11/07/2008

Over the next few weeks, allmediascotland.com is to publish, each weekday, extracts from the memoirs of Scottish war correspondent, Paul Harris. ‘More Thrills than Skills: A Half-life in Journalism’, is being scheduled for publication next year.

Three weeks later, I was doing my couch potato thing back home in Scotland. As I flicked idly from channel to channel, I caught the News at Ten on ITV and some immortal words to the effect that there now followed an exclusive report from the Croatian town of Pakrac.

“Besieged for two months, an ITN crew was the first to reach Pakrac as it was relieved by Croatian National Guard . . .” Now, I could have sworn that those were some of the same guys we passed going in the opposite direction.

Croatia, and specifically the town of Pakrac, provided my introduction to the shooting war. Slovenia had really only been a warm-up. Six months after the conflict in Yugoslavia started, I would find myself in Slavonia, on the eastern front, and then in Karlovac for Christmas. It was my first ‘festive season’ at war, in Croatia on the border with the breakaway Serb region of Krajina, which first brought home the savage realities of conflict. Christmas in a war zone is always particularly poignant and I had never before experienced the unique sensation of observing life and death at close quarters at the time of Christian celebration.

For me, Christmas in Croatia brought the challenge to try and convey to people at home back in Scotland what was being endured in former Yugoslavia. I was personally moved by what I saw and the challenge was to find an adequate form of words. My writing on the bitterness of Christmas in Croatia was published in Scotland on Sunday and The Scotsman.

It had a freshness and an honesty, a sense of revelation and personal discovery that I would be unable to retain for much longer. Everything was so new and terrible. The freshness of the writing could not last. This was what I wrote in December of 1991 in my article, ‘Christmas in Croatia’.

‘It is the season of goodwill to all men and a small Christmas tree illuminates the bleak corridor outside the mortuary at Djakovo Hospital, just a few kilometres from Croatia's eastern front. The bodies of the three Croatian National Guardsmen were brought in around midday on stretchers and laid out in the white-tiled room for postmortem. Still dressed in their dark green camouflage uniforms, their features were frozen at the moment of death. The yellowed pallor and the staring expressions - of seeming disbelief at their fate - lent them the appearance of skillfully executed waxworks. But waxworks they were not. Brutal execution was what had cut short their lives but a few hours previously.

‘Their features aged in death, these three young men were just 23, 25 and 28 years old. They had all lived in the same village of  Sodolovci; they had all been friends and they had all joined up together three months ago to protect their village from the Serbian irregulars, the Chetniks who had started to infiltrate the area. With the fall of Vukovar last month, the front line gradually edged nearer and nearer to their village and now the front line fighting is all around: reaching the beleagured towns of nearby Vinkovci and Osijek.

‘Last night, the three had set off from their village on a night patrol. When they had not returned by dawn, search parties were sent out.  Villagers combing the woods discovered their bodies in a shallow grave. It was evident they had been shot but the full horror of their death was only to become apparent with the postmortem.

‘Their commanding officer arrived. Solidly built, self assured, you could sense he was a leader of men.  No time was wasted, he had done this before. Deftly, he emptied the pockets; useful items of equipment were retrieved for future use; documents and papers laid aside. Then the bodies were stripped. This was heavy work. Rigor mortis had set in and the bodies had to be cumbersomely manhandled by the officer and two young female doctors.

‘Soon, the manner of their death became apparent. All had been shot: many times in both arms but these wounds were not the cause of death. Their bodies had been cut with knives and then two had been finished off with knife wounds to the heart. The third had died when his head was battered and crushed, possibly with a rifle butt.

‘Dr Shelko Milic, head of surgery at Djakovo Hospital, was in no doubt about the sequence of the night's events. "These men were taken prisoner. Some of the wounds may have come in the fight but they were shot in the arms later, tortured and then killed."

‘The door to the mortuary was opened to let in the cold fresh air and to dispel the rising stench.  Every so often, the young girls would go out into the fresh air in their bloodied white overalls, wipe their brows, gulp down the clean air, and then return to their bloody work.

‘The soldiers and doctors standing around the door are transfixed by the horror. Nobody notices a little old man making his way to the open door. He looks old - very old. Old enough to have seen three of these wars. His face is deeply wrinkled and weatherbeaten - the face of a man who worked his life on the land. His jacket - probably his best - is a couple of sizes too big and flaps around. Too late, the soldiers see him but he is too quick for them. Lowering his head, he weaves between them like a hare in flight and then is at the mortuary door peering in at a vision of hell. There is silence for a brief moment as he takes in the scene and then a desperate, piercing wail. "Mou sin. Mou sin." My son, my son.          

‘Led gently from the mortuary, he breaks free from the soldiers and, clutching his head in his hands, he runs to and fro, hither and thither, wailing piteously. Tears are now running in rivulets down those aged wrinkles on his face. He is inconsolable. All attempts at comfort are shrugged away.

‘Other relatives arrive. One young wife collapses at the door of the mortuary and is carried away by two soldiers. The doctors carry on with their gruesome work. And, all the while, the old man continues his anguished dash around the mortuary building.

Half an hour or so later, I prepare to leave. The doctors are wiping the blood from the walls of the mortuary. Dr Milic sucks pensively on a gold cigarette holder.  "Yes, I am a professional and I have seen this before. But it is still very difficult for me."

There are tears in the eyes of a soldier standing at the door. The commanding officer makes unrepeatable observations about the Chetniks. And the old man continues his anguished progress in a frenzy of personal despair, repeating over and over again, in frenzied disbelief those same two words. “Mou sin. Mou sin.”

‘. . . In the silences between the singing and the prayers you could hear outside the impatient chatter of machine gun fire, the explosion of mortars and the dull crump of heavy artillery. The singing was loud and passionate, as if in direct defiance of the incessant reminder of the horrors being enacted outside the Franciscan Church of the Holy Trinity in the town of Karlovac. This was the reality of a mist-laden, drizzly Christmas Day in Croatia.

‘The assembled worshippers must, superficially at least, have resembled any congregation elsewhere in Europe that Christmas morning. Sprucely turned out children, their cheeks made red in the sub-zero temperatures outside; peasant women and widows in black; townswomen in their furs and hats; old men in their best suits. But, as you looked around that packed church a few minutes before morning mass was due to begin, there were no young men, few fathers and certainly no men of military age. Then, just as the service was about to begin, men in uniform filtered in through the congregation. They came in twos and threes until the church was packed. There they stood crowded into the nave in their green camouflage uniforms, heads bowed and hands crossed respectfully. Here and there were the German-made dark brown uniforms of the 110th Brigade which included the foreigners who have come to fight here and Serbs who have elected to stay and fight with the Croatians. And, in stark contrast, conspicuous in its pristine white, was the uniform of a solitary EC monitor.

‘At the end of the nave, where you would normally have been able to see the ornamental stained glass in all its glory, sandbags were piled to the roof. The frontline is only a couple of kilometres from this 17th century church with its painted frescoes, finely wrought pews and its prized black Madonna. The 80,000 inhabitants of Karlovac have been under daily bombardment since September 15. Whether or not by Divine intervention, this beautiful church has thus far been spared but all those gathered there must have been aware of its fragility, its awful vulnerability in the face of devastating modern weapons of war.

‘Even for an outsider, essentially uninvolved in the day to day traumas of this war torn community, the service was a deeply moving experience. Prayers for Croatia, prayers for their own community, prayers for the soldiers, prayers for the bereaved and prayers for the dead.  Even a prayer for the journalists killed in the war. And for the EC monitors.

‘Some of the women cried. But, as I looked around, it was clear that most of the soft, gentle sobbing was coming from the soldiers.  From the men in uniform, none of whom could have been soldiers for any more than six months, and who had seen so much in such a short time. I had only once before seen the faces of men like that before - two days previously at that mortuary in Djkakovo.  And I knew why these men were crying.

‘Christmas lunch had not been on the menu when we set out that morning but it rather unexpectedly appeared when we pitched up at military headquarters in Karlovac to collect our escort to the frontline. In the mess, soup, chicken and vegetables, salad and cake, were all washed down with an excellent Dalmatian wine.

‘A couple of kilometres up the road in the village of Turanj, just across the river from Karlovac, they were also lunching - and fighting - when we arrived in the afternoon.  A couple of tank crews, clearly expecting not to do any business that day, were singing noisily in the kitchen of a farmhouse, an empty bottle of Kentucky whisky on the table. In a stone barn across the road a hot Christmas meal was being delivered to the couple of dozen or so soldiers billeted there.            

‘I had last been in Turanj in the middle of September and had sat outside on the terrace of a neat cafe in the warm autumn sunshine. That same cafe - like all the buildings around - was now totally devastated: its roof blown in, its interior gutted by fire, the outside pockmarked by bullets and the striped awnings hanging down in shreds. It now boasted a rough and ready sign. ‘Hotel California’.  This village was now the killing ground with just two or three hundred metres dividing the protagonists. Nobody now lived in this once prosperous village which had once been full of people who went to work in the textile factories and engineering works of Karlovac. Within sight of Turanj - on a better day than that of Christmas Day 1991 - is the Jugoturbina works. In June, it employed 10,000 people. That day, after three months of wilful damage, there were just 200 workers.

‘There is a heavy, damp mist. This we are glad of. It cuts down the sniper activity and observers can't call in the mortars. The mud lies thick and glutinous and we pick our way gingerly through mud, shrapnel, shell casings and the assorted detritus of war. A shell lands noisily a couple of hundred yards or so up the road, setting light to a once neat, whitewashed house. We take cover in the barn where Christmas dinner is being devoured. The soldiers sleep here in shifts before moving up the road to do battle. In the corner is a Christmas tree complete with decoration and lights - the only light in the room - next to a radio operator intercepting morse messages in the gloom.

‘One of their number has been killed a few hours previously in the yard outside by a mortar bomb and they have just finished burying him. Nevertheless, morale seems remarkably good.  Or, at least, there is much bravado about.  A young soldier approaches and touches my arm.

‘As I look into his eyes I know that I am looking into the face of a deeply troubled man.  Jadranko is 21. He speaks perfect English - and he desperately wants to talk. Conscripted into the army just a few weeks previously, he had finished three years of a five year course in shipbuilding engineering. "I know I must fight for Croatia. But really I want to learn. To live."  I recognise that he is looking for some reassurance from me; that he instinctively feels I will understand his unhappiness and fear. But our talk is interrupted by the guffaws of his fellows who are, I realise, poking fun at him.  he commanding officer waves me away from him, lest I become contaminated. Jadranko slinks away into the darkness of a corner, retreating into his own misery: the weakest animal in the pack.

‘Christmas Day brings Turanj its own footnote in the history books. The very last convoy of Federal troops to retreat from Croatian territory under the supervision of EC monitors leaves here mid-afternoon to cross over into Bosnia, just three kilometres down the road. This rearguard is made of the mine disposal team and their equipment from Pleso barracks, near Zagreb. They remained behind to try and clear the mines from around the barracks. The problem was they laid the mines without charting them and so three of their number had died trying to locate them in the frosty ground of winter.

‘Passing the convoy through the lines turns out to be a tricky operation. Although only a few hundred metres separate the two sides, communication is currently only being conducted through the barrel of a gun. My respect for the EC efforts improves dramatically when the white jeep with its blue insignia simply drives up the road into the mist, its klaxon hooting noisily. It comes under fire and after a couple of minutes turns back. One of the monitors points out to the Croatians that they have failed to remove all the mines - there are still deadly Saracen anti-personnel mines on the road. The Croatians give the distinct impression they aren't that bothered.

‘The French leader of the EC team - Eric Gautier - rounds on them and addresses them like so many naughty children. “Right, I tell you what I am going to do. I am going back up that road and I will stand beside those mines and wave the convoy around.”

‘And that is precisely what he did.  He had guts that Frenchman. That was the only truly Christian act I witnessed in Karlovac that Christmas Day. But why did he do it? Not for Croatia, not for the retreating Serbs. Certainly not for Europe. I think I know why. 

‘He was that EC man bowed in prayer in the Church of the Holy Trinity on Christmas morning.’

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