A CHRISTMAS IN BOSNIA - Part
5 (conclusion)
VITEZ
The entrance to the UN compound at Vitez was a sea of mud,
churned by the tracked and other vehicles constantly entering and leaving
the base.
Our escort led us deep into the fenced off compound. It
felt a little like being in jail, surrounded by the 20ft high security
perimeter fence.
We were shown where to park the laden trucks and after being
reassured that they would be safe we were invited to the officers' mess
to meet the camp commandant. The mess was beside the main entrance and
was small and cosy, once we’d negotiated the sea of churned mud to
get to the entrance. Inside we met with the senior camp officers and were
treated to several hot toddies before it was suggested that we crossed
over to the mess for some hot food.
We received a number of curious glances as we entered the
mess and queued for the meal, three civilian women and one elderly man,
myself and six foot six Ken. The looks became more curious when a few
minutes later we were joined at our table by some of the senior officers
who had followed us over from the mess, although I am sure word of our
coming had got around prior to our arrival
After the meal we were introduced to the chef who had prepared
the Christmas cakes. The plan had been to make one large cake from the
ingredients that had been shipped out from the UK, but this had been changed
and instead the chef had prepared hundreds of small slices of cake, each
individually wrapped in tinfoil. We were to bring the vans around to the
kitchen later to load the trays of cake, he said.
After the introductions and the meal, we returned to the
mess and crossing the short distance from the canteen we noticed that
in the brief hour it had taken for the meal, the temperature had plummeted
and the churned mud was now frozen solid.
Inside the mess again, I handed the commandant the letter
from John Major and after reading its message, the commandant assured
us that he would have the letter photocopied and placed around the camp
where it could be read. Then we were taken to the billets and each given
a hut. Linda and myself were assigned one Ted and Mike and Ceren and Kelly
shared separate huts.
The huts were insulated arctic prefabs and had hot air blowers
which kept temperatures up against the bitter minus 30 degrees. There
were several dozen of the huts, ranged on either side of a wooden boardwalk
with washrooms along its length. Each housed between six and eight UN
soldiers and other, larger main buildings in the camp had been turned
into accommodation for other units. Several hundred soldiers were stationed
at Vitez.
We were shown a small shower unit close to where we had
parked the trucks and it was suggested that we all took some rest and
reported again to our co-ordinating officer first thing in the morning
after breakfast. The idea of rest was welcome - none of us had taken much
over the preceding 24 hours. We took showers in the bitterly cold shower
huts. Before turning in, I walked around the camp
with Linda. In the middle distance sporadic gunfire was still heard against
the occasional burst of machine gun fire and crump of possibly a mortar
or shell. It was bitterly cold and it was good to get back to the warmth
of the hut.
q
We woke early to see soldiers from the opposite hut casually
strolling out onto the boardwalk in their shorts with towels around the
necks, heading to the washrooms and braving the freezing air as if it
was a summer morning. We knocked up the others and heading to the canteen
for breakfast, then drove the trucks to the canteen supply entrance and
loaded the dozens of trays of Christmas cake.
"We’ve organised a party at Zenika," our
co-ordinating officer said. How it had all been arranged I never knew,
but we were told that up to 300 children were expected to attend at a
disused but equipped school in the town, some 30 minutes drive away. Two
jeeps and six soldiers would accompany us.
The drive was uneventful though heavy snow had fallen. It
was hard to imagine that we were driving through a war zone except for
the very visible signs of war damage. The soldiers in the lead jeep knew
exactly where we were going and we found ourselves pulling into the grounds
of a large school. A caretaker was there to greet us and he let us in.
We began the hurried process of unloading boxes of food and toys and carrying
them into the main dining hall where we would hold the party. No children
were to be seen and we wondered where they were coming from.
"Don’t worry, they will be here, they are coming
from all over the area, " we were told.
Tables and chairs were stacked in the large room and we
began arranging them in rows. Then five or six women arrived to help
us prepare the food. For the next two hours a confusion of concerted
activity
ruled. Hundreds of sandwiches were made while the women prepared jellies
and trifles and everything necessary for a Christmas party. Mike
was busy
setting up some tables beside the serving tables from where he would
give out the presents after the meal. All the presents had been sorted
into
age and sex groups and labelled, so it would be simple to dig into
the right box and hand over a suitable present to each child.
Trays of food were made ready to be taken to the serving
tables. What we didn’t know was that while we were busy working,
the children had been arriving, in buses, cars, vans, lorries and on foot
and were gathering in another part of the school. There was a gated doorway
at the end of the hall that was closed and locked and every now and then
we’d hear an excited shriek as a child found a way to the gate and
peered through before being retrieved by an adult.
The final job was blowing up the dozens of balloons we’d
brought with the gas bottles we'd brought along for the purpose and then
hanging them around the room with the many decorations we’d brought
too. All that was missing from our own supply was the tree, but that had
been taken care of and the school’s caretaker brought in a huge tree
that was placed in the corner of the large room. Soon it too was decked
with decorations and then we were ready.
Just where they all came from I do not know, but when the
gate was opened, some 200 children aged from walking age to 16 or so filed
in, along with some two dozen adults who'd agreed to help supervise. Seeing
so many children gathered in the empty school, in the heart of a town
torn apart by the ravages of war had a powerful impact. This was what
we'd come for and now it was happening.
Row by row they approached the food tables and collected
their trays of food and drinks and soon the party was in full swing,
with the sounds of Christmas songs playing from a tape recorder and
our team
taking it in turns to capture the event on our TV camera. Two young twin
girls, just three years old, then took centre attraction, climbing
on
to their table and performing a dance for all. One of the older boys
asked if he could try using our TV camera, and although he had never
used one before, within just a few minutes he was using it to take
footage in an astonishingly professional and imaginitive way. Although
we kept the footage for some time, the full video was eventually lost.
[See
note at end of article ]
Mike disappeared into the kitchen and changed into his Santa
outfit and when he was ready, emerged with lots of ho-ho-ho and a big
sack of presents draped over a shoulder for full effect as the youngsters
cheered and clapped and laughed.
It was a mammoth task for Mike, taking each and every one
of the children onto his knee as they queued in a long line to meet Santa
Claus and tell him their name and how old they were, before he dipped
into one of the boxes and handed over two presents to each child.
Soon the hall was deep in discarded wrapping paper and children
were eagerly examining their new gifts and toys. Suddenly an angusihed
squeal and the sound of sobs was heard. A mistake had occurred,
a young girl had been given a boy's present and it was her heart
rending cries of disappointment we heard as we saw one of the adult
minders embarrassingly trying
to comfort her and usher her away. It was a shame that this person didn't
really trust us enought to approach one of us.
We recovered the young girl from her charge and took her back
to Mike, who made sure she had a replacement, a huge cuddly toy that
stemmed the tears.
There was sadly little time for party games, our co-ordinator
explained that the children had to be returned to where they had all
come from before it started to get dark and all too soon they were
all saying
goodbyes and leaving again, clutching their toys and taking away what
we hoped were good memories in lives filled with vicious sadness, cruelty
and the meaninglessness destruction of war.
All that was left was for us to clear up the mess and return
to the base at Vitez, with the knowledge that we'd at least accomplished
something we ’d set out to achieve.
q
q q
Our trip was not yet over, though our original timetable meant that we
would leave the next day. We still had a quantity of medical supplies,
food and boxes of presents left. Sitting in the aid co-ordinator's office,
we debated what to do with the remaining items. We'd already left e good
number of supplies at the basecamp at Trogir, which were to be delivered
by a Swiss humanitarian team to another part of the country. I asked the
lieutenant assigned to help us if there were any locations in the region
where little external donations had got through.
"I'd like if we could deliver what we have left ourselves to somewhere
like that, " I said.
He said he'd find somewhere, and later told us he'd picked the township,
more a village, of Stari Vitez. It was remote, cut off by the severe snowy
weather, in a fighting zone and seldom visited by external aid agencies,
the lieutenant told us.
We said we'd go and just needed directions, though we had our own very
detailed map of the region, obtained by Mike on an earlier visit and something
that had proven absolutely indispensable.
Our trip was cleared by the relevant UN section but the lieutenant asked
that he be allowed to accompany us in a jeep with a translator as the
Mayor of Stari Vitez wanted to meet with us and could not speak English.
We readily agreed and met a young Bosnian woman who was working for the
UN as a translator. We would drive out early the next morning, make the
delivery, then head back for Vitez and the journey back across country
to Croatia and Trogir, a trip we'd make unaccompanied. We had nothing
left in the trucks to be plundered so we'd take our chance.
That evening however Ken, Ceren and Kelly announced that they were leaving
for the trip back to Split at first light and the long haul for the UK.
Ken and Kelly felt they had to be back for their jobs and could not stay
longer. I found it an odd decision on their part, but could not persuade
them to stay the additional day or so. We took what remained in their
truck and loaded it into ours and sorted through our paperwork to ensure
they had the correct documents they'd need with them, including their
ferry tickets. They said they planned driving through to Rjenka without
stopping off in Trogir, but I doubted they'd make it that far in one step.
The next morning we wished them luck as they drove off from the base.
They too would be driving back unaccompanied.
Mike, Linda and myself set off in our truck accompanied by the lieutenant
and the UN translator in their jeep. The countryside surrounding Vitez
and Stari Vitez was under a deep blanket of snow. We saw few people on
the trip, mostly elderly women wrapped against the cold, foraging or bound
on some unknown mission. Sometimes we'd see small groups of armed men,
many of them young, sometimes one or two children walking briskly with
women.
The damage to the country's infrastructure was visible everywhere. It
looked as if time itself had frozen all normal activity, though we knew
that life still went on behind the apparent emptiness. As we pulled into
Stari Vitez it was eerie knowing we were headed for a meeting with the
region's mayor even though the place seemed abandoned and deserted.
I'm not certain now if it was the town hall or a town centre school or
some other building in which we met the mayor. It was a large room with
a long boardroom table and a small fire burning in a grate. There was
no electricity, the radiators in the building were cold and the rooms
quite chilly. The mayor had some bottles of wine and after the introductions
and handshakes, he passed glasses around to all.
Speaking through the translator, he told us how grateful he was on behalf
of the people of the village and himself that we had arrived. There had
been no independent aid deliveries to his town and he was clearly moved
by our visit.
The food and toys would be distributed to local families, and the medical
aid to the local clinics, which were much in need of such supplies, he
told us.
Then the translator said that the mayor was curious as to what we had
been doing in the country and how our visit had come about, so we gave
a brief sketch of our trip. He then spoke at some length with the translator
before she turned to us and said: "The mayor is inviting you to stay
on in the village and have dinner and sleep at the homes of some people
here. He says he would like the children to stage a show for you tomorrow
and that they have already agreed to do so. "
The lieutenant said we could stay if we wished but he would advise us
not to and to politely decline by saying that our timetable did not permit
it. The area was still subject to raids and there would be concerns for
our safety, although he was certain that we would be well looked after
in the village. "Of that you can be sure," he said.
We would be particularly at risk, said the lieutenant, because the enemy
forces were not very tolerant towards the delivery of aid to regions they
were trying to keep isolated and cut off from all supplies. It was a conversation
out of the Dark Ages yet it was taking place here in the Balkans in 1995.
More out of deference to the wishes of the lieutenant than out of concern
for our own safety we regretfully declined the mayor's kind and obviously
very sincere offer and after much handshaking and embracing we returned
to Vitez.
We spent the remainder of that evening in the mess, feeling slightly
deflated. None of us were in any hurry to leave, yet there was little
else we could now accomplish. Big wheels had moved to help us accomplish
our project and now we were at something of an anticlimax. To me, it felt
like there was something I should be doing to be of help in the appalling
situation of Bosnia. We stayed in the mess until it closed, then retired
to our huts, Mike alone to his. I was a little concerned about Mike, he
was looking drawn and tired from the events of the days. He was, after
all, 82 years of age.
In the morning we set off on the drive across Bosnia from Vitez through
Mostar and then across to Posusje and into Croatia from Imotski. We planned
to stay on for one more night at the hotel in Trogir before leaving for
home.
Linda and I talked about taking Mike out for a trip into the medieval
town of Trogir but he was tired and wanted to turn in early, so Linda
and myself went alone. We spend the later afternoon and early evening
walking about and calling into the small bars in the narrow alleys of
the walled interior of the town before returning to the hotel.
The trip was to have one final poignancy when the young Bosnian waitress
who had been looking after us took me aside on our return to the hotel.
She knew we were leaving the next day and beseeched me to take her
to England with us. She had previously explained to me how she had to
leave her parents behind in Tuzla when she fled from the persecution
in Bosnia
and had been unable to find out if they were alive. She'd given me a
written note to take when we set off into Bosnia in case we ventured
near her
former home or could give it to anyone who might be able to let her parents
know she was alive and in Croatia.
"Even though there is no fighting here, I am frightened for my life
when I walk home at night to my lodgings," she said. She lived about
a mile down the road from the hotel. "I feel safe here in the hotel,
they are kind and good people, but there are a lot of people here who
hate me just because of where I come from, " she told me.
I wanted to take her with us, but I was scared for her own safety and
what might happen to her should she be found with us on the trip through
Bosnia. To this day I feel terrible about leaving her behind, as I know
from the easy checks we passed through while returning home that I could
have got her as far as England very easily. She was only one of thousands.
I am certain too that she would have received refuge in England.
There was no sign of her the next morning when we bid farewell to our
hosts at the hotel. We'd already said farewell to Colonel Smith the previous
day. From Croatia we followed a route back through Slovenia and then through
Austria to Salzburg, Munich and on through Luxembourg back to France,
Le Havre and the ferry back to Portsmouth.
We invited Mike to spend the night with us, but he wanted to go home
so we dropped him off at his home in Eastleigh. I said I would call by
the next day.
The following day, I returned the truck to its supplier and called in
on the others as well as on Mike, together with Linda. After a long day,
that evening I announced that I was going to my desk to print off letters
to everyone who had helped and who were on my database, informing them
of the outcome of the trip. Linda bridled at this, perhaps because I'd
spent the best part of the past four months working until the early hours
of the morning on organising aspects of the project. I was not due back
to work for two days, but knew I'd have a heavy workload on my return,
and also had to write up an account of the trip for my paper.
Linda grew very angry and upset at my plans and so instead I suggested
we pack a bag and take off for a break into the country somewhere. Instead
she announced that she was going to drive up to London to visit her mother
and wished to go alone.
A few hours after she left, Linda's pregnant daughter telephoned from
South Africa, where she was married to a white South African in Pretoria,
to say she was in some trouble. She was in a serious predicament, and
I had to telephone Linda and relay the situation. I offered to drive up
to London to be with Linda, but she said she didn't wish for me to join
her.
She returned late the next day, my birthday, and immediately asked me
to go for a walk with her and her dog. Before we had crossed the street
in front of the home we were buying together, she told me that she wanted
me to leave. There was no room for discussion.
For the next week I lived in the house like a stranger, unspoken to and
sleeping alone and going to my job. Unable to put up with the situation
I left and moved into a flat by the Solent, some 40 miles away. It marked
a big upheaval in my life and despite trying to stick it all out, a combination
of circumstances arose that resulted in my leaving unannounced from the
job that I still loved doing and quitting the UK for Ireland. Such is
life.
Today there are thousands of orphaned children in Bosnia and the surrounding
countries as a result of the years of war. Indeed there are many thousands
more throughout the world, victims of the needless inanities of their
own species. There are many, many thousands of grieving children and adults
who have lost loved ones, in many cases entire families and who, unable
to forget the past and move on, still live in memories of what had once
been.
What value is ‘victory’' against such background of pain?
Mike Gillman succumbed to cancer less than two years after returning
from Bosnia.
‡ END NOTES
If anyone reading this remembers being
at the UNPROFOR-assisted Christmas party held in the dining room of a
large school in the Vitez vicinity on about 27/28 December 1995, and
attended
by about 250 or so orphaned youngsters aged from about three to about
17 and who came from around the region, a party at which two very young
twin girls danced a traditional dance on a table and a boy in his early
teens learned how to use our TV camera and filmed part of the event while
Mike Gillman as Santa
gave out presents to every child, I would very much like to hear from
you. Please use the contact link below
Despite the tireless commitment Mike put into the
charity work he did over 20 years, I have been unable to locate one
photograph of him on the web. My own photographs were lost in unavoidable
circumstances. If anyone has any photo(s) of Mike please get in touch.
Thank you.
A
2¾ hour film made during the trip, the making of which is told
in the story and which Mike went on to show at the many talks he later
gave at schools and associations, has proved difficult for the author
to locate, though efforts to locate it continue. Anyone with information
is asked to contact the
writer.
Keith
Harris
First published 2002
Seed
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