In his wonderful philosophical tale of "The Prophet", Kahlil Gibran states that "Your children are not your own" He likens them to arrows that are fired from the bow and fall where they will. I don't imagine that my parents knew anything of The Prophet, though the book was written in 1923, but the concepts were drawn from Islam, rather than Christianity, and their reading would not have taken them there. My going to Bosnia and my subsequent visits there would not have come about at all if my parents could have dictated where I, the oldest of their three "arrows" might fall.
My initial visit to Bosnia was in 1999, as a Regimental Medical Officer in the Territorial Army serving with an honourable Heavy Artillery Regiment of the British Army, and it was actually rather unexpected really, although I welcomed it at the time.
I need to go back to 1991 to start with. Officer Son, was then 13 and was at a bit of a loose end in the evenings after school. In my day we joined the scouts and slightly later a Youth club. When I was nine, I joined what was then called the Wolf Cubs, but is now a politically correct multi-sex organisation known as Cub Scouts. ( Odd that the girls would want to join the Cubs. Boys would never have wanted to join The Brownies, although joining the Guides could have been fun!) I went every Wednesday evening for years and then moved on to Scouts and Senior Scouts and Rovers, finally leaving when I went to University at 18. It was a superb organisation and I enjoyed it a lot. I still have my scout shirt upstairs in my cupboard, although it would never fit now! I keep meaning to throw it away, but I can't bring myself to. It is about 45 years old now but is as good as when I last took it off. Son did not fancy joining the local scouts, and I can't say I blame him really. Our local village scouts was very parochial, whereas my own troop was in a large town and also attached to my school, so the activities were much extended by excellent leadership and additional financial support. No, Son opted to join the Yorkshire North and West Army Cadet Force. This in itself was quite a radical move in our family, since, during World War 2, my Maternal Grandfather, who had fought in the First World War became a Conscientious Objector, my Father was a newly qualified doctor and was non combatant in a protected occupation, and my Mother was Pacifist inclined (although many who met her would have found that argumentative streak of hers hard to associate with that viewpoint). My Father in Law was a Civil Servant, also in a protected occupation, working at that time in what was called The Ministry of Works, and he was responsible for the Civil Defence of all the Whitehall Government buildings, including Downing Street and The Palace of Westminster. My maternal uncles worked in the fire service and agriculture respectively, and my paternal uncle was exempted because of ill health! From this, it is clear that my family's part in Hitler's downfall was largely supportive, from the "Lines of Communication and Rear Party" positions only! ' I myself stayed in the scouts at 14, when most of the other lads at school were joining the Combined Cadet Force, largely because of my parents distaste for the military, and their strong beliefs in Christian Pacifism. So, it was a bit of a shock when Son decided to become a boy soldier. I have always believed that it is the duty of a parent to be an enabler, not a dictator. We should advise from the best of our knowledge, but then the child must decide for themselves. We aim the arrow true, then watch it soar, but we cannot pull it back! So, of course, we supported him in his wishes, and encouraged him in every aspect of his new found activity. And it was obvious, within the first three months, Son had found himself, found confidence, found self respect, found ambition and direction and application, and the beginnings of an inate ability to plan and lead. One thing lead to another, and although never an academic, his military strengths and canny understanding of tactics and situations grew and he went to Sandhurst at 18, already an obvious professional soldier and leader.
Now all that stuff is just a Dad looking back and being immensely proud of his Son, but the story is to tell you that I got a call from Son's A.C.F. Senior Officer when he was about 15 asking if I would perhaps consider becoming the medical officer for the Yorkshire North and West A.C.F.. This involved "simply doing some routine examinations of the T.A. Officers from time to time, and going away with the cadets to annual camp to run the medical facility". Well why not! It couldn't be much different from being a St.John Ambulance Officer and I had done that. "Yes", I agreed, I would happily do it. A few days later, I was sent some forms to complete. I was a bit surprised, (why should I have been surprised?....it IS the Army after all!) because the forms asked me to sign the Official Secrets Act forms, to take the rank of "Acting Captain".(..actually the lowest of the low, a Second Leiutenant), and to give various body measurements for a uniform. It emerged after a telephone call that I was actually joining the Territorial Army as a "Class B Officer". I was rather taken aback, not because I particularly objected from any ethical or religious point of view, but because I had never ever in my wildest dreams seen myself as any sort of soldier. And now, at 46 years old I found I had "signed up" and taken the Queens's shilling. So, presumably, with my dear Mother and her Dad rolling in their graves, I became a "soldier". I have to say that I did not actually think much at all about what they would have thought, because I was so pleased to see the positive development in my own son, that I was happy to become a part of it and to give something back.
Now, let's just get something straight, this was not a role that might some day be played in a film by Steven Seagal; rather a phenomenally boring back seat job being done by someone who had not the slightest knowledge of anything military, although I was quite pleased to have 3 stars on a flash, managed to get some sort of shine on my boots, albeit with liquid polish, and Son showed me how to wet and wear in my hat (NOT called beret which are things worn by French onion sellers) My role was to do a few routine medicals and then, at the Annual Camp supervise the nursing staff in the medical centre where we predominantly treated sprains, gnat bits, diarrhoea and the occasional small cut. I think the most exciting of my combat field hospital was a fractured foream and an appendicitis, but at least, I didn't miss them, and duly despatched child soldiers to appropriately comfortable NHS beds where they spent the rest of camp. I did this for about 3 or 4 years, until, in 1997, after a series of rather poo-filled events, which may come to light later on if I am feeling particularly honest and morose, lead to me taking a six month sabbatical from my Village practice. After 20 years, I welcomed a bit of a change, and, with the slight Army connection, and Son at Sandhurst, I applied for a six month locum post as a civilian medical practitioner with British Forces in Germany. I left in July 1997 and stayed 6 years, which was a bit more than any of us actually expected, least of all me, who had intended to clear my head and come home and sort things out. . The upshot of this was that I became very much more familiar with the Forces and their ways, and for Son's sake I actually learned a lot about the Army and Army Medical Services and I started to regard the lads and Officers as brother soldiers with Son. I actually wanted to serve them better, and so, in 1998, when the new hostilities had broken out in Kosovo, and the Army Medical Services were heavily stretched, I rather rashly and nihilistically volunteered for an active service role. I felt strongly that 23 years experience in an older man was better than sending a young newly qualified doctor into a risky area, after all they had a lifetime to live and work, and I had had all that and was not so important. I took little concern for my safety or what I might encounter. I had done several Army Courses in emergency work and battle injury and major incident management, and was a highly experienced doctor and competent minor surgeon. I felt I could cope, except perhaps with my physical fitness, which, was to say the least, well past it if ever it had been really there at all. I was accepted, and asked to be the Regimental Medical Officer to the **th Regiment, The Royal Artillery, in a place called Glamoc (pronounced Glamotch) . In April of 1999, I went to the two weeks training before deployment, and although it was all total mystery to me, somehow bluffed my way through the training, learning to use the new Army rifle, the General Purpose machine gun, (bloody useful stuff for a doctor!)all the webbing and kit with which we were issued, and going to PT classes! The PT and the runs, I largely managed to miss due to having two screws in my right ankle, and being over 45, but I did attempt the Army fitness test and passed most of it but failed the run in the allotted time by about two minutes. I did however learn some really useful new skills, like how to make a bivouac, hide in undergrowth in a trench, sleep out in a bivvy sac and protect myself from the elements, all of which have proved invaluable in my motorcycle camping trips as I can now happily manage without a tent! I proved a dab hand with the 9mm pistols however, my experience of shooting almost every type of confiscated handgun at The Lancashire Police Gun Club coming in rather handy. The 9mm Browning automatic is a pain, especially when it jams. I have to confess that a Smith and Wesson Revolver would have been more to my liking! 19 Officers, mostly long standing T.A. and one or two older retired Reservists were invited to a competition pistol shoot on the last day by the Range Officer. We had a competition sweepstake and each put a fiver in; winner takes all. I felt a bit nervous with this weapon, and not very familiar with its weight and shape. We lined up in fives for shoot offs, which I managed to get through with what seemed like some ease and luck. I was in the last four, up against two Infantry Officers and a Reservist who had been a Gurkha Officer. He was quite intimidating as he had been mooted to be the best shot of all of us. The five rounds were taken and we lined up. Five fast shots at own pace, to be taken within 15 seconds. We fired. My pistol jammed after two shots, I knelt, opened, cleared, re-loaded, stood, pushed my imagined index finger at the target and gently but rapidly squeezed off the last three succesive shots I was delighted then to be suddenly acclaimed be the most "warrey Doc" they had seen, having beaten my nearest opponent by a shot and three points to take the hundred odd pounds pot. A great confidence boost, but I was still, an enormous, if somewhat bluffing, square peg in a round hole, which I remained throughout my operational tour. And so, off to Bosnia, which, in 1999, rather disappointingly for me and my expectations,( if fortunately for the peoples there) was very much quieter, and peaceful, and I knew immediately that I really never would be played by Steven Seagal and they would probably not make the film!
Isn't it odd, how, almost no matter what you do and what choices you make in life, there are occasions when you meet people or find yourself in places that, in retrospect, you just knew you had to do as a part of your life's journey. You sometimes just get that feeling that it's right and this was something that only you could do, and that it was important. That is rather how Bosnia turned out for me. To go into the areas of still total desolation and destruction and to see people in the Glamoc Valley who had probably lived much like some of our local Lancashire country people before the Wars, but who were now in despair, poverty, and extreme hardship, really got to me and I could identify with them like I could to my rural patients back home. This valley is 1000 metres above sea level , a glacial, effluvial plain of wonderfully fertile, then land mined soil, farmed by families of Serbs, Bosniacs, and Croats, side by side in strip farming principles around a co-operative for generations. I will not discuss the role of my Regiment there, but suffice to say that I was living with the rest of the Battery to which I was assigned, in a former saw mill in what is termed a Corrimec, a corrugated container turned mobile home. I was very lucky, because I was serving in the acting rank of Major and so had a Corrimec to myself for the most part. Most of the soldiers shared a 12 foot by 8 foot unit in three or four to a unit, in bunks where they had no privacy and had to store all their kit and personal belongings. Most of their time was spent patrolling and looking out for criminal or military activities which were prohibited. and then either intervening or reporting intelligence as appropriate. The tour was largely quiet from the action point of view fortunately, because, as I soon came to appreciate, the locals were far more important than any action or adventure that I might have pictured myself involved in and supporting. There is life saving and life saving, and it soon became obvious that the lives that needed saving were not ours but those who were termed the "returnees", the refugees who were moving back into the valley to examine what was left of their homes and lives, and wonder whether they could ever pick them up again. My slightly exasperated, but wise and empathic Commanding Officer allowed me a lot of leeway, albeit under the control of a "proper" Major who understood the protocols and security better than I did. We could never have achieved what we did without the C.O.'s generous and forgiving attitude towards his "square peg of a Medical Officer". I had eight Medics and a Medical Sergeant with me, all of whom needed occupying, when the small sick parades were finished. We started out by sending a few on the patrols, and then gradually increased to going to see what the medical needs of the few returning locals were. Most of them were alone or in small groups and were elderly men. Their houses were largely ruins, many wih no roof, and burned out. The opposition forces had driven through the valley killing, raping, and looting, and had then systematically, with engineer/demolition units, stripped the houses of everything, pipes, wires, floor boards, and windows and had put debris and general filth and dead animals in the water cisterns in which they all have to have to collect rain water for every water need. The electricity poles had been chain sawn down and removed, the roads bombed and blasted, the animals killed, the fields mined, and all the furniture, soft furnishings and farm machinery stolen by organised criminals. People fled with carrier bags and wheelbarrows, many miles over treacherous mountain passes and through the forests to escape the genocidal massacres. This is not to say that the forces who did this in the Glamoc valley were unique. They all had forces which did the same to the other groups. No ethnic group was any the less terrible in its treatment of the others. This was a terrifying civil war in which, without intervention, many more thousands would have died, and many more hideous atrocities would have been committed, previous neighbour against previous neighbour. In 1999, and even still today,although it is improving a bit, there was mistrust of other ethnic people, tales of who they were, had been, what they did, who hid who and suchlike. I was so lucky, I did not have to see any of that. What I saw was that they had all suffered and whatever their ethnicity, it was of absolutely no consequence to me. All I had to know was whether they could be trusted in their treatment of me and my men, and whether we could trust them. We made it absolutely clear that we had no favourites, and that anything we did for one, we would do for another if we could. In particular, we set about cleaning the wells and water cisterns to try to get clean and healthy water back for washing and drinking. We cleaned out 17 cisterns when we were there, always slightly wary as we were told that some were mined, but we never found anything dangerous. In one we retrieved an entire set of pots and pans, cutlery and dishes which had been thrown in by the destroyers. They were all beautifully washed by their nine year immersion and scrubbed up perfectly. We found animal carcasses and old bits of glass and bottles and old buckets and junk, but nothing really dreadful fortunately. When we were doing this we came across four eldelry men in particular, who had all lived in the same village on the Western side of the plateau. They appeared to all be in their 70's, but actually, it became apparent were a lot younger than that. They had left thier wives and families in Banja Luka, where they were squatters in other's houses and had returned to see if they could survive a winter in the valley and get some semblance of their homes back together. All the refugees living in other cantons were having to move back from whence they had come in order to free up the homes in which they were squatting, so they had little option but to come back anyway, but life in the rural highlands is far harder and more severe than in the bigger towns and cities. They came back with a handcart on which they had put all the things they could in order to survive and had pushed it up the mountain pass for almost two weeks to return here. Their attitude was humbling. They were determined to survive, and yet in these houses, and winters of 3 feet of snow and 20 degrees of frost, their chances were slim. There were others too of different ethnicity, and we soon had a group fo about 24 people to try to work with, but these four, we nicknamed "The Old Pioneers".
Big do's and little do's, the upshot was that we raised some £2,400 in that Battery, from raffles, friends back home, church donations and ourselves. In conjunction with the United Nations who helped some with windows and rooves, and with the Belgian Army who provided some generators, chain saws and a few tractors, we ourselves provided enough food for all these 24 people to survive the winter, a lot of clothing, work in re-building, timber, bricks, cement, and sand, and tools and finally we paid for the pioneers to have 4 acres of their lands ploughed for the following year and left them Barley seed and vegetable seeds to plant in the spring. We met their families who came over to visit to see how they had got on, and at that stage, I became a friend to a bright 12 year old single child, grand-daughter of one of the pioneers, There are many others with whom I am still friends, but this one child, is the one about whom I am most proud. She could talk a little English when we were there in 1999, and was keen to practice. She was a typical 12 year old slightly shy lass, but surprisingly with drive and ambition, a desire to put the terrible things of her childhood behind her, an eclecticism, an open mind, a respecter of the others' rights to exist. She and her parents, and her Grandparents, and this family have become almost another family to me in some ways, although she is the only one of them who can speak English and my Serbo-Croat is totally useless!
When we all parted,rather emotionally, at the end of my tour in November 1999, I rather rashly found myself saying " I'll come back next year and make sure you made it through the winter". And so, in 2000, I went, and none of them were surprised to see me! They had all made it, and they had had 4 acres of barley which they hand cut and sold to a brewery, and they had vegetables and logs and old chairs and Grandma had moved back and the family came at weekends to help the restoring programme. I took a trailer of bedding and clothes and utensils and seeds and anything that would enable further returnees to make life easier and I saw most of the 24 people we had worked with and they had all survived and many had grown the vegetable seeds in small plots round their houses, and many of the rest of their families were coming back.
In 2001, about to plan a second visit , this time with an enormous 3 ton trailer of Car Boot booty, my Father, who was then 89, insisted that it was too far and too lonely and dangerous to drive alone, and that he was going to come with me for company and security! The thought of my 89 year old Father "riding shotgun" on the Bosnia Stage, did not exactly make me feel any safer, but the bonding time we had to gether was wonderful! We have been every year since, and every one has been a story and an adventure in it's own right, with memorable, and remarkable and sometimes dangerous highlights, except last year when I could not leave Father when he was, unfortunately, taken quite seriously ill. Our last visit was in September 2005,see inset photo) but with him now off the critical list, I scheduled that I would go again this Easter. Upon the news, like Lazarus,risen from his death bed, Father has rolled up his bed and walked again ,and decided that he wants to come too, "for a last trip". Although he has said this for the past four visits, this time, I truly suspect that is is sadly true, and the rest of my family are not at all certain that it is either reasonable or sensible. But, when the arrows have left the Archer's bow, can they tell the Archer how to shoot? This archer clearly intends to go hunting or drop in the process and that has got to be better than sitting in his hut thinking about it. I do propose to take some special care this time though. We will set out on Easter
Sunday, the day after his 95th birthday, and travel in my camper with a bed and loo and my cooking for him. It will be slow, and sedate rather than the mad autobahn race, and I am certain that Bosnia won't have seen a campervan in the last 20 years, let alone one with British plates, and I am not even quite certain how safe it will be, as it is very conspicuous, but if this is how we have do do it one more time, then so be it.Oh, by the way, our 12 year old Returnee is 20 this year; she's reading law at University. Perhaps I know the person who will the first woman President, but whatever she does she will certainly be a fighter for the right and I am proud of her.
Perhaps it was one of those things....me and the boys there at just the right moment in history? Whether it was fate or chance, or whatever, what a wonderful privelege to see all this now coming to fruition. I wish you all peace Bosnia Hercegovina.
So, once again, perhaps for the last time, the old team, together, Archer and Arrow, it's Bosnia or bust!
Best wishes, Doc
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