SOLDIER X IN BOSNIA

Even though the town was under siege I could still see people going about their daily lives. The most obvious difference was seeing people running through certain areas of open ground, to avoid Serb snipers who may be watching. In this war of ethnic hatred, anyone is considered a target whether a 70 year old women or a 10 year old boy. Our main priority was to make contact with the BIH commander as quickly as possible. Archer was on the radio trying to make contact with their command post while everyone else kept watch in our defensive positions. We knew the the Serbs would have DF equipment so every second was important. Eventually, after around 10 minutes of trying Archer was speaking to the commander who had been given the code name `Attius`. Arrangements were made for some of his men to meet us and guide us in to the command post. It was now time for us to check we had the extra pieces of uniform we had been issued, our UN armbands and blue berets. For this mission we were not officially working for the British government, we were with the United Nations. If things went pair shaped, the UN insignia should in theory have granted us some protection. In reality we all knew they would mean little.

The command post was located in an old factory in the heart of the once beautiful city. There were sandbags covering the windows and the main entrance, but half of the top floor had already been damaged by shell fire . The lower floor where the main area was looked as if it would not withstand much Serb fire if they located it. We were each in turn introduced to Attius and some of his officers. He then offered us a drink of the local firewater slivovitz and he toasted to the defeat of the Serbs. Archer then went to speak with him in private with a female nurse who spoke near perfect English acting as an interpreter. The rest of us were left to stand around like spare parts while they went off. We tried to make small talk with the BIH soldiers but it was embarrassing that we could not speak more than a few words of Serbo-Croat between us. After around 5 minutes Archer returned and gave us a short briefing on the situation around the town. With the BIH soldiers in earshot he didn’t go into too much detail about our mission. Even though we were there to help them, we were still foreign soldiers on their land.

The situation was not looking good. The Serbs were advancing towards the town and there was not a lot the Muslims could do except try to slow them down. The end seemed inevitable and a few NATO airstrikes would do little to help. Nothing was said about this by any of our group, but everyone in our group was thinking what the fuck are we doing here. Attius had arranged a place for us to stay and use as an operations centre. Looking at the place they were using, I wasn’t expecting much. Our escorts showed us the way, we moved through the gloom of the streets as night started to fall, I could here the occasional sound of shell fire, luckily nothing near to us. Eventually we arrived at what was going to be our home for our time in Gorazde. We were taken through the front door and found our new home had in peacetime been a bank.