In the world media the Serbs were portrayed as the perpetrators of all the pogroms, though they had also seen Serb communities butchered when isolated and in the minority. The reason was that in the old Yugoslavia the Serbs had had the dominant control of the army; when the country fell apart, they simply grabbed 90 per cent of the heavy weaponry, giving them an insuperable edge.
The Croats, also no slouches when it came to slaughtering non-Croat minorities in their midst, had been granted irresponsibly premature recognition by the German Chancellor Kohl; they could then buy weapons on the world market.
The Bosnians were largely unarmed, and kept that way on the advice of European politicians. As a result, they suffered most of the brutalities. In late spring 1995 it would be the Americans who, sick and tired of standing by and doing nothing, would use their military power to give the Serbs a bloody nose and force all parties to the conference table at Dayton, Ohio. The Dayton Agreement would be implemented that coming November. Ricky Colenso would not see it.
By the time Ricky reached Travnik, it had stopped a lot of shells from Serb positions across the mountains. Most of the buildings were shrouded with planks leaning against the walls. If hit by an ‘incomer’ they would be splintered to matchwood, but save the house itself. Most windows were missing and were replaced by plastic sheeting. The brightly painted main mosque had somehow been spared a direct hit. The two largest buildings in town, the gymnasium (high school) and the once famous Music School, were stuffed with refugees.
With virtually no access to the surrounding countryside and thus no access to growing crops, the refugees, about three times the original population, were dependent on the aid agencies to survive. That was where Loaves ‘n’ Fishes came in, along with a dozen other smaller NGOs in the town.
But the two Land Cruisers could be piled up with five hundred pounds of relief aid and still make it to various outlying villages and hamlets where the need was even greater than in Travnik centre. Ricky happily agreed to back-haul the sacks of food and drive the off-roads into the mountains to the south.
Four months after he had sat in Georgetown and seen on the television screen the images of human misery that had brought him here, he was happy. He was doing what he came to do. He was touched by the gratitude of the gnarled peasants and their brown, saucer-eyed children when he hauled sacks of wheat, maize, milk powder and soup concentrates into the centre of an isolated village that had not eaten for a week.
He believed he was paying back in some way for all the benefits and comforts that a benign God, in whom he firmly believed, had bestowed upon him at his birth simply by creating him an American.
He spoke not a word of Serbo-Croat, the common language of all Yugoslavia, nor the Bosnian patois. He had no idea of the local geography, where the mountain roads led, where was safe and where could be dangerous.
John Slack paired him with one of the local Bosnian staffers, a young man with reasonable, school-learned English, called Fadil Sulejman, who acted as his guide, interpreter and navigator.
Each week through April and the first fortnight of May he despatched either a letter or card to his parents, and with greater or lesser delays, depending on who was heading north for re-supplies, they
arrived in Georgetown bearing Croatian or Austrian stamps.
It was in the second week of May that Ricky found himself alone and in charge of the entire depot. Lars, the Swede, had had a major engine breakdown on a lonely mountain road in Croatia, north of the border but short of Zagreb. John Slack had taken one of the Land Cruisers to help him out and get the truck back into service.
Fadil Sulejman asked Ricky for a favour.
Like thousands in Travnik, Fadil had been forced to flee his home when the tide of war swept towards it. He explained that his family home had been a farm or smallholding in an upland valley on the slopes of the Vlasic range. He was desperate to know if there was anything left of it. Had it been torched or spared? Was it still standing? When the war began, his father had buried family treasures under a barn. Were they still there? In a word, could he visit his parental home for the first time in three years?
Ricky happily gave him time off but that was not the real point. With the tracks up the mountain slick with spring rain, only an off-road would make it. That meant borrowing the Land Cruiser.
Ricky was in a quandary. He wanted to help, and he would pay for the petrol. But was the mountain safe? Serbian patrols had once ranged over it, using their artillery to pound Travnik below.
That was a year ago, Fadil insisted. The southern slopes, where his parents’ farmhouse was situated, were quite safe now. Ricky hesitated, and moved by Fadil’s pleading, wondering what it must be like to lose your home, he agreed. With one proviso: he would come too.
In fact, in the spring sunshine, it was a very pleasant drive. They left the town behind and went up the main road towards Donji Vakuf for ten miles before turning off to the right.
The road climbed, degenerated into a track, and went on climbing. Beech, ash and oak in their spring leaf enveloped them. It was, thought Ricky, almost like the Shenandoah where he had once gone camping with a school party. They began to skid on the corners and he admitted they would never have made it without four-wheel drive.
The oak gave way to conifers and at five thousand feet they emerged into an upland valley, invisible from the road far below, a sort of secret hideaway. In the heart of the valley, they found the farmhouse. Its stone smokestack survived, but the rest had been torched and gutted. Several sagging barns, unfired, still stood beyond the old cattle pens. Ricky glanced at Fadil’s face and said:
‘I am so sorry.’
They dismounted by the blackened firestack and Ricky waited as Fadil walked through the wet ashes, kicking here and there at what was left of the place he was raised in. Ricky followed him as he walked past the cattle pen and the cesspit, still brimming with its nauseous contents, swollen by the rains, to the barns where his father might have buried the family treasures to save them from marauders. That was when they heard the rustle and the whimper.
The two men found them under a wet and smelly tarpaulin. There were six of them, small, cringing, terrified, aged about ten down to four. Four little boys and two girls, the oldest apparently the surrogate mother and leader of the group. Seeing the two men staring at them, they were frozen with fear. Fadil began to talk softly. After a while the girl replied.
‘They come from Gorica, a small hamlet about four miles from here along the mountain. It means “small hill”. I used to know it.’
‘What happened?’
Fadil talked some more in the local lingo. The girl answered, then burst into tears.
‘Men came, Serbs, paramilitaries.’
‘When?’
‘Last night.’