Little Bosnia

for the reader Mala means small and Bosnia is bosnia

We were designated to join the line at Mala Bosnia, we moved up to line the next evening. We followed paths next to the wide spaced roads of Novo Sello and into the cramped urban sprawl of Vinkovci. The sounds and the signs of war increased as we neared the front.
The town seemed to be cleaner than the time we had passed through a couple of days before, but there were more signs of artillery damage than before. Some areas were untouched while others were badly hit. In a multi ethnic place like Vinkovci it is hard to tell the loyalties of the citizen and by the way these attacks seemed to be centred on certain areas. I would say that the loyalty of some of the citizens was highly questionable. We passed through the city without any incident and made our way out to the suburbs. Here we would have to be careful although we were spaced out to prevent casualties one gun between four doesn’t count for much, and anything could happen.
To cross into Mala Bosna we had to crawl along a ditch out side the city hospital. The hospital had been used as an observation post and snipers had been using the roof as a vantage point to get at the Serbs. So in retaliation the Serbs regularly shelled the building from Mirkvcovci, though I think they would have shelled the building even if the soldiers hadn’t used it.
A fixed mount G.P.M.G covered the railway crossing and road that went into Mala Bosnia it was done so well, that the rounds actually bounced of the road even though the gunner couldn’t see where his rounds struck. Fortunately there was a ditch that we could use when he was feeling keen; regrettably the road was cut by a train track running from the Serb positions. Which left us exposed for the short dash. The journalist crossed first to take a position ahead of us to return fire if needed. We crossed over the track one by one in a sprinting crouch.
We were assigned to a house where the civilians were still living in the cellar. They gave us their back bedroom to bed down in. The gesture was nice, but I think we all would have preferred to be in the cellar with them. When the three of us moved into the small room, our first concern was for the householder’s ornaments.
We didn’t want them to get damaged so we took them all of the shelves and started to wrap them in newspaper, placing them all in a cardboard box for safe storage. The old man of the house came in and saw what we were doing, and went to find someone who could ask us why we are doing it. We explained to the man that we were trying to protect his possessions, but he said that they didn’t matter.
The next thing we did was to nail a Yugoslav blanket over the window. This was to act as a black out curtain for us and to stop the glass from being blown in on us. The glass was already cracked so it wouldn’t take much to bring it in on us. A plastic blind was pulled down over the outside of the window. It was broken in a number of places where it had been hit by shrapnel, but to be honest it wouldn’t have stopped an air rifle pellet the condition it was in by then.
The old man from the cellar now had a change of policy with us; whilst smashing his ornaments up was “acceptable” to him, nailing the blanket over his window to him was not. This was something we were not prepared to budge on. So, he stormed of to abuse the local commander. I don’t think he had much joy there either, because the subject was never raised again.
As far as we knew the old man and his fat wife were the only residents of the cellar whom we were supposedly protecting. However after meeting his wife, a mammoth of a woman! I wondered if they really needed our protection.
There was still no electricity in the village; our water was obtained from a pump in the garden.
To operate it we had to do a crash course in grandma’s days. Forget what you see on TV, these things don’t just cough up water at the pump of a handle! They are temperamental pieces of rubbish that need amongst other things priming before use. It is very important that when you finally get some water out of the thing, that you save some of it to prime the pump for the next time you require more water.
The valves on this thing were shagged! You had to tip a little water down the pump cylinder to create a seal and only then with a ‘gentle’ pumping action could you get any water out of the ground. This also meant that if you were to drink the last of the water you were stuffed when it came time to pump out some more. So you would then have to beg for water from someone else’s pump to get yours working fortunately, the other pumps in the village actually worked properly.
The toilet arrangements were even more bizarre!
They were an outside earth closet coupled with chicken coup on one side and woodshed on the other. The toilet was a little shed with a bench in it with a hole cut out of the centre, it was the kind of thing you see in cowboy films.
I think the reason that the chicken coup was attached to the out house, is that it gives you the opportunity to blame the chickens for some of the horrendous smells that came out of the place. This also meant when you sat down to go to the toilet it didn’t take long for a chicken to stick it’s head under the door and start pecking at the floor by your feet.
I have to hand it to them they were clever little buggers and they knew when they were pushing their luck and a kick was coming.
Another strange thing about the toilet was its appetite for toilet paper.
Being naive westerners, we stocked the toilet with nice soft toilet paper. However, on our return to the toilet it was always missing. It would seem our former socialist hosts were hitting capitalism in a big way and privatising the people’s toilet paper. (Though they had the decency to put some newsprint up for us).
Another thing that didn’t go down to well with our hosts was the old Al Jubal kazee trick. During our deployment for the Gulf War, Porte potty’s were bought into the port for us to use, The smell of those things in the Saudi sun was terrible, so the ever resourceful sqaudies started putting on our respirators when we had to use one.
To sit in one of those smelly little hovels in the midday heat was intolerable, but with a gas mask on it wasn’t too bad. So, I started to do the same thing with our host’s toilet.
I am sure that it didn’t go down well with them at all. After a very successful mission on the thunder box, I walked out of the little house and waved at the owner’s wife as she was doing something with frozen clods of earth in her garden. She gave me a particularly strange look (not unusual for me). Then I realised as I walked off towards the house; I WAS STILL WEARING THE GAS MASK!
As night fell we tried to find out where we would be fed as we were by then pretty hungry and we had been told that our hosts would not be feeding us. So we went of and asked a number of the other soldiers who were out side, but none of them seem to be able to speak English.
Fortunately a little white fiat 500 pulled up, the man we were trying to talk to pointed to the driver indicating that this was the man for us to see.
We went over to him just as he was getting out of the car. He stumbled out of the car (drunk) and then struggled to pull something out from behind the seat. It was his folding stock A.K 47 that was caught up in the seatbelt on the floor; he grabbed it by the pistol grip and tore it free. In the process he Fired of a burst of full automatic between us.
He apologised for to us for his little accident in Croatian. Then when he found out that we were English, he asked us if we were ok, and what he could do to help his English friends.
Strangely enough we no longer feel hungry, but as he had the gun and we didn’t, we decide to be civil about the matter and explained our dilemma to him.
Being a nice person he told us that all the food for the night was finished, but we were welcome to come to his cellar and have something to eat.
Not wanting to insult a drunk man carrying a klashnikov we all accept the offer and make a point of telling him how kind he was (despite the fact he almost killed us less than 2 min. ago).
This man we were to find out was none other than the famous Satan Pananski, a Yugoslav punk rock legend and total nutcase to boot!