19/08/2008

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.

On rather better roads, there were all the speeding tickets gunning the fastest Skoda in the West through Croatia and Slovenia on the way home. I particularly remember one unpleasant situation just over the Slovenian border.

I had driven six or seven hundred kilometres out of Bosnia and then Croatia after several weeks on the frontline. Reaching Slovenia was an enormous relief: at last, a country at peace with itself, a degree of safety and decent roads. Through the border control, I gunned the twin carburettors that lurked under the bonnet of the Skoda.

Three or four hundred metres ahead, two policemen emerged onto the road and flagged me down. It soon became clear they intended to throw the book at me: speeding, dangerous driving, driving without seat belt, driving with a car in a dangerous condition (multiple bullet holes), etc. etc. It was getting expensive so I decided to play my trump card.

A few months previously I had enjoyed morning coffee with Slovene President Milan Kucan, a most amiable and respected man. I had jokingly observed that I sometimes had problems with the authorities as a journalist. He took out one his splendid embossed business cards and wrote in his own handwriting a brief endorsement: ‘For Paul Harris, a true supporter of Slovenia in its fight for independence. With respect, Milan Kucan, President’.

I presented the card to the officious guardians of law and order. I swear their mouths fell open. They were rendered momentarily speechless. Then, simultaneously, both sprang firmly to attention, saluted smartly and waved me on . . .

Twenty months of abuse eventually proved too much for the first faithful Skoda. It packed up in Tuzla, in the very north of government-held territory within sight of the front line, and, of course, nobody could fix the problems with the electronic ignition and electric petrol pump. That would have been the end - if  some obliging Danish UN chaps hadn't promptly loaded it into a truck and driven it three hundred miles down to the Croatian coast at Split.

Alas, all fixed up, on the next trip a rock tore off the front suspension on a mountain road, reverse gear disappeared, and the shock absorbers gave up the unequal struggle. Incredibly, it still ran and limped back to base. 

Back in Britain, I got hold of a five year-old 136 Rapid coupe. Lacking the demanding electronics of the 135 it could be fixed more easily. Nevertheless, it almost failed to survive its first trip.

Just outside the British base in central Bosnia somebody chucked a hand grenade. I'm not absolutely sure whether the grenade actually bounced off the passenger window breaking it in the process, or the glass was just blown in by the blast. But the British army, in the form of good old REME, came to the rescue with some beautifully fashioned fibre glass and I was on my way again. The only problem was that I could no longer wind the windows down.

The 136 seemed a trifle sluggish. Indeed, its performance over successive peregrinations around the battlefield saw it get slower and slower. Eventually, after one trip, the mechanic solemnly announced that I'd actually got it back running on just one cylinder. Fortuitously the old 135 still lay in his yard, abandoned but not entirely forgotten. So, we popped the engine from the 135 into the 136.

Two years later, it was still running like a bird with a couple of hundred thousand kilometres notched up. Then I gave it to a Scottish charity of which I was a trustee and Connect successfully ran the car for another couple of years.

Alas, it met a sad fate. Having survived the war zones of the Balkans, a beautiful but slightly dippy Iranian actress friend parked it on the steet in Sarajevo. Once the real war was over, the Bosnian police became curiously energetic about little matters like parking and all of a sudden they seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of trucks undamaged by war to lift away illegally parked cars.

The Skoda was duly lifted away, meeting an untimely and undignified end in the crusher of Sarajevo town council, a victim of the unpaid parking fine. I have to say I was very sad and felt it was a rather unfitting end for a vehicle which had given such sterling service to Bosnia.

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