them that.
On one of my visits to the UK base at Kisiljac, I met a Korean technician who was servicing a rather large, top-of-the-range, photocopier. I commented on how a machine like that would make my life so much easier as I only had a small black and white portable one back in Sarajevo. ‘Not a problem,’ he said. ‘Just get yourself down to Zagreb and you can take your pick from the UN warehouse.’
When I got back to Sarajevo I immediately arranged to fly to Zagreb the following day. At the UN procurement department I was shown to a large warehouse with office equipment of every kind stacked to the roof -a veritable Aladdin’s cave. I had been asked to try and get a photocopier for our administration office as well as for myself. A civilian clerk asked me what I required, filled out a couple of forms, stamped them and gave me a guided tour of the facility. There were desks, office chairs, computers, filing cabinets and hundreds of photocopiers. I could have equipped the entire Regiment from what was stacked in that warehouse.
The clerk explained that it was all bought and paid for by the UN. There was easily over £500,000 worth of equipment in that warehouse alone, and I could see that there were several identical warehouses within the complex, but I have no idea what was in them. He said that everything that had not been distributed by the end of the mission in the Balkans would be written off and would disappear into the black market. He was quite open about it and didn’t see what was wrong with the system. Another scandal that no one spoke about.
Transport was provided to take me back to the airport and I set off back to Sarajevo with two colour photocopiers that could print double sided, sort documents in page order, and automatically bind and staple them into the finished article. At no time was I asked to sign for anything and had only shown my UN ID card to the clerk when I first arrived. Back in Sarajevo I explained how
the system worked. Within a couple of weeks each of our companies had made the trip to Zagreb and re-equipped their offices.
If this is how the UN runs every mission it undertakes, then there are a lot of people making an awful lot of money supplying goods that nobody really wants or needs. There didn’t seem to be an effective audit system in place and there must have been other things that the money could have been spent on, like refugee relief, for example. Both sides had been in the habit of manipulating and intimidating UN personnel at every turn. It took exceptional patience, firmness and the ability to stay calm in the face of extreme provocation. On the whole we were lucky to have officers and senior NCOs of the highest calibre who were prepared to take decisions which put the safety of their own men above all other considerations.
From the moment we arrived it was made clear to us by UN politicians that we were expected to carry out the mission without prejudice. There were even those who thought that we should let every aspect of our operations be open to inspection by both sides, including our command and control set-up, communications, everything. They lived on another planet and I am glad to say that our commanders thought otherwise. Our Colonel in Chief was a man of large stature and had the personality to go with it. The Serbs in particular are a tall race, but our Colonel was able to face up to them eyeball to eyeball. Our highest-ranking NCO was a Croat by birth, and when we first arrived he had a few problems establishing working relations with the belligerents, in particular the Bosnians. In the end he got through to them and played an important part in establishing a certain level of trust, while maintaining a healthy respect for the Regiment’s military prowess. Both men made it clear that they would not stand for any acts of aggression against us. Unfortunately it didn’t stop the attack that killed Legionnaire Benco. Even the changes we had made to our living conditions, and our professional approach to security, did not go unnoticed by observers working at the airport. I am sure that the message that things had changed was passed on up the line to their bosses.