Aid Memoir. Larry Hollingworth

I debriefed the French. They were disappointed but ready for Gorazde. I attended their “Orders Group” where all participants outlined their role. I did my bit which brought back a memory or two. The French were very efficient, this was a battalion with service in Africa’s hotspots. Eric, in particular, was very impressive. I came away thinking that we would never have a better chance at making it.

      We loaded the convoy the night before we set off. My Sarajevo drivers could not drive their vehicles. The Serbs would have given them too much hassle, and the convoy was too important to risk on principles. If they could not drive, then they were still going to be part of it. They serviced every vehicle, cleaned every vehicle, and loaded every vehicle with care and determination. The drivers would be Ukrainians. I had insisted that they sleep in the hangar the night before the convoy, as they were not renowned for their ability to be on time. I settled into my cosy corner with all the activity continuing around me.

      All sorts of thoughts raced through my head and kept me awake. Would we be mined like Fabrizio? Would we get shot at? Would anybody die? Would we get there? Try as I might, I could not drop off to sleep, and when Nonjo came to awaken me at five with a cup of tea, I was wide awake. I got up, washed and then kick-started the drivers. The Ukrainians were stretched out in their coarse uniforms, tall, stocky, peasants, sound asleep. Nonjo then called me over to the table; he, very touchingly, had cooked a special breakfast for me.

      My own drivers were putting finishing touches on the vehicles: carefully stacking and loading medicines, vital medicines for a hospital with a daily intake of patients wounded by mortar shells and sniper fire, a hospital carrying out major surgery without anaesthetics.

      We lined up the vehicles, and the French escort arrived. It was exhilarating. I felt proud and excited, the adrenaline was running. The dawn was bright, warm and still, Sarajevo was quiet. The local staff wished us every form of luck.

      At H-hour we crossed the start line, the runway taxi area outside the hangar. In the convoy was a contingent of the best of the press. Jeremy Bowen of BBC, Kurt Schork of Reuters, the brave Corinne Dufkas (one of the finest photographers in the business who had started her career as an aid worker in South America), and Patrick Rahir of AFP.

      At Lukavica, we were met by Brane. Always an honest and good man, he genuinely wished us luck. The tall Serb in the APC swung out of the Serb barracks, moved to the front of the convoy and led the way. I hoped he was not going to take me down any more cul-desacs, no matter how scenic.

      The road as far as Sokolac was that which we had taken on our unsuccessful trip a few days previous. Looking at it for the second time, it contrasted starkly with poor Sarajevo. The fields were green and full of crops. Houses were complete, windows intact, children played. Materially, these Serbs were untouched by war; mentally, they were scarred by the propaganda pushed out from the TV and Radio stations of Belgrade and Pale. They could not see the suffering that their soldiers were inflicting on innocent civilians in Sarajevo, they could hear only of the alleged impending atrocities about to be committed by “Muslim hordes.”

      We passed through Podromanje, near Sokolac without stopping; soon the Serbs would establish a checkpoint there to harass and delay our operations. We arrived, still following the Serb APC, at Rogatica. Here, outside a flour mill, the convoy was halted. Here it was to be inspected by the Serbs to ensure that it contained no weapons, no ammunition for Gorazde. The inspection was carried out under the auspices of the Milicija, the police. The Chief of Police of Rogatica who had held the post before the war invited myself, Eric, and some journalists to his office where we drank slivovica and brandy. His office was towards the far end of Rogatica, so we were able to see for the first time the damage done to a front-line town. Before the war, Rogatica had been a majority Muslim town. There had been bitter fighting over it. The Serb army had driven the Muslims out and they had fled into Gorazde. The centre of the town was destroyed, every shop window shattered, most buildings burned. The shopping centre is just one long narrow street. The proximity of one side of the street to the other emphasised the destruction. Literally the damaged buildings leaned over you and hemmed you in. Not a place for a claustrophobic. The Chief was very friendly, I gave him a bottle of whisky, he assured me that we would have no trouble from the Serb side, but he was certain that the Muslims would attack the convoy and put the blame on the Serbs. He therefore gave to me a formal warning that, as we left Rogatica, the Serbs would no longer guarantee our safety and that we were proceeding at our own risk and against their professional advice. This was the first time I was given this speech, the first of many times. The bizarre, devious events that followed this convoy were an early lesson to me, never to forget the “Balkan” factor.

      We returned to the convoy, the inspection was going well.

      I briefed the journalists and the drivers—If we are ambushed, drive on like hell. If we are mortared, keep moving. If a vehicle is hit and the road blocked, get out and seek cover. If you get out in a hurry, look before you leap. At some stretches the road clings to the mountain side with a sheer drop of a hundred or more feet. If we stop and you want to urinate, do it at the roadside, forget modesty, to attempt to find a secluded spot may result in your genitals immodestly spread over the countryside if you stand on a mine. Any questions?

      – Can you show me where we are going on the map? Kurt Schork of Reuters wanted my finger to trace the route. I was soon to learn that this was the most innocuous question that Kurt had ever asked. Normally, he and Sean Maguire of Reuters TV deliver the fast ball that dents the ground and smashes the wickets. The Serb APC and the Chief of Police’s car escorted us to the boundary of Rogatica, conveniently at the entrance to a gorge. You wave to the Serbs, take a sharp right-hand bend and you are on a wide tarmacked road in a steep sided valley. There are huge rocks on the road which have fallen from above. A peacetime hazard in an eerie area full of wartime, evil potential. Since the outbreak of the war, only Fabrizio’s convoy had travelled this far. Somewhere ahead we would find the debris of part of his convoy. We travelled at a slow speed in a strange silence. Birds must have twittered; the river was but yards away but we did not hear it gush and flow.

      After a kilometer or so of gorge, the road ran along the valley bed and we saw large houses at generous intervals. They were deserted but hardly damaged. The “normal”—that is in peacetime—way to go from Rogatica to Gorazde is to continue along this good road, our way was to be the mountain route. The Serbs told us that the Muslims had blocked the main road. The Sarajevo Government told us that the Serbs had mined the road. On a later convoy, I was to open up this direct way and find that both were right.

      Turning off onto the mountain route, we could see our road ahead. It wound its way up an isolated mountain. Within a few hundred metres, we encountered our first hazard, a rickety wooden bridge with a weight restriction of two tonnes. All of our trucks weighed more than ten tonnes. I decided we would risk it. Eric agreed to send an APC across to secure the other side. The APC is no test of weight for a bridge as their enormous tyres and design specialties distribute their weight more successfully than a truck. I marshalled each vehicle across the bridge individually, they paused about one hundred metres before the bridge, then went at great speed. I waited for the vibrations to stop before sending another. The bridge was obviously grossly underestimated—it eventually took many a convoy.

      Soon after the bridge there was a sharp right-hand hairpin bend. It was made negotiable by our trucks because to the left of it extended a rocky plateau at the base of a sheer needle-like mountain. The trucks were able to swing wide onto the plateau. Up at the top of the needle were Muslim forces. It was their outpost—high, safe, and secure. They shared caves with mountain goats whose muffled, plaintive bleats travelled across the still valley. From these observation posts, the Bosnian Army was able to report to Gorazde who was approaching. From their eeries they were also able to snipe at Serb patrols. We passed without incident. One hundred and fifty metres on, there was another bend at which we found a small Serb position, three soldiers in good humour. Just before the next bend (another right hander and exceedingly sharp), we came upon the debris of the APC from Fabrizio’s convoy.

      I paused whilst I recollected his account of the events after the vehicle hit a mine, lost a wheel and overturned. The explosion triggered off a firefight. They were caught in the middle and took cover in the steep slopes of the hill where they spent a long, confused