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

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