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

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СКАЧАТЬ say kajs, but I’m sure I’d be wrong.’

      Nick smirked, ‘Kajs in Serbia or Bosnia, but here in Croatia it’s a – wait for it – an okolotrbusnipantolodrzac!’

      ‘An around-the-stomach-trouser-holder! You’re kidding me!’ I was astonished.

      ‘Spot on. Got it in one. They’re at it all the time, making up new words. They’re creating a whole new language here. They’ve even got a huge Croatian to Serbo-Croat, Serbo-Croat to Croatian dictionary, just as if they’re two separate languages.’

      ‘Bad as that then?’

      ‘Yep. So, if you don’t know New Speak keep your mouth shut here in Croatia and Hercegovina, especially with your accent.’ That was enough for me; I made a mental note there and then to play the dumb foreigner in Croatia.

      That evening Nick Stansfield dragged me off to a bar in Trogir, an enchanting fifteenth-century fishing town about four miles north of Split airport and Divulje barracks. Trogir is a mini-Notre Dame, perched on an islet linked to the mainland and to the island of Ciovo by two bridges. At its heart lies a labyrinth of narrow, twisting alleys, small continental-style bars and a variety of restaurants. Before the war it was a haven for tourists and drug addicts. While none of the former was in evidence, Trogir still featured as one of the main nodal points on the drugs route from the East into Europe. Not only was trade prospering, but the war had, according to Nick, allowed the local mafia to flourish and spread its tentacles into every bar and restaurant, including the small corner bar, King Bar, in which we were quietly drinking.

      Nick was leaving theatre in a couple of days’ time, after almost a year in the Balkans. He was unsure what the future held for him once he got home. He even had the option to stay on, one which I was rather selfishly encouraging him to take as he was just about the only person out here that I really knew.

      ‘Trouble is, you can only play the odds game so long and then your luck’s up …’ I wasn’t sure what he was getting at but let him continue, ‘… I’ve followed people into the most frightening situations … Bob Stewart drove us straight into a fire-fight … I crapped myself … then in Sarajevo there was that much metal flying through the air that you spent most of the time cowering in a bunker …’ He paused. He was thinner than I remembered him. His voice trailed off, ‘… No. Eventually your luck just runs out.’ I knew he wouldn’t be staying.

      At the bar a fat German was shouting something in his mother tongue. He was waving a wodge of Deutschmarks at an uncomprehending bar girl and stabbing a sausage-like finger at a crucifix and rosary beads hanging behind the bar.

      ‘I thought there were no tourists here, Nick, you know, the war and all?’

      ‘There aren’t. He’s probably one of those German businessmen who nip down from Munich in their Mercs for a spot of hunting for the cause.’ He laughed dryly.

      ‘How d’you mean?’

      ‘They think nothing of spending a long weekend down here with the hunting rifle taking pot shots at the Serbs on the Knin front line. Solidarity with their Croatian brothers. And then zip back to the office in Munich. Weird, but it happens. There’s weirder yet, but you’ll find out. Whole place is fucked up.’

      The following day we once again found ourselves in the briefing room for a day of orientation briefings. As Brigadier Cumming was indisposed, we were welcomed instead by Major Richard Barrons, the Brigade Chief of Staff and a Gunner. His address was really an overview explaining that the UN’s mandated presence in the Balkans was to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to whomsoever the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, the lead aid agency in the Former Republics of Yugoslavia, FRY, saw fit. The UN Protection Force, UNPROFOR, was mandated to protect UNHCR and the aid. Then it got a bit more complicated. UNPROFOR 1 was the UN force charged with maintaining the peace in the four disputed UN Protection Areas, UNPAs, in Croatia, while UNPROFOR 2 was concerned solely with the protection of humanitarian aid in Bosnia-Hercegovina, B-H. Both UNPROFORs were commanded by an overarching HQ in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. UNPROFOR 2’s headquarters, known as HQ Bosnia Hercegovina Command, HQ BHC, was located in a hotel in Kiseljak in Central Bosnia. It was run on a day-to-day basis by BHC’s Chief of Staff, Brigadier Roddy Cordy-Simpson. The actual commander of BHC, the French general Philippe Morillon, had established himself in a small tactical HQ in Sarajevo in a building known as the Residency.

      If that wasn’t enough, UN deployments within B-H were even more confusing. The French had two battalions, the Egyptians and Ukrainians one apiece in Sector Sarajevo. The Spanish had a battalion based in Mostar in Hercegovina and outposts up the Neretva river valley. The British battalion, BRITBAT, based on the Cheshires’ Battle Group, was centred on Vitez in Central Bosnia and had the largest Area of Responsibility, AOR, with a company in Gornji Vakuf, GV, and B Squadron of the 9/12 Lancers in a base at Tuzla airfield way up north. Not far from the British base at Vitez, the Dutch had a conscript transport battalion at Busovaca.

      In addition to BRITBAT, which numbered about 800 troops, the British had insisted on the deployment of a National Support Element, NSE, logistics battalion and 35 Engineer Regiment, which was located at Tomislavgrad, TSG, in the south in Hercegovina. Their primary tasks were to open, widen and maintain routes running northwards and to keep the Cheshires supplied from points of entry at Split airport and harbour, where the Royal Fleet Auxiliary supply ship Sir Galahad was moored. The controlling HQ for the NSE was in Divulje barracks: based on Cumming’s 11^th Armoured Brigade HQ, now called HQ BRITISH FORCE, BRITFOR, (he himself being Commander BRITFOR, or COMBRITFOR), it answered to the Joint HQ, JHQ, in Wilton. Thus the total British strength came to a shade over 2,400 troops.

      Co-located at Divulje barracks was half a squadron of Royal Navy Sea King helicopters from 845 Naval Air Squadron, 845 NAS, who were known as ‘junglies’ and their French equivalent with their Pumas, known as DETALAT. Although they were unable to fly over the Croatian border into B-H, the junglies and DETALAT busied themselves conducting navigational exercises in preparation for the day when diplomatic clearance and the situation in B-H would permit the first proving flights north.

      Somewhere over the horizon lurked the ships of a multinational flotilla, Op SHARP GUARD. High above both of us ran yet another operation, Op DENY FLIGHT, which consisted of two E3A Sentry AWACs, one above Hungary and the other above the Adriatic, which controlled fighter aircraft from NATO’s 5^th Allied Tactical Air Force, 5 ATAF, who were charged with preventing the warring factions in B-H from using their fixed and rotary wing military aircraft.

      All this military effort was in support of United Nations High Commission for Refugees, whose in-theatre head, Jose Maria Mendeluce, a Spaniard, was based in Zagreb. He was charged with the provision of humanitarian aid throughout Croatia and B-H. UNHCR’s logistics operation was even more complex than UNPROFOR’s. Bought by the UN’s World Food Programme, WFP, using donor countries’ money, aid would be moved into theatre by a variety of means, most usually by sea or road, to UNHCR’s primary depots at Zagreb and Metkovic in Croatia, and Belgrade in Serbia. From those nodes the aid would be trucked into Bosnia. Aid from Belgrade travelled through Serbia, crossed the River Drina into B-H over the Karakaj Bridge near Zvornik, moved through Serb-held territory to the front line at Kalesija just east of Tuzla, where it was escorted over the line and into Tuzla by B Squadron 9/12 Lancers. That operation had been unofficially christened Op CABINET by an exasperated Major Allan Abraham, the Squadron’s OC, who had been heard to comment that it would take a Cabinet decision to get a line crossing approved by the Serbs.

      The aid from Zagreb travelled south into B-H destined both for the Serbs in Banja Luka СКАЧАТЬ