The Delegate's Diaries: Part Four

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Part Four







Hi!
All the last week at our base in Pale we had been watching CNN and listening to the BBC World Service reports of the fall of Srebrenica. We had also been receiving calls from a Serb doctor at the small clinic at Bratunac, a few miles from Srebrenica. He apparently had a large number of wounded Muslim civilians in his care and was having great difficulty protecting them from attack. He was asking us to evacuate them... to go into the very centre of the chaos. After a couple of false starts we finally got the go-ahead. Unfortunately my translator had called in sick that morning so I was on my own in the vehicle.
At 8 am we headed off in convoy at break-neck speed along the edge of the plunging valley of the Drina River. Nine Landcruisers with flags flying, we flashed into the pitch darkness of tunnels and then out onto spectacular bridges that overlook the river far below and wind their way north to Zvornic. The excitement and anticipation was incredible. Could life get any better than this? I sang aloud the "Ride of the Valkyries" and the music from "The Dambusters" as the diesel engines roared flat out, echoing through the tunnels and across the hills still with the morning mist around them. We met up with six other Landcruisers that had come from Belgrade with two large covered tray trucks.
We had crossed the border into Serbia earlier and planned to recross into Republica Srpska together near Bratunac. The usual delay, for about an hour, while we had our permission to cross confirmed by a dozen phone calls. More problems however. One of the trucks was carrying surgical supplies, desperately needed in Srebrenica. We had a customs clearance but the officials wanted a ‘sanctions clearance’. Where do we get that? Washington! The rest of us went on. Bob, the pommy truck driver stayed on the other side of the bridge. I kept in radio contact with him. It looked hopeless. An hour later Bob radioed to say he was on his way. He bought a few beers from a little cafe near the bridge and shared them with some chaps he had seen sitting at the check point. Surprise surprise, it turned out they were customs officials and had the authority to allow the truck to cross the border, in spite of the UN sanctions. War is insane.
At 1pm I was sitting in my Landcruiser outside the Bratunac clinic, a fairly large two storey building in the usual state of semi-collapse. It must have been around thirty six degrees and the town was jam packed with people. I had the great foresight to pack a slab of Coke and some bread which I shared around the team as we waited. Inside, Lucy, Deputy Head of the Delegation in Pale and our appointed leader, was arguing about who was to be allowed to go with us. They said no "war criminals" could go as they were needed for interrogation. This meant no males, including two seventeen year old lads with broken legs. Then more conditions were added. We could not take anyone unless we went into Srebrenica and evacuated the UN compound which had a large number of severely wounded people. Confusion as we worked out who would go in. I was going to make sure I went so I jumped in my vehicle and started the engine. "I’m ready". I heard someone object but it was too late. I was lined up behind Lucy and set to go. I had come thus far and wasn’t going to miss out now.
We moved through the crowded streets and down the road to Srebrenica. Along the side of the road was the evidence of the terrorised flight of the people of the town. Piles of clothing and household effects taken but quickly abandoned or pillaged in their exodus. I sped through the abandoned Yellow Bridge checkpoint I had been at a week before. At Potucari, on the outskirts of the town, was an abandoned factory. On the roof and around the perimeter fence were sand-bagged observation posts. Blue UN flags were still flying and the words "DUTCH BAT" had been painted along the side of the factory. We pulled into the yard and chatted to some of the Dutch UN soldiers who were most unwilling to talk about the events that had unfolded around them over the last few days. Lucy disappeared into a building to continue the negotiations while we drove our vehicles into the pitch black factory and parked near a generator that rumbled away and powered a few light bulbs that pierced the darkness. This was hell. We waited again, eventually extricating the miserable wretches from stretchers and mattresses underneath machinery in the filth and darkness and loading them into the four landcruisers and one truck. I imagined what it would have been like a week earlier as shells and rockets roared over head and the terrorised population crammed into the factory and compound. We put thirty nine people into the truck and four into each of the Landcruisers. I had an old man who was completely in shock. He kept calling out for hours and hours, seemingly oblivious of where he was. I had a delightful old lady with terrible bruising and cuts on her face and limbs. She had a couple of plastic bags with a few meagre possessions which she guarded with her life. I had a woman in her fifties I suppose with severe abdominal injuries from shrapnel. She turned an ever more sickly yellow as the hours went by on our journey. A British doctor explained who my last passenger was. A woman of about forty. She had been narrowly prevented from suicide several times in the last few days. It seems her brother, who was around the compound somewhere had been aiding and encouraging her in this. The casualties were laying on whatever we could find to cushion them. Some old mattresses, blankets and clothing were used, but were to prove totally inadequate for the journey ahead over rough dirt roads. All manner of quite serious casualties were crammed into the truck, along with supplies of water and bandages etc..
In spite of fractured limbs, skulls and serious abdominal injuries we didn’t hear one cry of pain or complaint from the truck as we made our torturous eighteen hour journey.
When we arrived back at Bratunac we expected the other vehicles to be loaded and ready to go. No such luck. Still arguing about the lists. The two boys were in tears. They were not to go. More heated discussion behind closed doors. Ann rushed out. "Yes, they can go". Claude and I grabbed either side of a blanket and whisked one of them out the door and into a vehicle. In spite of the pain he smiled and shook my hand. "Good on ya cobber, you’ll be right." I told him. The two boys were in the vehicle ahead of me for the rest of the trip and many times I waved to them and gave the thumbs up, which they returned with glee.
It was after four but we were moving at last. Another two hours at the nearby checkpoint while they checked the lists of people. They wanted a list showing the name, date of birth and the vehicle each person was travelling in. We scribbled lists on scraps of paper. They checked each one. The numbers didn’t add up. Frustration frustration frustration. Should we go on into the darkness? Can we wait here? On we went. As the sun sank behind the rugged and heavily timbered mountains we headed off through into Serbia and then back across into Republica Srpska.
As we crossed the border we were told we would have a military escort, for our protection. This is always resisted by the ICRC. We believe the best way to reinforce the Red Cross as a symbol of protection is for us to take it seriously ourselves. No weapons under any circumstances and no escorts. But they insisted. We were very wary, as they seemed to be irregular soldiers rather than the police.
Our fears seemed to be even more real when they led us off the main road and down a winding dirt road towards the frontline. This is not a good place to be at night. We were not sure what we were being led into. Under radio instructions from Bijeljina and Pale delegations we stopped. They were not happy with this and were even more angry when we all turned our vehicles around and started heading back the other way. They pulled us up at gun point. What followed was about four hours of intense negotiation. It seems one of their colleagues had been captured near Tuzla recently. "The ICRC must know where he is" they said. "The ICRC will find and release him in exchange for the convoy". We stood around in the cool of the evening, in the darkness, quietly chatting. I gave my casualties some water and offered some bread. It was so quiet and still. I can’t remember feeling frightened at all. I just thought to myself "this is living... really living".
Police arrived and we were on our way by about four am. As the sun began to rise we headed through Bijeljina and approached the frontline. At around nine we finally had the go ahead to cross no-man’s-land on a road that had not been used for about three years. A Serb soldier from the checkpoint agreed to go with Lucy in the lead vehicle around the first few bends in the narrow road that descended into Tuzla. As we headed though the checkpoint I could see the large anti-tank mines that had been slid out of our way. As the Muslim positions came into view, Lucy’s soldier suddenly swung the door open and leapt from the moving vehicle. Our colleagues from Tuzla had come through to meet us and we quickly headed into the large industrial town, crammed with refugees, some selling their few possessions along the roadsides. Police blocked traffic as our convoy headed into town. I had a great sense of triumph obviously shared by the two boys who struggled up on their elbows in great pain but with beaming faces and the now familiar thumbs up sign to me driving behind them.
We pulled into the huge Tuzla air base where strapping Norwegian medics began unloading and triaging our casualties. I waited with my little group. I looked at them and wished I could talk to them. I casually pulled out a picture of my three sons, aged 14, 12 and 8 and passed it around. They all burst into tears. I don’t think they had considered that I might have had a family. I had a cry with them. It was a magic moment.
We enjoyed a huge feed of eggs, bacon, hash browns and coffee. I was looking forward to a shower and a sleep. Someone came into the canteen with the news that if we were not across the border within an hour the Serbs would close it again and we would have a very very long round trip through Croatia to get home. The blankets and mattresses had been removed from the vehicles and their interior pressure cleaned. The mess was unimaginable inside the truck particularly.
As the sun again rose fiercely in the sky we headed back across no-man’s-land and into Republica Srpska. Having been on the road now for some thirty hours we all had great difficulty staying fully awake and so chatted on the radio to each other.
After a shower, a feed and a sleep at Bijeljina I felt great.
I had decided I wanted to "throw a little colour on the canvas of life." I think I had.
In the next episode we faced an enormous moral dilemma. General Mladic invited us to be present in Zepa, the next Muslim enclave to fall, during the evacuation of the civilian residents. Would our presence mean we agreed with the ethnic cleansing?



If you are enjoying reading this I would love to hear from you. There are a few issues you might like to comment on or questions you might like to ask.

we never carry weapons of any kind. What are we...nuts?
why should anyone take notice of a Red Cross flag?
should we accept military escorts in dangerous areas?



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ask Stuart Trist a question.

Introduction | Background | Diaries | Submit Questions | Other Resources | Guest Book |

Copyright © 1996 I*EARN Australia and Australian Red Cross, Victoria.

	Hi! All the last week at our base in Pale we had been watching CNN and listening to the BBC World Service reports of the fall of Srebrenica. We had also been receiving calls from a Serb doctor at the small clinic at Bratunac, a few miles from Srebrenica. He apparently had a large number of wounded Muslim civilians in his care and was having great difficulty protecting them from attack. He was asking us to evacuate them... to go into the very centre of the chaos. After a couple of false starts we finally got the go-ahead. Unfortunately my translator had called in sick that morning so I was on my own in the vehicle. At 8 am we headed off in convoy at break-neck speed along the edge of the plunging valley of the Drina River. Nine Landcruisers with flags flying, we flashed into the pitch darkness of tunnels and then out onto spectacular bridges that overlook the river far below and wind their way north to Zvornic. The excitement and anticipation was incredible. Could life get any better than this? I sang aloud the "Ride of the Valkyries" and the music from "The Dambusters" as the diesel engines roared flat out, echoing through the tunnels and across the hills still with the morning mist around them. We met up with six other Landcruisers that had come from Belgrade with two large covered tray trucks. We had crossed the border into Serbia earlier and planned to recross into Republica Srpska together near Bratunac. The usual delay, for about an hour, while we had our permission to cross confirmed by a dozen phone calls. More problems however. One of the trucks was carrying surgical supplies, desperately needed in Srebrenica. We had a customs clearance but the officials wanted a ‘sanctions clearance’. Where do we get that? Washington! The rest of us went on. Bob, the pommy truck driver stayed on the other side of the bridge. I kept in radio contact with him. It looked hopeless. An hour later Bob radioed to say he was on his way. He bought a few beers from a little cafe near the bridge and shared them with some chaps he had seen sitting at the check point. Surprise surprise, it turned out they were customs officials and had the authority to allow the truck to cross the border, in spite of the UN sanctions. War is insane. At 1pm I was sitting in my Landcruiser outside the Bratunac clinic, a fairly large two storey building in the usual state of semi-collapse. It must have been around thirty six degrees and the town was jam packed with people. I had the great foresight to pack a slab of Coke and some bread which I shared around the team as we waited. Inside, Lucy, Deputy Head of the Delegation in Pale and our appointed leader, was arguing about who was to be allowed to go with us. They said no "war criminals" could go as they were needed for interrogation. This meant no males, including two seventeen year old lads with broken legs. Then more conditions were added. We could not take anyone unless we went into Srebrenica and evacuated the UN compound which had a large number of severely wounded people. Confusion as we worked out who would go in. I was going to make sure I went so I jumped in my vehicle and started the engine. "I’m ready". I heard someone object but it was too late. I was lined up behind Lucy and set to go. I had come thus far and wasn’t going to miss out now. We moved through the crowded streets and down the road to Srebrenica. Along the side of the road was the evidence of the terrorised flight of the people of the town. Piles of clothing and household effects taken but quickly abandoned or pillaged in their exodus. I sped through the abandoned Yellow Bridge checkpoint I had been at a week before. At Potucari, on the outskirts of the town, was an abandoned factory. On the roof and around the perimeter fence were sand-bagged observation posts. Blue UN flags were still flying and the words "DUTCH BAT" had been painted along the side of the factory. We pulled into the yard and chatted to some of the Dutch UN soldiers who were most unwilling to talk about the events that had unfolded around them over the last few days. Lucy disappeared into a building to continue the negotiations while we drove our vehicles into the pitch black factory and parked near a generator that rumbled away and powered a few light bulbs that pierced the darkness. This was hell. We waited again, eventually extricating the miserable wretches from stretchers and mattresses underneath machinery in the filth and darkness and loading them into the four landcruisers and one truck. I imagined what it would have been like a week earlier as shells and rockets roared over head and the terrorised population crammed into the factory and compound. We put thirty nine people into the truck and four into each of the Landcruisers. I had an old man who was completely in shock. He kept calling out for hours and hours, seemingly oblivious of where he was. I had a delightful old lady with terrible bruising and cuts on her face and limbs. She had a couple of plastic bags with a few meagre possessions which she guarded with her life. I had a woman in her fifties I suppose with severe abdominal injuries from shrapnel. She turned an ever more sickly yellow as the hours went by on our journey. A British doctor explained who my last passenger was. A woman of about forty. She had been narrowly prevented from suicide several times in the last few days. It seems her brother, who was around the compound somewhere had been aiding and encouraging her in this. The casualties were laying on whatever we could find to cushion them. Some old mattresses, blankets and clothing were used, but were to prove totally inadequate for the journey ahead over rough dirt roads. All manner of quite serious casualties were crammed into the truck, along with supplies of water and bandages etc.. In spite of fractured limbs, skulls and serious abdominal injuries we didn’t hear one cry of pain or complaint from the truck as we made our torturous eighteen hour journey. When we arrived back at Bratunac we expected the other vehicles to be loaded and ready to go. No such luck. Still arguing about the lists. The two boys were in tears. They were not to go. More heated discussion behind closed doors. Ann rushed out. "Yes, they can go". Claude and I grabbed either side of a blanket and whisked one of them out the door and into a vehicle. In spite of the pain he smiled and shook my hand. "Good on ya cobber, you’ll be right." I told him. The two boys were in the vehicle ahead of me for the rest of the trip and many times I waved to them and gave the thumbs up, which they returned with glee. It was after four but we were moving at last. Another two hours at the nearby checkpoint while they checked the lists of people. They wanted a list showing the name, date of birth and the vehicle each person was travelling in. We scribbled lists on scraps of paper. They checked each one. The numbers didn’t add up. Frustration frustration frustration. Should we go on into the darkness? Can we wait here? On we went. As the sun sank behind the rugged and heavily timbered mountains we headed off through into Serbia and then back across into Republica Srpska. As we crossed the border we were told we would have a military escort, for our protection. This is always resisted by the ICRC. We believe the best way to reinforce the Red Cross as a symbol of protection is for us to take it seriously ourselves. No weapons under any circumstances and no escorts. But they insisted. We were very wary, as they seemed to be irregular soldiers rather than the police. Our fears seemed to be even more real when they led us off the main road and down a winding dirt road towards the frontline. This is not a good place to be at night. We were not sure what we were being led into. Under radio instructions from Bijeljina and Pale delegations we stopped. They were not happy with this and were even more angry when we all turned our vehicles around and started heading back the other way. They pulled us up at gun point. What followed was about four hours of intense negotiation. It seems one of their colleagues had been captured near Tuzla recently. "The ICRC must know where he is" they said. "The ICRC will find and release him in exchange for the convoy". We stood around in the cool of the evening, in the darkness, quietly chatting. I gave my casualties some water and offered some bread. It was so quiet and still. I can’t remember feeling frightened at all. I just thought to myself "this is living... really living". Police arrived and we were on our way by about four am. As the sun began to rise we headed through Bijeljina and approached the frontline. At around nine we finally had the go ahead to cross no-man’s-land on a road that had not been used for about three years. A Serb soldier from the checkpoint agreed to go with Lucy in the lead vehicle around the first few bends in the narrow road that descended into Tuzla. As we headed though the checkpoint I could see the large anti-tank mines that had been slid out of our way. As the Muslim positions came into view, Lucy’s soldier suddenly swung the door open and leapt from the moving vehicle. Our colleagues from Tuzla had come through to meet us and we quickly headed into the large industrial town, crammed with refugees, some selling their few possessions along the roadsides. Police blocked traffic as our convoy headed into town. I had a great sense of triumph obviously shared by the two boys who struggled up on their elbows in great pain but with beaming faces and the now familiar thumbs up sign to me driving behind them. We pulled into the huge Tuzla air base where strapping Norwegian medics began unloading and triaging our casualties. I waited with my little group. I looked at them and wished I could talk to them. I casually pulled out a picture of my three sons, aged 14, 12 and 8 and passed it around. They all burst into tears. I don’t think they had considered that I might have had a family. I had a cry with them. It was a magic moment. We enjoyed a huge feed of eggs, bacon, hash browns and coffee. I was looking forward to a shower and a sleep. Someone came into the canteen with the news that if we were not across the border within an hour the Serbs would close it again and we would have a very very long round trip through Croatia to get home. The blankets and mattresses had been removed from the vehicles and their interior pressure cleaned. The mess was unimaginable inside the truck particularly. As the sun again rose fiercely in the sky we headed back across no-man’s-land and into Republica Srpska. Having been on the road now for some thirty hours we all had great difficulty staying fully awake and so chatted on the radio to each other. After a shower, a feed and a sleep at Bijeljina I felt great. I had decided I wanted to "throw a little colour on the canvas of life." I think I had. In the next episode we faced an enormous moral dilemma. General Mladic invited us to be present in Zepa, the next Muslim enclave to fall, during the evacuation of the civilian residents. Would our presence mean we agreed with the ethnic cleansing?

	If you are enjoying reading this I would love to hear from you. There are a few issues you might like to comment on or questions you might like to ask. we never carry weapons of any kind. What are we...nuts? why should anyone take notice of a Red Cross flag? should we accept military escorts in dangerous areas?
	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ask Stuart Trist a question.