THE SILENT CRY
JOHN MacPHEE
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First published in 2000 by Empire Publications
Smashwords Edition
© John MacPhee 2000
ISBN: 1901746 089
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by Empire Publications at Smashwords
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For Armane and Axon, my two sons and also Joanne.
Thanks to Peter Ireland, who immediately captured the essence of my words and thought them worthwhile to publish. To Ashley Shaw who more than anyone believed in the need for the public to read of the particular reality of war as emerged in Bosnia and Croatia. He persevered when I, so many times, wished to call it a day. It was hard work editing my many and varied thoughts but he did it. To Kate Schofield, Mike Hubbard, and Dave Ireland who were always helpful in pushing the project forward.
This work is a testament to every life lost in the Bosnian and Croatian War. I salute them, whatever their nationality.
FOREWORD
In ‘The Silent Cry’ I have tried to probe my innermost feelings regarding my part in the Bosnian War, in particular the manner in which the terrible deaths and my personal involvement in the fight for freedom affected me. Despite the four-year gap between my last action in Bosnia and the present day the images and memories haunt me still.
Soldiers play a special role in war as they are trained to kill and obey without question. My intention here has been to allow the non-combatant to understand the mind of a soldier, a trained killer. Like anyone, however, soldiers are human. They are prone to emotion: dread, fear, anger and sometimes they act in accordance with the latter and exact a personal revenge when those they love are tortured and murdered.
War is a terrifying, chilling business – much of the time killing is undertaken in a cold, professional manner. But sometimes emotions come to the surface all to easily when your land, livelihood and the lives of your family and friends are at stake. During the conflict UN and UNHCR officials seemed to ignore these basic emotions. They would mouth their personal, highly paid views, whereas I lived or died on a £3 a week wage during my first months as a HVO soldier.
The officials sent to protect the civilians in Bosnia didn’t seem to understand the war. In particular a lot of them failed to understand the basis of the conflict and the emotion and desperation of those directly involved in it. At the end of the day they did not count the dead and dying among their friends and relatives, they did not bury their lover and her child as I did.
The death of those closest to me left me isolated. My only means of escape was to kill. Perhaps this book may hold some key as to the fascination of war but in all honesty I have written the whole thing from an anti-war stance. I met many brave and dauntless characters during the course of the conflict: soldiers and civilians, Croats, Serbs and Muslims and it is not my intent here to shock or scare the reader with graphic detail of death and destruction, as a result I have held back from some of the seedier details.
Where I have not held back however is in my quest to show the reality of war. The manner in which I have written my account of the conflict is consequently at odds with many British soldier books you may have read. I am not tied to the UK government by a need to keep ‘Official Secrets’ and the reality of the situation is given immediacy by my honest assessment of the forces in Bosnia during the war. These include the Western Powers’ humanitarian arms in the guise of the UN and Nato.
Consequently it has been my intention to challenge the Western media’s view of the conflict. I have tried to write from the standpoint of someone who has seen the images behind the TV cameras, spoken to the survivors and bereaved without an interpreter, suffered the indignity of shell-attack and mortar fire and witnessed the helplessness of the forces sent to keep the peace.
As a result I hope this book will awaken people to the brutal reality of conflict before it takes place, rather than after 7,000 people have died as they did in Srebrenica under the guise of UN protection. It wasn’t ordinary people who started the Bosnian War. In this case it was the failed diplomacy of international politicians that made all-out conflict inevitable. I believe all this could have been avoided with strong leadership from the West.
Some of the stories written here may appear melo-dramatic. But in all cases remember that truth is often stranger than fiction – I have done everything within my power to remember the people who I fought alongside and met during my three years in the Balkans. If I have omitted anyone then I can only apologise and blame the aftereffects of the war on my memory and state of mind.
John MacPhee,
January 2000.
THE LEGEND OF VUKOVAR
I was languishing in a prison cell in Manchester’s Strangeways prison in October 1991 when the soldiers and civilians of Vukovar finally surrendered to the Federal Yugoslav Army. They had been starved out. Food, ammunition and medical supplies long since cut off from the East Slavonian town on the border with Serbia. I soon developed a sympathy for such a beleaguered people.
Day after day the TV news showed pictures of suffering beyond belief. This in turn pushed me toward a decision that it was time to move out of England and away from my criminal past. Croatia, I reasoned, could be a clean slate for me, a chance to prove that I was better than the sum total of my criminal life, its bitter cycle of prison and re-offending.
The following description of the town comes from conversations with many of my Croat comrades who fought in Vukovar until the last days. By this time, the TV cameras had moved out of Vukovar and waited for news; if they had hung around long enough this is what the rest of the world would have witnessed...
On the day the town fell Yugoslav soldiers marched through the streets of the town ordering the locals to bring salad as they were about to slaughter every last man, woman and child in Vukovar. Croats were marched through the streets as the Serb forces continued to loot, kill and rape. The hospital, which had been the main focus of attention for both sides during the 3 month siege, was finally overrun and its occupants (both wounded and staff) dragged away - most of them never to be seen again. Until an invasion became inevitable the hastily assembled Croat army fought bravely and it was with great anguish that Croat commanders left their people behind. It was inevitable and necessary - to re-group and re-arm, to live to fight for Croatia another day.
Since 1945 there had been only one armed force in Yugoslavia - the Serb dominated JNA (Yugoslav Federal Army). None of the states that made up Yugoslavia were allowed their own force and many of the men fighting in defence of Vukovar were raw recruits, a mixture of old men who could remember the Second World War and youngsters barely out of school. Others were part of HOS, Croatian paramilitaries not directly commanded by the army. For this force, and indeed for the newly declared Republic of Croatia as a whole, the bombardment of Vukovar was a baptism of fire.
This siege set the rules of the Bosnian War to follow - to be captured was a certain way to face torture and a long, suffering death. The Serb enemy were ruthless; paramilitaries were given licence to clear whole villages inventing a new term - ethnic cleansing. Consequently for three months or more the citizens, volunteers and patriots of Croatia held out against the irresistible force. For the Croats to have knocked out so many Serb tanks and soldiers was regarded as a crime by the invading forces and they sought their terrible revenge once they forced their way through.
The UN (offering an early indication of their later inaction in Bosnia) attempted to broker a peace agreement but to little avail. It was all far too late for the citizens of Vukovar as the Serbian onslaught engulfed the town - the dead and dying found amid a ruined, blitzed town reminiscent of Stalingrad in the Second World War. In the final weeks of the siege, an old farm track that wound through a cornfield was the only way to get in and out of the town. And, as the net closed in, the artillery barrages intensified, pulverising buildings and people.
The streets of the town were defended by soldiers who dodged from ruined building to ruined building. They slowly starved to death as they carried ammunition and water to their few remaining comrades. Fighting their last for their country, their town, their way of life - their grip weakening with every pull of the trigger, every breath and stride as they sought out sustenance in a desert of destruction.
Communications had all but gone, Croat wounded were dragged into cellars and finished off. The few survivors were paraded on Belgrade television in an attempt to degrade those who had fought bravely against Serb tyranny. The streets, littered with broken slate, glass and wooden beams, played host to small fires that smouldered until rain came to put them out. The soldiers fought for their lives as blood poured from their bodies before finally passing away.
The morgue at Vukovar hospital was full to overflowing and, as winter approached, the ground hardened making burying the dead an ordeal which required an energy the living could no longer muster. Severed limbs lay here and there in the streets - black, blue and rotting as the rats came to devour the human remains.
The line between the living and the dead became blurred. Bomb shelters housed some of the living but their faces were gaunt, their minds shot from three months of siege, shelling and starvation - people of all walks of life were united by hunger as their guts ached with ulcers - there was little hope of food or medical assistance. Babies died in their mother’s arms deprived of life’s basic requirements - milk and bread. Hiding in the bunkers for day after day children were starved of sunlight - to take a peek out of the bunker was to invite a sniper’s bullet or shrapnel - the only familiar smell to most civilians was the rotting of living flesh as gangrene claimed victim after victim.
As the shelling intensified (up to 7,000 shells falling every 24 hours), Vukovar played host to the first of many War Crimes perpetrated during the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Even Serb civilians didn’t escape torment as they cowered in cellars and bunkers - many of them had tried to help their Croat neighbours fight the invading army. But it was they who suffered the most once the town was overrun with JNA and Serb paramilitaries, many of their neighbours pointing them out before they were dragged away never to be seen again.
All these stories came pouring out later as I made friends with some of those who had fought at Vukovar. Many of the defenders of Vukovar were part of HOS (Croatian Defence Force) and were originally from Herzegovina (Southwest Bosnia), the place where I joined the HVO (Bosnian Croatian army). The survivors told me their tragic stories as the armoured might of Serbia finally broke through into the streets of the town - smashing the last remnants of defence and humanity with each tank; machine-gunning all who crossed their path, decimating everything within sight. Everyone and everything became a target as the increasingly drunken invaders made a sport of cruelty and barbarism; a bitter hors d’oeuvres to the Bosnian War to follow.
Following their successful invasion of Vukovar, Serb attentions turned to Bosnia. Because of the Serb actions in Croatia, Germany became the first Western power to recognise Croatia and Slovenia on December 23rd 1991. Moreover by January 1992 the European Community had followed suit, much to the annoyance of the Serbian government, Great Britain and the United States, who all regarded the conflict as an internal matter. In response, the Bosnian Serbs, led by Radovan Karadzic, announced an Autonomous Serbian Republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina and within a week the newly declared Bosnian government had held and won a referendum (which Bosnian-Serbs boycotted) on independence.
In May 1992, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia are recognised by the UN and the Yugoslav Army move into Bosnia to ‘maintain order’. By May they are engaged in a war with Croat forces in Mostar, Kupres and Jajce in Western Bosnia while the Muslims muster an army in an attempt to hold onto the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. In response, the Yugoslav army shell Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian coast and by July 1992 Bosnian-Croatian leader Mate Boban declares the Independent Bosnian-Croatian State of Herceg-Bosna with an army, the newly formed HVO (Bosnian-Croatian defence force), to protect it. That month the Croats and Muslims resolve to co-operate against the common Serb enemy amid rumours that the Croats and Serbs are plotting to partition Bosnia between themselves.
By the end of the summer Bosnian-Serbs control nearly 70% of Bosnian territory while the Croats and Muslims attempt to stem the tide in Herzegovina, Central Bosnia, Sarajevo and Mostar. Bosnia is now at war.
John MacPhee recovers from a bout of pneumonia and is released from prison in 1992 vowing to enter the war. He starts to get himself in-shape and by July 1992 has convinced himself, his sons and the rest of his family that joining the Croatian cause will not be a suicide mission.
PREFACE - THE WAR AND JOHN MACPHEE
THE WAR
Never has there been a more vicious or bloody war than that which greeted the break-up of Federal Yugoslavia. Religious and political tensions polarised the Yugoslav Federation of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro, erupting into war in the early 1990’s.
Catholic Croats, Eastern Orthodox Serbs and Bosnian Muslims contributed to a unique shared history which, with the aid of the nationalist rhetoric of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and the simultaenous desire for independence in Croatia and Slovenia, contributed to a wholesale breakdown of trust between the region’s diverse communities. Federal Yugoslavia, held together since the Second World War by the fragile glue of ‘non-aligned Communism’ under the semi-dictatorial regime of Marshal Tito, had won many friends during the Cold War.
Tito, a Croat, managed to achieve a semblance of peace in the area by giving all sides a say in the running of the Federal Republic. If a dispute between rival tribes emerged he would settle it by subtly altering the power base to give the impression of favouring one ethnic group over another without substantially threatening the Communist party’s rule and the safety of the region. Effectively an enlightened dictatorship subdued all underlying ethnic tensions during this period. Throughout however, Croat remained suspicious of Serb, Bosnian Muslims felt threatened by both - villages where the population was evenly divided lived in an uneasy, but increasingly workable peace, until Tito’s death in 1980.
Tito’s funeral summarised the importance of the Balkans to European prosperity and peace. Every nation sent a delegate to pay their respects. Like the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan the future stability of the region seemed to be held in the hands of an old but respected diplomat. Once he died there seemed every chance that the ethnic fissures would re-emerge. But Tito, adept at covering up the past and prolonging the peace, left a void that proved impossible to fill. Still, inter-ethnic tensions failed to emerge until nearly 10 years later. By then a new generation of politicians had emerged and the notion of a Federal Yugoslavia seemed anathema to all of them.
The institutions in the old state (military, police, and government) were Serb dominated, engendering a feeling of alienation among the other states. As a result a groundswell of support for independence grew in Croatia. Slovenia did secede in 1991 and, amazing as it now seems, won their right with little bloodshed.
Croatia was a different matter however. The Croats and the Serbs had long running scores to settle. Suspended by Tito’s 35 year reign both had brushed aside their role in the Second World War. However the dawn of democracy in the region heightened tensions on all sides. The Serbs accused the Croatians of siding with Nazi Germany during the Second World War and claimed that they helped to execute Communists, Jews and other non-Aryans while Croatia was under the Ustashe regime.
The Croats countered that far from being a special friend to the Allied forces, the Serbs had actually fraternised with Nazi Germany; using strategic cease-fires to better their own cause before further shaping their good-guy image with the Allies by secretly executing Croatian Partisans who fought against Nazi Germany. The Croats also believed that because the Serbian capital Belgrade had been the Yugoslav capital, and Serbs dominated the Federal Yugoslav Army, government and police, they had been stifled by the Serbs for too long. In turn the Serbs felt that every state around them had designs on Serbia and as a result the cause of nationalism grew, stoked by the bush-fires of half-remembered injustices, quasi-romantic history and unjustified paranoia.
In 1991 Croatian-Serbs began to arm, their cause fuelled from Belgrade by Milosevic’s rhetoric and ill-concealed state aid. As town after town fell, a new word came into common currency - ethnic cleansing. By 1991 Serb forces were on the brink of breaking through to swamp the newly declared state of Croatia. Vukovar (on the Serbo-Croat border) was cut off, surrounded and shelled remorselessly. It has been estimated that 600 shells fell on Vukovar for every house in the town, yet the Croats held out for three months. Television cameras recorded the fall of the town. It became a symbol of resistance to unreasonable Serb aggression - a sign that the simmering tensions in Yugoslavia had boiled over into a war that no-one in the West had the power to prevent.
John MacPhee was one such viewer. However unlike the majority of viewers he didn’t switch channels when the trouble started but became embroiled in it, seeing a parallel between the Croat fight for freedom and his own life which until then had struggled against enemies both real and imaginary. Within weeks of the fall of Vukovar he had vowed to join the Croatian cause.
JOHN MACPHEE
John Bulloch MacPhee was born the third of seven children in Glasgow on May 25th 1950. His father, once a proud, victorious soldier in the Blackwatch Infantry during the Allied conquest of Italy, was now unemployed and had become, if not quite an alcoholic, most certainly a drunk, while the birth of J.B. MacPhee had very nearly killed his mother Klara in child labour. John’s mother quickly spotted the devil in the latest addition to the MacPhee family. He soon became known as ‘the anti-Christ’ within MacPhee circles, an argument that gained weight when, following his christening, the local church burned down.
From the beginning John’s life was fraught with the realities of post-war Britain. Disillusionment stalked his father at every turn. The joy of the successful war for freedom quickly turned into drunkenness and cruelty as his father took out his frustration on John and his mother. John continued to take his father’s rage in silence while his mother’s frequent absences from their one room tenement flat in Glasgow served to further focus his father’s rage on the child, so it came as little surprise when the violence meted out to the child became a hall-mark of John’s entry into the rest of society.
Aged only four John took his first beating from the local police, a prelude to a life of mutual antagonism between the angry Scot and all figures of authority. It was also in keeping that his first word, following an early life bereft of speech, was not ‘mama’, or ‘dada’ but ‘bastart’ - the start of an angry life.
His story could and should have taken a turn for the better when, later that year, he boarded a ship bound for Australia. But Klara MacPhee fled the ship in tears before it sailed and the opportunity was lost. The result, while his brothers and sisters cried, was John’s further retreat into silence. And, as the family disintegrated, the younger MacPhees were farmed out to children’s homes; a prelude to John’s incarceration during 31 of the next 38 years in one kind of institution or another.
Locked behind the bars of children’s homes, prisons or within the strict discipline of military life John began to fight for his freedom, expressing his frustration in the way he had been taught as a child - through violence. The pain of the beatings meted out in children’s homes welled up within him as he plotted his revenge; using the violence inflicted to build-up a tolerance to pain, adding determination to a plentiful reserve of hatred. Nevertheless, John had a brief taste of freedom when he escaped borstal to join the Swedish and Norwegian navy with the aid of a forged passport.
For 16 months he travelled the world, and while it was a kind of freedom he still found himself institutionalised by daily naval chores. When he was finally discovered he was sentenced to 7 days bread and water followed by 28 days solitary confinement in Wormwood Scrubs before being returned to Rochester Borstal, from where he’d originally escaped. A litany of crimes and misdemeanours ensued; violence, theft and daring each playing a part in an expression of hatred for society. For 10 years (1966-1976) he was a professional criminal, re-offending at the first opportunity. The death of his father in 1976, while John was serving a 7 year stretch for conspiracy to steal, meant that he attended the funeral in chains and, despite a compulsion to ‘go straight’ in memory of his father, the violence and mayhem was cranked up a gear later that year.
He was in Hull prison for the riot in August 1976 that was sparked by allegations of violence by prison guards on prisoners. John MacPhee played a starring role in the subsequent conviction of 12 of the guards in 1978 - his evidence appearing on the front page of the Daily Telegraph. Upon his release however John continued his cruel career in the underworld - one particular lowlight being the stabbing of a one-time associate of Ronnie Kray. Now suffering mental turmoil John sought help from the authorities to no avail - so carrying both a mental illness and post-prison traumatic stress he went into the countryside to commit suicide, however he and a pair of criminal associates wanted on drugs charges were followed and caught in possession of a gun - suicide averted he was sent down for another 3 years.
John had widened his criminal scope by this time. There were rumours of a connection with a Colombian drug cartel, allegations of his role as an enforcer for drug gangs, he fought against the Russians in Afghanistan, smuggled arms between Cambodia and Burma. In 1986 he was arrested for importing forged £20 notes and passing them on to the striking miners. He was involved in the ‘Stalker affair’ and was asked to explain how the conclusions of the Sampson inquiry had come to be delivered to his prison cell in Strangeways before official publication. At one time JB MacPhee was the most wanted man in Britain following his suspected involvement in the murder of a notorious criminal in London.
Brushes with the West Midlands Police ensued; helicopter chases and armed police confrontations became accepted parts of his everyday life - he led 200 police in a merry dance following allegations that he had threatened a police officer with a silenced pistol. A ‘not guilty’ verdict followed his arrest. But it was while he was inside that John heard of another fight for freedom. The crisis in former Yugoslavia was in full swing. Vukovar, on the border of Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia was being shelled incessantly. Television news reported the Croat fight for freedom and something within John MacPhee clicked.
Following a criminal career that had brought nothing but the worst excesses of society’s punishment on John’s head he finally saw the fuller picture. He had fought against society so violently that by 1991 the cycle of incarceration, release and re-incarceration had become predictable and dull. He was also ill, laid low by pneumonia and depression. In July 1992, having recovered, he raised the cash to fly to Zagreb. His knowledge of explosives gave him a way into the newly formed Bosnian-Croatian forces (HVO) and when he arrived in Croatia he experienced a real sense of life and freedom for the first time. He quickly became a respected figure within Croatia, was renowned as a determined fighter and found a love for humanity which the British authorities had long since believed impossible.
His cause was now war and freedom. He moved within all circles in Croatia, befriended the opposition nationalist party leader and became a frequent spokesman for the Croatian cause on British television. His travels as a freedom fighter have seen his ‘talents’ help with the struggle for Chechnyan independence, while offers continue to pour in from around the world - invitations from similar small nations who struggle for their independence in spite of the aggression of their larger neighbours. He has said that he found peace in war, something never accorded him in Britain throughout the formative stages of his life. His struggle for Croatia in Bosnia is the subject of this book for in his own words; “it is better to die in freedom than to be imprisoned and embittered within the chains of its loss”.
This is his powerful story - a personal struggle for the freedom of a nation and his own battle for inner-peace within the chaos of the Bosnian War.
1 - A JOURNEY INTO WAR
ZAGREB - JULY 1992
As the plane touched down at Zagreb International Airport the sun blazed a welcoming heat upon the tarmac runway. The airport was quiet, which I thought unusual considering that a war was being fought in the vicinity. Then again the airline carrying me, Croatia Airlines, was the only one using Zagreb, they had loaned their stock of planes from Lufthansa, the deal being part of Germany’s growing alliance with Croatia (Germany being the first country to recognise Croatia as an independent state). I looked out of the porthole and saw the reality of conflict - a UN transport plane was sitting on the tarmac. I suddenly found myself questioning my reason for coming to Croatia and abruptly realised that the fighting was no longer at arm’s length, on TV, but that the action was only a few miles away - there was no turning back.
My feelings were in turmoil as I touched Croat soil for the first time before taking the airport transfer bus over to the smallest of the air terminal buildings. Once inside I relaxed a little in the departure lounge, cooling down from the intense summer heat. I remembered fragments from my previous life, jumping out at me from obscure corners of my mind - crisp, clear memories but they all held the same fear, all ended with the same inevitable conclusion, that I was walking to my death.
I was shaken from my self-obsession by a voice as I approached passport control. I was asked for my ID in Serbo-Croat. The man at the desk spoke firmly but respectfully, he had mistaken me for a Croat soldier and following our brief misunderstanding (I couldn’t speak a word of Croatian) I was directed to the departures lounge for the next flight to Split. My mind wandered as I examined the runway, buildings and planes milling around outside. The harsh reality of war was yet to hit me; my initial fears questioned whether I was doing the right thing by coming to Croatia in the first place, never mind my imminent arrival in Bosnia. The bitter memories of my wasted criminal life returned. The 21 years I had spent in the English prison system, the 10 years before that in borstals and children’s homes. This was my opportunity to make a mark for the right reasons, an opportunity to contribute rather than to take.
There was a dignitary in the lounge, Mate Boban - the President of Croat controlled Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was surrounded by a large entourage and was chatting casually. Despite his presence my mind quickly flitted back to the flight and how I would actually go about joining up with the Croatian army. In those moments I forgot about the President, although I later realised that I could have enlisted through him. In any case I decided that I would join-up by any means necessary, I didn’t need a leg-up from the top man.
With renewed confidence I left Zagreb and as the plane rumbled on towards Split I put myself in a positive frame of mind by remembering the many times I had survived against the odds in Britain, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Burma. Yet nagging doubts persisted. I was 42 years old now, was I too old? Would a younger soldier make me pay with my life for my age? I didn’t want to get too bogged down with the fatal possibilities but I did wonder.
I travelled from Split airport by bus to the city’s dockside. Split was a bustling, friendly place - the warmth of the people struck me immediately, everyone appeared to be smiling which was unusual having lived most of my life in Glasgow and Manchester and even more unusual in a city that had only recently been cut-off from the rest of Croatia. There were a few sad, huddled, figures in the dockside however, refugees fleeing the conflict and it was seeing them that brought the humanitarian crisis home to me as I stepped from the bus into Croatian life.
A woman approached me at the bus terminal. She spoke in German, ‘Zimmer, zimmer’
‘Do you speak English’, I replied.
‘Nein, sprachen Deutsch’
‘Ok,’ I said trying to recall my sketchy German, ‘Zimmer… ein nacht, wie wiel cost? Englesi punt?’
She held up five fingers, which I felt was fair enough for bed and board. So I followed her onto an Autobus, all the time she kept saying ‘Dobra, dobra’, the first words I managed to understand in Serbo-Croat - this apparently meant good. We got off the bus a kilometre on and reached a six-storey block of flats and went up to the third floor.
Her apartment was clean and tidy and with a gesture I was led into the kitchen to eat. She listened intently as I related my reasons for coming to Croatia while translations were made by the woman’s daughter-in-law as the family continued to offer me food and drink until I was eventually forced to refuse, another early lesson in Croat hospitality. I was directed to a room that I would share with a wizened 60 year-old Muslim guy. He had something wrong with his fingers on one hand and a bandaged wound on his right leg.
The old guy told me his story: Serbs had attacked his village massacring all and sundry, killing livestock. They had tortured him, chopping at his leg with a machete and standing on his fingers until they finally left him for dead. As darkness approached he had managed to crawl to some woods nearby and stayed there half-conscious, half-frightened to death for 4 days before moving on with little or nothing to eat. He eventually found another set of refugees and they eventually found relative safety in Split. This was my first Bosnian tale – the story of Serb aggression, ethnic cleansing and barbarous cruelty would soon become commonplace, every non-Serb had a similar tale. I don’t know how many similar stories I have listened to since, but this first one certainly made an impression on me.
Sleep came fitfully that night. Then, first thing in the morning I woke, had my breakfast and bid a thankful farewell to the old woman, her daughter and the old guy before heading for the bus bound for Tomislavgrad just over the border in southwest Bosnia.
Fear and anxiety overcame me once more as the bus moved toward the border. The evidence of the war was all around; machine gunned and burned houses were everywhere, the landscape desolate and desperate, all sense of hope shredded by the Serbian war-machine as military music blared from the driver’s transistor radio – it made for a surreal entry into Bosnia. We eventually reached a port-a-cabin that served as a border checkpoint and my trepidation grew as we waited. If there was no turning back at the airport, I thought, there was even less chance of turning back now. Passports checked, we went through, and continued a few kilometres on before the bus broke down outside a roadside café bar. Another aspect of the Balkans to consider – prehistoric transport.
I got out and struck up a conversation with a couple of girls returning to Tomislavgrad when a passing soldier offered the three of us a lift to the command post at Tomislavgrad. So off we went. We passed the sign of the town ‘Duvno’, the old Communist name for Tomislavgrad (Tomislav was a former king of Croatia and therefore an unacceptable imperial symbol of the past under Tito) before we reached the Croatian Command checkpoint.
I anxiously handed over my passport to the guard and the guy left, only to return a minute later to abruptly tell me, ‘you are too much’, which I took to mean too old. He was an Australian Croatian, a non-combatant with a uniform. He didn’t endear himself to me with his attitude, you would have thought that the Croatians needed all the help they could get under such pressure from the Serbs.
At that moment a tall guy, also in uniform, approached asking what the problem was.
‘He thinks I’m too old’, I replied, a little offended at the first guard’s attitude.
‘How old are you?’, the guy asked with a Canadian drawl.
‘42’
‘I’m 39 – like you, the wrong side of 30’.
Without warning he turned to the Australian guy and said, ‘you, go fuck a donkey’ and directed me upstairs.
I sat down and told the soldier, who turned out to be the Tomislavgrad commander, my story. He made me feel right at home – offered me some peach juice and told me to ignore the Aussie on the gate. I explained my criminal past, my recent illness and the inspiration for my coming to Bosnia, finishing with, ‘the truth is that there is nothing for me England. I was on death’s door a few months back so I suppose I see every day as a bonus. I’d rather die out here fighting for a cause than languish in hospital for weeks on end. I have come to help you in any way possible’.
Hoping that I had impressed on him my desire and enthusiasm for the fight I was taken to a mess hall where I met some other HVO soldiers. Among them was a guy called Ante and a small group of Special Forces, they seemed like swell guys and made me feel right at home. The commander told me to hang about for a day or two in case I went off the idea of joining up, suspecting that I might go off the idea pretty quickly when I discovered what was at stake.
Later that day I was driven to Bucici village and given lodgings in a house with another two foreigners - this also bolstered my confidence, that others had travelled so far to join up was confirmation in my mind that I wasn’t the only one inspired by the Croat heroics at Vukovar and that there were others prepared to risk life and limb for complete strangers..
BABICE - SEPTEMBER 1992
It was 7.20 am when the first of three 120mm mortar shells landed 15 metres or so from my makeshift bunker, scoring a direct hit on two adjacent frontline sleeping quarters. Within moments of the explosion I was up, running towards the cries of untimely, fateful death. This was it, my first action in Bosnia - I had moved into the hill only 12 hours ago and here we were within the earshot of death, screams known only amid carnage. This was death’s destructive pause, the moment when a war-machine takes its inevitable toll. The dying and wounded were quickly within sight suffering agony beyond belief. I was not paralysed by shock at that moment but accepted death as a logical, if unjust, conclusion to the lives of my new comrades.
They were the fathers of 13 children, they had wives and brothers - tragic but true, they would leave the tears of their families on graves back home. Then I wondered why. Why had the enemy chosen our beautiful hill to satiate their lust for horror, despair and despondency? Then, hours later, I asked myself why am I not dead or at best dying? The very evening before, when we had arrived, I had been designated to one of the two huts that had just been hit.
But among the fatally wounded lay one Croatian soldier who had borne the brunt of that shell instead of me. The night before he had taken into account that I would be excluded from Serbo-Croat conversations and swapped places so that I could share with a German soldier and two other foreign nationals who spoke English - now he was paying for his hospitality, slumped against a tree stump, dead. Another who had loaned me his helmet while on guard-duty lay face down in the mud; from the buttock of one leg to the knee there was a huge wound, cut to the bone - he was also paying for his good manners.
The cries resulting from the explosion will always be embedded in my brain. The agonising screams spoke at face value of physical pain. On another level they could be regarded as the cries of the nation those soldiers represented, screaming at the injustices suffered by their homeland against a Serb aggressor, against the enormity and senselessness of man-made death.
There is no need to further relate what came into view that night as I scanned the area; my brain clicking like a camera in slow motion - images that still haunt me today. Around me shocked soldiers lay flat on the ground - not dead but numbed by the explosion. I couldn’t feel for them; I screamed orders that they return to their AK positions and await the next attack - it was harsh but the Croatians and other volunteers obeyed me. In effect I was trying to force an order on the chaos, later a Major thanked me for my reason and courage, but there was no reason or courage to the events that took place up in Babice during my first action in Bosnia. I was running on autopilot, attempting to exert some power even though underneath I was shocked by the deaths of our six colleagues on the hill. In the few days since my arrival in Croatia my doubts and fears had ebbed away as I found a new respect for the simple mountain people of Herzegovina. I knew their cause was life’s freedom. The hate in my life, up until then such a driving force in my criminal career, had almost disappeared with the warmth of my reception in Croatia. Twelve hours before that shell had exploded we had embarked on a tortuous journey from the Tomislavgrad command base into these hills.
Shells pounded the road as our driver veered the jeep across the narrow track, pushing for extra speed to beat the mortars - my relief at reaching Babice in one piece had been tainted by the feeling that this was my first encounter with the real war in Bosnia. For the first month I had trained without a gun, then once I had satisfied them that I was not a ‘glory-seeker’ I had been flung into action in Babice, north of Tomislavgrad.
The Babice frontline was typical of most in Bosnia. Thick undergrowth protected us on all sides, which made getting through it silently impossible. Five small bunkers were set along the top of the hill as gun emplacements while there were a number of log barricades with apertures at chest height a little down the slope. The sleeping quarters were positioned behind the hill and consisted of a flimsy looking combination of polythene covered with branches - a covering which that first shell had had little trouble piercing. But there was little hope of surprising the Serb enemy on the Malovan Mountain opposite - we knew all about their positions and they ours. This was trench warfare First World War style.
The frontline was on a hill which sloped down to a town below called Suica. It had been shelled incessantly by the Serbs and was now completely abandoned, razed to the ground. Walking about down there the place was a ghost-town; a bombed out cafe, an eerie sense that people once lived there happily, as windows creaked above your head and doors banged in the breeze. Babice was a focus for much activity. It was a base to defend and from which we hoped to attack. I experienced joy and carnage, laughter and tears beneath the 4,000 metre high Malovan Mountains. But it was also a place of camaraderie as soldiers joked away hours of idleness or waited in trepidation as fraught seconds stretched one’s sinews.
In the previous month or so I had been greeted with open arms; there were several foreign volunteers who had joined the HVO at about the same time as me and in a way this seemed to justify my long trip to Bosnia against the wishes of many members of my family. Now we were part of a great struggle for independence, for the right to self-determination and the natural right of all men, women and children - the human right of freedom. But the need to make real the rights of the innocent required the brutal act of killing for which I had volunteered.
There has never been any compunction in my life to continually take the life of another. However, here in Bosnia the stakes had been raised - now I thought, why should I care about inhumanity? Why should a soldier give an iota of consideration to the enemy? Life, in the cold act of killing, is to be taken quite clinically - once the initial killing has begun and a soldier has passed the weary stage of fear for the imminent battle, once you can no longer hear the zing of bullets or blast of shell and tank-fire directed at you from only metres away; smashing beside your feet, trembling the very ground you walk upon - then and only then can you be a cold and heartless killer. In heavy fighting your thoughts are mechanical and reasoned, there is something unearthly about it. It feels like some primitive point or aeon in a time warp, then you experience an inner excitement - a realisation that you are powerful and destructive, able to pierce flesh with lead.
Later that cold, heartless night within the mountain woods (following the morning that had seen the demise of six of my comrades) the frontline had slowly returned to routine. We were changing guard every two hours - it was a moonless, dark and bitter evening, a slight mist suspended over the whole area. My teeth were chattering. I don’t know whether it was from the bitter cold or out of nervousness but there was something suspiciously quiet about that night. I could still hear the cries of the wounded and dying in the back of my mind and felt the painful realisation that only soldiers can understand - the shock of men who expect death at every minute, every hour.
Regardless of all that I quietly went up to the machine gun emplacement made of logs and boulders. The soldier beside me, a tall gangly Croatian farm hand, had received a mere four weeks basic training before being pitched into this cauldron. For all that he was a likeable character, if naturally a little nervous following the morning’s events. When the shell had exploded they had been taken by surprise - I most certainly wasn’t, being born to madness and its way, I expect the unexpected as the norm, as a law of nature. Wherever there is hell I’ll be the first to open its gates. Don’t get me wrong I don’t invite trouble; I just accept it when bombs explode on my bludgeoned Scottish head.
Meanwhile in the emplacement I checked out my two Claymore mines, remembering the precise positions where they had been laid. Then I checked the 1943 German Eagle MG.42 machine-gun; it had probably killed more men than I could contemplate with its typical German coldness. As it would turn out German precision was what would be needed that night, and I patted it like a dog of war; it was now my mentor, complicit in my intent to kill all in our path. My teeth chattered, I became impatient for an attack, wanting someone to shoot-up my machine-gun post - seconds later they did. I jumped out of my skin, this was it - I was being shot to pieces - the cartoon was over.
I now remembered my aversion to fixed positions, the Serbs had plotted well and had got to within 50 metres or less of our frontline. Minefields? Don’t trust them unless you lay them yourself. Chips of stone and splinters of wood spat into the night, as I clattered my machine-gun ripping the night to pieces - there were screams down to my right; the smell of gun oil and spent cartridges. I held the power of life in my hands, a survivor of all before me. I wanted to get out of the position to administer the kill personally, to make the enemy die like animals, to let them receive the cold steel of my bayonet.
Then to my shock the piece of history stopped in my hands - the German gun had jammed. I picked up a Bulgarian AK 47 and gave single shot fire to the edge of the nearest tree, the only place that could offer cover to any of the vermin out there. My sole intention was to survive, my fullest need to kill all and everything - but there was no panic. I was born to this as I shouted, short of breath, “Come on ya bastarts, take whits yours!”
Each bullet was now riding on autopilot, my tracers lighting up the sky - it seemed natural. They were firing all along the frontline now, my mouth dry from exertion. The bloke beside me looked amazed but more sure; even at this mad moment I felt for him - he was from these hills, had tended its fields of corn, now we were ripping his beautiful land, his mountains and forests, to pieces. Explosions everywhere - a grenade thrown to my left hit one of our lads in the neck. Shit! The bastards. Quickly, I un-jammed the MG42 telling the Croatian farmer/soldier to cover my front.
The smash of bullets gave confidence to all as the German scythe cut the undergrowth. The automatic rifle-fire was continual now but, I thought, it was pointless to throw grenades as the woods were to our disadvantage. Another 300 rounds expended I fitted another belt;.
It was useless to operate this old gun single-handed - the thing was jamming constantly, these guns needed a two-man team, one to feed, one to kill. As quickly as it began it ended. Some more sporadic firing took place before moans could be heard right in front of me. My comrade, sat beside me signalling, declined my invitation for him to go out and practise first aid on the Serb and I roared with nervous laughter. Soon everything was quiet.
As night gave way to dawn I felt a little strange. There was elation but also an inner fear - I was confused about my transformation from criminal to commissioned killer. I wasn’t happy that I had killed for the first time in this war but there is a natural elation attached to survival - if I was to survive this war I would need to learn how to kill professionally and in cold blood - this was lesson one.
The sun reluctantly came up through the trees and still the cries and moans could be heard 50 metres directly ahead of us. I peered into the misty morning light with relief. Shouts all along the line of our positions confirmed that we had held our positions - as ordered, as expected. Only one man was down, seriously injured. As it later turned out the main attack had been directed at my post but of course the madness that morning was all theirs as I was awake - a Scottish soldier, a German gun.
I am normally teetotal - but a HVO soldier, who had worked at the hell and high-water position, was opening a bottle of ‘Pivo’ (beer) with his already broken teeth and handing me the bottle as a mark of respect. I guzzled it down like a bear and in one momentum had emptied every drop before I touched my forehead with the cold, empty glass - pure bliss and me a non-drinker as well.
Everyone was smiling and laughing now, through nerves or relief that they were still alive and in one piece I knew or cared not; who gave a fuck for death, we were still in the land of those who could pretend to live - then a single shot broke the laughter, a bullet took the bloke beside me to the ground, blood seeping from his left side as he flattened; in the middle of our jollity it was strange, like a film.
Instinctively I ripped AK fire into the face, neck and chest of the Serb in the aperture of my sights. The consolation was small however as I looked to see the blood bubbling from my comrade’s mouth, his eyes pleading, as if he could not believe his fate - to be wounded by the Serb I had just this moment mown down. I gave credit to the enemy. Then as now I knew he fought us as a soldier and died a quick death, the kind deserved by a killer of killers.
Once the smell of cordite and sound of explosions had ceased I peered into the glade. What was there to see, to understand? I could see a mass of bodies, cold blood on the ground beside them. I was numb. Amid the carnage there had been a loss of respect for life, for some reason nothing seemed to matter any more. My fingers had squeezed the trigger so many times and the result was there before me.
I also knew that I would have to continue the killing spree for many years to come - unless, of course, I too received my just desserts and was killed. Then I believe that there is more order in war than in civilian life. If you’ve ever been involved in a conflict then you too will realise the simple, natural order of things, the feeling that life is within your grasp.
Later I walked among the dead. Following the elation, the ‘power surge’ of killing in combat for the first time, I inspected the bodies and noticed that some of the eyes of the dead Serbs stared at me. They were only bodies now, carcasses in an open wood, but they looked alive as I walked among them, checking they were dead. One brave Serb, the guy who had wounded my comrade, had seemed to smile as his head disintegrated into pulp.
Standing there I was momentarily lost to all reason and compassion - my unconscious mind took over, protecting me from the shock of conflict but there was no shock as to how many I had killed. Blood soaked the soil here and there - death was not vainglorious, it was matter of fact - the soldiers were dead and gone, yet I lived - elation became experience. I stood and reflected on the harsh reality of battle: seeing in the faces of the dead all those that had frustrated my life’s aim - freedom.
Bodies were checked for anything that might give useful information, right down to the country of origin on the chocolate wrappers, as we worked out whether the Serbs had received UNHCR aid or had looted supplies - if they had, this would also tell us where the Serbs had most recently been in action. My mind was alive with information, anything that could be used by us we took, the spoils ours to claim.
Guns, grenades, ammunition, the odd machete or axe, the killing knives; no money was ever to be had; their gold jewellery was always left behind at their base. Life went on and we were never bored, or at least I wasn’t - I felt that it was impossible to be bored within a conflict, only a moron could venture such an excuse.
We checked the dead. Bodies were turned over by the use of a rifle-butt. I always bayoneted each by going into the solar plexus, and heart, or in through the neck and up into the brain. There was no degree of malice in this action, only the absolute certainty that one day one of the ‘dead’ wouldn’t be as he first appeared - as sometimes you could encounter someone with the will to carry on even though they were maimed and on death’s door.
Life force is life force, I never underestimate the power of this particular factor - they were animals, just as we could be, hell was their mentor as far as I was concerned. When that bullet had seared past my face and hit my comrade-in-arms I had little option but to shoot back at the Serb whose will to live was unbelievable; my highest respect remains for that soldier of the damned. We fought on equal terms, as rival soldiers on the frontline. He had traversed no-mans-land; dodged my bullets and tip-toed through a minefield before striking home at us - only to find me in a killing mood.
My need was my need. I had to continue to kill because I wanted to expedite the feelings, emotions and frustrations of my futile life. Now I was an equal with the ability and capability to destroy all before me, in this the first of many destructive sorties in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
JAJCE
Until October 1992 Bosnia and Croatia had agreed to work together against the ‘common Serb enemy’. Politicians cemented this alliance when they set up a Joint Defence Committee on September 23rd. At the same time however Croatia negotiated with the Serb government for the relief of Dubrovnik (on the Southern tip of the Croatian coast) in return for Serb control of Bosanski Brod in North-East Bosnia.
This deal was greeted with dismay by the Bosnian government, who regarded it as an attempt by Belgrade and Zagreb to partition Bosnia between them. Despite these deals however the fighting intensified between Croatian and Serbian forces while the mistrust between Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats exploded into fighting within weeks of their joint-declaration and finally resulted in war between all three parties.
It was at about this time, not long after returning to Tomislavgrad from Babice, that I met a Scottish girl and her boyfriend who were in the process of delivering much needed medical supplies to the Bosnian Muslims. At that time an enmity was growing between the Bosnian and Croatian forces, a division that would later find the HVO (Croatian-Bosnian Defence Force) fighting both Serb and Muslim forces. Meanwhile my job was to escort the white truck, laden with a ton of anaesthetics, through Croatian held territory to a Muslim hospital in Bugojna. Along the way the trail of destruction and terror became evident.
At one particular Croatian checkpoint in Prozor all hell had broken loose. I ordered the boy to slow the truck to 5 mph (any faster and we were sure to be shot at) in order to make sure that the Red Cross on the truck could be seen.
It was a bit hairy - a Croatian soldier approached us at the checkpoint. He had the wild, staring eyes of a madman and an itchy trigger finger. Only my HVO badge and my own particular brand of diplomacy helped avert a potentially threatening situation. Later that night we reached Rumboci, a Croatian hospital a little off the route to Bugojna, where we were given the traditional Croat hospitality - drinks all round and a slap up meal. Unfortunately for the Bosnian Muslims that particular ton of anaesthetics never did reach Bugojna - somehow they ended up at the Croat run Rumboci hospital instead - to this day I don’t know how that happened.