You might think that was quite a number, but anyone who had contact with the locals had to have an interpreter. Not just Bob Stewart. The Quartermaster had to negotiate the purchase of materials, hardcore and so on. Every single liaison officer, all Cheshire captains, had their own ‘patch’ and were responsible for liaising with local commanders. The BRITBAT area of responsibility was huge. Each of these LOs needed an interpreter. So did the battalion Padre, Tyrone Hillary. Most of these interpreters, of varying ability, were held in a pool. There was even a tiny office, a sort of standby room, where the door might suddenly open, someone would shout, ‘Need an interpreter’ and one of these boys or girls would jump up and go. For the most part though, each LO had his favourite with whom he’d work permanently. The best, of course, were retained for the difficult interpreting with the CO and the company commanders.
I had a small room at the bottom of the captains’ house and shared it with one of the local interpreters, Edi Letic, a Muslim from Novi Travnik. He was an outstanding linguist, a brilliant guitar player and singer and all he ever wanted to do was to drive around the world in a battered Renault 4 with his guitar. He had qualified as a civil engineer at Sarajevo University and spent most of his time working for the QM or the Engineers. The Padre also had a room downstairs. The rooms at the top were occupied by the doctor, Captain Mark Weir, and a couple of LOs. I had nothing to do so latched on to Martin Forgrave, the LO for Travnik, Novi Travnik and Turbe. Each day we’d jump into his Land Rover and go visiting and chatting with the local commanders.
The first thing we had to deal with was the mysterious death of two British mercenaries, who had been killed in Travnik. The whole place was mad with suspicion. Something very odd was going on right across Bosnia and Croatia at the time.
The war was so accessible. It was only a two-hour hop from London. The fighting attracted a bizarre collection of people who flocked down to the Balkans: aid workers, go-it-alone journalists hoping to make their names and, inevitably, mercenaries. Some were genuinely ex-services, others were bluffers and Walter Mittys and some were just utterly naïve and lost. They came from just about every country in Europe and beyond. When I left Split, Bob Edge was dealing with the local police over the case of a Brit in the HOS who had been found with his throat cut. The police reckoned it was something to do with drugs. I’m not so sure. Another three British mercenaries were found dead in Mostar that week and then we had these two in Travnik to deal with. For some reason the locals were popping off British mercenaries.
These two in Travnik weren’t dogs of war or anything like that. All they were doing was running first aid courses for the BiH 7th Brigade in Travnik. One day they’re found face down in a field, hands tied behind their backs and riddled with bullets … from behind … an execution.
Who knows what the motive was. My guess is that they’d been seen coming to the camp at Vitez once or twice for a meal or a chat or whatever. Someone put two and two together and came up with five … British spies, and bang, executed. Martin and I flapped around for a few days trying to track down the bodies. They’d been taken to the mortuary in Zenica but we couldn’t find them. We spoke to Djemajl Merdan the BiH 3rd Corps Deputy Commander, who didn’t know where the bodies were. And no one knew exactly what the status of these people was anyway. What was Britain’s obligation to dead mercenaries? We weren’t really interested in that and all we felt at the time was that they should at least have a Christian burial. We looked around the cemeteries and graveyards of Zenica and eventually found them in graves with Muslim head boards. Bob Stewart and the Padre and one or two others went up there and Christian crosses were placed at their graves and they were given a proper send off. Bloody sad. That’s what it was like there – the place stank of suspicion and death.
In the evenings I’d sit in the Mess drinking and chatting with some of the interpreters. We fed off each other, explaining the intricacies of idioms in both languages. There wasn’t really a pecking order amongst them but the best two, Dobrila Kalaba, a Serb from Novi Travnik who had studied English at Novi Sad University, and Ali, a Muslim from GV, whose home and family were being trashed by the Croats there, were the best. They worked almost exclusively for Bob Stewart. Then there was Edi Letic my roommate, who was almost their equal and was also Dobrila’s boyfriend. They’d been childhood sweethearts. Finally, there was Suzana Hubjar, half-Serb, half-Muslim from Travnik. She was exceptionally bright and brave. She’d been in her final year of medical studies at Sarajevo University, had returned home to Travnik to cram for her finals and bang, war – no finals, no qualifications and she winds up working for us. Tragic, all of it.
It was Edi to whom I got closest. We’d spend hours in the kitchen chatting, him strumming his guitar and telling me what it was like to grow up in Yugoslavia. I learned a lot from him. He had a mouthful of the world’s most rotten teeth, but he was a real window into the mentality of the locals. I remember him saying, ‘Here was I, a Yugoslav, born to Muslim parents, never stepped into a mosque in my life, never considered myself to be anything other than a Yugoslav and then suddenly this war comes and I’m pigeon-holed “Muslim”.’ He horrified me once when he told me of an incident back in October 1992 when the Croats and Muslims of Novi Travnik started fighting, ‘I’m in this trench with a radio and with a whole load of other Muslims. The Croats are charging us, firing, and we’re firing back and then suddenly something snaps. Everyone around me leaps up screaming and shouting, mad with red rage. They drop their rifles and charge forward with axes, knives, meat cleavers and bayonets and they hack away at each other. That’s what it’s like here. It’s not enough to shoot. Better to make a real job of it with axes and knives. I just cowered in the trench and thought “fuck this” … that’s why I’m an interpreter.’ The Padre used to sit and listen to us rambling on but I think it was all beyond him, the mentality I mean.
As for what was going on in the rest of Bosnia at the time I didn’t have a clue. When you’re back in one of these valleys that’s your frame of reference. You meet the locals, the commanders in Travnik, like Commander Kulenic – young, charming, very bright, terrific sense of humour and an expert ski instructor from his JNA days. He’d point up at this enormous mountain at the head of the valley which we called the Vlasic feature. The Serbs held it and looked down on the whole valley. Kulenic would say, ‘I know that mountain like the back of my hand. I’ve spent my life skiing it. It’s as much mine as it is theirs. One day I’ll ski it again.’ He used to slap me on the back at parties and his eyes would twinkle, ‘Ah, Mike, ti si nas, you’re one of us, I know.’ He knew. He was no fool. You can’t hide your soul from these people. But as for the rest of Bosnia – I hadn’t a clue what was going on behind the scenes. All I knew was that valley; you could feel this terrible tension hanging over it. Croats and some Muslims in Vitez, Croats and Muslims in Novi Travnik and in Travnik and it was all going to blow sky-high. The Lasva valley was a giant pressure cooker waiting to blow. And there we were, sitting in the middle trying to keep the lid on things, but knowing secretly that something was coming our way. It was just a question of time.
Then one day in February this enormous 25-kilo parcel arrives for me. It’s from General Jackson in London. There was a note too, ‘Well done for delivering the parcel. Here’s another. This is your own personal humanitarian mission.’ So that was it. I became Postman Pat but the problem was, how to get it into Sarajevo. Although it was nearer than Split it was harder to get in. You had to have a damn good reason to go into that French colony. You couldn’t just hop off to Sarajevo and besides, apart from their Mortar Platoon, the Cheshires rarely went in there. So the parcel stayed in Vitez.
In the meantime I had to go up to Tuzla and cover the Op