Watching Gen Ratko Mladic make his first appearance in court on television this evening stirred some unwanted memories. I saw for myself the destruction of Sarajevo and the fighting between Bosnian Muslims and Croats - houses burning, graves, the mercenaries and much, much worse.
Quite by chance, as I was scanning a collection of cemetery snaps that had arrived from America, I opened a battered wallet of photographs. It had a sticky label on it, marked Bosnia 10. I remembered that I had taken hundreds of Kodachrome transparencies and even more 35mm negatives recording what I saw. They sit in the attic waiting to be looked at.
Here are few of my images. These are just snapshots and not my best work, but they do illustrate a little of the massive destruction that took place. Remember to click once on the photos, and then again, for a really close up view. I used to describe such snaps as record or evidential shots. Think of them as a rare glimpse into one of my previous lives!
Not wishing to bore you, I will recount just one tale of the inhumane acts that took place in the conflict. The second image shows an overgrown garden in front of a wrecked house. It reminded me of an incident that affected me greatly.
I recall being driven up country from Gorni Vakuf. On the outskirts of the town, a woman was hanging up her washing on a line in the garden that surrounded her home. Her toddlers played by her feet. When I came back from the front two weeks later, I was shocked to see that the house had been torched and there was one freshly dug adult grave and two smaller child-sized graves on the lawn. The washing still hung from the line. I passed that way six months later and the washing still waved in the breeze, albeit faded by the sun and in rags. There were red roses in bloom by the front door. The memory still troubles me still . . .
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| As I clutch my trusty Canon T90 camera, behind me is a large hole blown in a bridge. Such immense damage |
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| A little overgrown, but the shape of the garden still exists |
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| Ruin after Ruin |
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| Street after Street |
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| A striking example of the ferocity of the fighting. Riddled by bullet after bullet! |
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| A grave in an abandoned village cemetery. This person is probably of Serb descent as the headstone is undamaged |
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| Not like the grave on the right which has seen it's headstone smashed by the occupiers |
