‘Time of flight’s about fifteen seconds,’ I shouted up at him.
‘Good. Fifteen seconds, yeah?’ He seemed pleased. What difference did it make? Flashes, bearings, time of flight? The facts couldn’t be altered. We were stuck in this APC. Shells were landing somewhere to our front. A direct hit would destroy the vehicle. A very near miss would destroy it as well, and, with it, us. But I had a sneaking admiration for that unknown corporal. He was one of Kipling’s men, keeping his head and his cool while all around him were losing theirs. At least he was doing something, keeping his mind busy, warding off the intrusion of fear and panic – pure professionalism. I felt useless, unable to contribute in any way, jammed as I was in the rear and prey to my fears and imagination.
What were we doing sitting in an aluminium bucket between the building and the incoming rounds? Surely we’d be safer in the lee of the building, behind it? Another dreadful thought came to mind: the CVR(T) series of vehicles, of which this Spartan was one, were the last of the British Army’s combat vehicles which still ran on petrol. All the others – tanks, armoured infantry fighting vehicles, lorries, Land Rover and plant – ran on diesel. We were sitting on top of hundreds of litres of petrol ‘protected’ only by an aluminium skin. We’d sought refuge inside a petrol bomb. My mind imagined a near miss – red hot steel fragments slicing through aluminium, piercing the fuel tank, which we were sitting on, and wooooossssh ... frying tonight! Fuck this! This was not the place to take cover.
‘Hey! Why don’t we just drive out of here, round the back of the building where it’s safer?’ I shouted at the corporal and anyone else who might care to listen.
‘No driver in the front,’ he shouted back, seemingly unconcerned. I don’t suppose the fuel thing had occurred to him.
‘We had this for four hours this afternoon … just sat here, froze and waited … shit myself,’ mumbled the staff sergeant opposite and then he added savagely, ‘I’ve fucking had enough of this shite!’
‘Another flash!’ screamed the corporal. Bugger him! Why did he have to be so efficient? I didn’t want to know that another shell was arcing towards us. This is the one that’s going to fry us!… three seconds … the panting started … five seconds … where were Corporal Fox and Brigadier Cumming? Where had they taken cover? … seven seconds ... How had we got ourselves into this? How eager and consumed with childish enthusiasm we’d been, desperate not to miss out! How we’d raced down to TSG – and for what? … nine seconds. ... Idiots! The lot of us.
We’d been in Vitez that morning. In fact we’d just left the Cheshire Regiment’s camp at Stara Bila when it happened. We’d driven there from Brigadier Cumming’s tactical headquarters in the hotel in Fojnica. He’d been incensed by an article in the Daily Mail, written by Anna Pukas, which had glorified the British contribution to the UN and had damned, by omission, everyone else’s. We’d dropped by the Public Information house in Vitez late the previous night after a gruelling eleven-hour trip up into the Tesanj salient. Cumming had returned to the Land Rover Discovery clutching a fax of the article. He’d been livid but it had been too late to do anything about it at that hour so we’d returned to Fojnica. The following day we shot back to Vitez where Cumming had words with the Cheshires’ Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Bob Stewart, who had been quoted in the article.
We were heading back to Fojnica and had been on the road some ten minutes. The Brigadier was silent. Corporal Fox was concentrating on keeping the vehicle on the icy road and the accompanying UKLO team – an RAF flight lieutenant called Seb, his driver, Marine Dawson, and their wretched satellite dish in the back of their RB44 truck – in his rear-view mirror. Next to his pistol on the dash the handset of our HF radio spluttered and hissed into life. It was always making strange noises and ‘dropping’ so I never paid much attention to it. Corporal Fox grabbed it and stuck it to his ear.
‘Sir, I’m not sure, but it sounds like something’s going on in TSG … signal’s breaking up and I can’t work out their call sign … sounds like they’re being shelled or are under attack.’ Corporal Simon Fox was a pretty cool character, never flustered, always the laconic Lancastrian. I couldn’t make much sense with the radio either. Static and atmospherics were bad. All we could hear was a booming noise in the background. We decided to head back to Vitez.
The Operations Room at Vitez was packed. We entered to a deathly, expectant hush as everyone strained to hear the transmissions from TSG.
‘… that’s forty-seven and they’re still landing … forty-nine, fifty … still incoming …’ There was no mistaking it: TSG was definitely being shelled and some brave soul was still manning a radio, probably cowering under a desk, and was giving a live commentary as each shell landed.
‘How long’s this been going on for?’ snapped Cumming, now hugely concerned that his logistics and engineer bases were being attacked.
‘About twenty minutes.’
‘Any casualties?’ His tone was unmistakable.
‘None as yet. Too early to tell. Everyone’s under cover except …’ except the loony under the table.
‘Right, I’m off to TSG. Get hold of the Chief of Staff in Split. Tell him what we’re up to.’ And with that we swept out of the Ops Room. The Brigadier was right of course. He could hardly sit around in Vitez or, worse still, retire to Fojnica, while his troops were under fire. I told Corporal Fox and Seb what was happening. They’d had the presence of mind to get the vehicles fuelled up.
Ahead of us stretched a long journey: Route Diamond to Gornji Vakuf, around the lake at Prozor and then the long climb up over the ‘mountain’ on Route Triangle. This was the worse of the two main supply routes into Central Bosnia, a hell of frozen ruts, tortuous bends, precipitous slopes and broken-down and stranded vehicles. It would take us hours.
I doubt there was a man among us who didn’t feel a buzz of anticipation.The military is a peculiar profession. It’s crammed full of frustrated people – highly trained, frustrated professionals. Unlike any other profession we rarely actually put into practice what we train for ad nauseam. In a sense, we’re untried, untested, and always there’s that little nagging doubt, that little question – how would I cope? Would I do the right thing? Would I freeze? Panic?
Sometimes there are incidents and soldiers are shot at, attacked, bombed, and they are tested. But it doesn’t happen to everyone. Most of the time nothing happens. I’ve done three tours in Northern Ireland, one in the bandit country of South Armagh, and I’ve never been shot at, heard a shot fired in anger or heard a bomb go off. There are the occasional blips – the Falklands and Gulf Wars, where people really are tested and really do ‘see an elephant’ as the Americans refer to combat: ‘Few people have actually seen an elephant, most have only had one described to them.’
It’s an odd arrogance that underpins opinion on being in combat. The US Army is almost obsessive in this respect. As a visual manifestation of this, soldiers who have ‘seen their elephant’ wear on the right sleeve of their fatigues the patch or emblem of the unit or division with which they served on operations – ‘look-at-me-I’ve-been-there’ symbolism. Those unlucky enough not to have been on operations can only wear on their left sleeve the patch of the division with which they are currently serving; their right sleeves remain bare. Fortunately, we have no such rites of passage badges in the British Army, just medals which we’re required to wear so infrequently that most people can’t remember where they’ve put theirs.
As a very young soldier I remember well one night in McDonald’s in Aldershot. It was June 1982 and 2 and 3 PARA had just returned from the Falklands War. The place started to fill up with a gang of Toms from 2 PARA, all