twenty-three
House Cat Blues
Other than me, all the duty officers were occasionally rotated in and out during the tour. They were permitted to participate in patrols, convoy escorts, and were sometimes dispatched to platoons to gain some much-valued experience. I, on the other hand, was not allowed outside the camp, with the exception of attending briefings at the unprofor Headquarters in Kiseljak, thirty minutes away. Every once in a while, I begged to go on patrols or convoy escorts but the commandant refused, saying that it wasn’t safe. I argued that there were female drivers from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (unhcr), as well as from the other battalions, but I was blatantly ignored as if I was an irresponsible teenager asking for the keys to the family car. I was, for all intents and purposes, grounded. It was painful to experience every operation, every negotiation, every mission, from the inside of a duty room looking out. Young lieutenants, junior to me, were commanding troops, conducting prisoner exchanges, negotiating passages in remote areas, while I manned the radios, drafted all the reports sent to Canada, and meticulously planned the visits of dignitaries and vips.
One morning halfway through the tour, I was busy drafting a situation report when unhcr requested a security escort for a convoy. It was destined for a hospital in Fojnica, which had been abandoned following fighting between the Serbs and the Croats. According to reports from locals, it had been three days since the hospital, which sheltered and cared for children with mental disabilities, had any staff, water, or food.
The thought of all those children struggling to survive was horrifying and I immediately tasked a platoon to respond to the request. They would provide security for the convoy of trucks carrying much-needed supplies and, once in location, they would secure the perimeter and control access to the grounds. The hospital was only about two hours away, some sixty kilometres from Kiseljak, but because of obstacles and land mines, it took a day and a half for the convoy to get to the hospital. Checkpoints along the route from both belligerent parties blocked or delayed passage, played the usual trick of inspecting the convoy, demanding tariffs in the form of whatever was carried in the trucks, and wanting cigarettes in exchange for passage. When the convoy finally arrived, the crew was devastated by what they saw. Some of the babies had died from dehydration, and the rest of the children were in pitiful condition. They’d not been attended to for days and days, lying in their own feces and urine. Mentally handicapped adults in a separate wing had all been locked in their rooms, and they too were suffering the effects of malnourishment and dehydration. Our soldiers, many of whom were still very young, did not shy away from the incredibly challenging task at hand. Despite the stench that had them donning their gas masks, they tirelessly cleaned and fed the children, changed four-day-old diapers, and, with the help of unhcr, got the hospital liveable again, all the while providing perimeter security until they could be relieved by the next platoon.
As the situation reports got back to the command post, I literally begged my commanding officer to allow me to accompany the next security escort to Fojnica.
“It’s not right that I’ve been locked up in here for three months,” I protested. “How can I make intelligent decisions when I haven’t even seen the terrain, or understand the challenges our troops face when they cross checkpoints because I’ve yet to cross one myself? How can I have any credibility at all when all I do is blindly dispatch troops from the command post? Everybody is allowed out of the camp; the nurses, the administrative personnel, even the cooks are allowed out to explore the local markets. But I’m locked up in here because it’s too dangerous for me to be out there? Jesus, sir, I am not a goddamn indoor cat! I should have stayed in logistics, at least I would be on the ground commanding a transport platoon.”
That wasn’t exactly true, given that the service battalion had not been deployed to the former Yugoslavia as a unit, but my point had been made. I was being insubordinate and could have been reprimanded, but I was past caring. I needed to get out of camp so badly. Every day when I went to the makeshift gym the battalion had set up on the fourth floor of the hangar, I’d spend an hour on the treadmill working out while listening to the stories soldiers shared about their trials and tribulations when they were out patrolling. Then I’d return to the command post to sit at a desk and review operational support requests from headquarters, longing only to participate in what I couldn’t witness. It was heart-wrenching.
I must have worn down my commanding officer because the next day there was a note on my desk telling me that at 0730 I would be picked up by the platoon going to Fojnica. I would finally get to leave the duty room.
The roads leading to Fojnica hospital had been cleared, demined, and negotiated with the local belligerents, so it took our convoy only a few hours to get there. The smell was still nauseating when we arrived that morning. A cloud of dust from the vehicles caught up to us, bringing with it a waft of diesel fumes that mingled with the smell of feces, decaying bodies, and antiseptic cleaner coming from the hospital. I looked around at the improvised security perimeter and made a mental note to order more barbed wire to close off the main access road. We’d also need to start negotiating with local authorities for them to regain control of the facility because our troops were already stretched too thin and would be needed elsewhere in the very short term.
Once I entered the hospital, I was immediately impressed with the clean-up our soldiers had keenly endeavoured to complete in such a short amount of time. Although the stench of urine, sweat, and body waste still pervaded the halls, the ice-slick polished floors were impeccable and dirty sheets, probably from the cribs, which I was told had all been changed, were piled high in a corner of the entranceway. unhcr had deployed a few staff members to provisionally operate the hospital until arrangements could be made. Their fatigue was apparent. Most of them were young men, dressed in white skivvies and latex gloves. Their hair was messed up, and despite the surgical masks they wore, I could see that most of them hadn’t shaved in days. They all had dark circles under their eyes.
So did our soldiers. They busied themselves with unloading supplies from the convoy, but I could see the vacant look in their eyes. They’d need relief very shortly. I was given a debrief of the situation by the section commander on duty, and while the unhcr supply convoy was distributed amongst the different departments of the small hospital, he showed me around the rooms. There were about eight rooms on the first floor where the children had been locked up prior to abandoning the hospital. In each room there were four to six cribs, and each of those held a child, many of whom were severely mentally and physically handicapped. On average they were probably about two to four years old but it was hard to pinpoint their exact age because of the deformities. They were pale, thin, sunken. One of them was twisted like a pretzel, his legs wrapped around each other and his arms kinked over his head and behind his neck. Another had two rows of yellow teeth protruding from his upper palate and no nose. One small baby wore a heavy bandage on his hand because he’d started eating it when the hospital had been deserted by the staff. Most of them had been unable to leave their crib once they’d been left on their own and those who could have escaped had been tied down in their cots.
Apart from one or two stuffed animals that were hung up on the wall beyond their reach, they were bereft of any amusement, toys, or any stimulation of any kind. No music, no interaction, no love or affection. They were painfully frail, alone in their cribs with only a few staff hands to tend to their most basic needs. Despite my resolve to stay unemotional and detached, I lost all reserve and unabashedly held the children in my arms, coddling them, tickling them, making them laugh, which was surprisingly easy. Whereas normal children would have been twisting and struggling, trying to break free of strange and weary adult arms, these children hungered for any small bit of affection. They begged not to be let go. I touched all of them, cupping their cheeks, holding their little hands, rubbing their arms gently and affectionately. Those who could stand up in their crib reached out to me with their open arms, so desperate for any human contact. One by one, I held them tight, not wanting to let go before I could move on to the next crib. My arms just weren’t big enough that day. They’d had such little attention that most of them held on to me as if their lives depended on it, and I had to pry myself away from each one so that I could visit all the rooms before the escort needed to leave again. It tore me apart.
I held a small baby boy in my arms and he giggled as I nuzzled my nose in his neck, taking in the faint baby scent that lingered despite the many days without having been bathed. How could this little being be so happy with so little? Come to think of it, they all seemed happy, despite their dire circumstances. At that moment I had an epiphany: these children, with such obvious mental handicaps, were oblivious to the war. They had perhaps not been given the traditional intelligence or the functioning bodies of other children, but they’d been blessed with something else — a shield protecting them from witnessing the horrific acts happening all around them. They were unaware of the killing, the rapes, the lives being lost to anti-personnel mines, and the ethnic cleansing. These children were pure little angels, perhaps flawed, yes, but unspoiled and untainted by the hate outside that hospital. I took it all in, held them, loved them, and let them return that love in spades the day I was there.
I returned to the battalion serene and at peace, energized by the long list of tasks and requests I’d taken note of during my visit. That night, I went to see my battalion commander, who as usual was in his office until very late.
I knocked on his open door. “Sir, permission to come in?” I asked softly.
“Come in, Captain Perron,” he answered, looking up from a huge pile of papers.
“Sir, I would like to first apologize for my insubordination two days ago and also to thank you for allowing me to ride along with the escort to Fojnica.”
“Accepted. How was the visit?” he asked. I could sense the sincerity in his question.
“It was excellent. I have a better idea of the challenges our troops face when they cross checkpoints. At one of them the Serb section leader was drunk and it could have degenerated quickly. Our driver told me that it happens regularly. I saw where the anti-tank mines nearly blew up our convoy a few days ago — they were lucky to have seen it in time. We have amazing drivers. I hadn’t realized the stress they experience every day on patrols and convoys. Thank you, sir. I needed to see that, and to get out of this place too.”
“We’ll see how we can get you out more often.” It wasn’t quite an admission that he’d been overprotective, but an immense weight was lifted off my shoulders nonetheless.
“Sir, I realized something else when I was talking to our soldiers and trying to answer all the questions they had. I became conscious of how much I know about the war raging all around us from a very high level. I have an amazing opportunity here in the Ops Room because I get to understand everything that is happening in all of Bosnia from a very macro level. I’m privy to your decision-making process, I get to witness the exchanges between you and the commandants of the other battalions, and am privileged to have access to highly sensitive and top secret intelligence that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I’d much rather be out there, but now I also appreciate the valuable experience I’m getting in here.”
“Don’t forget how valuable your contribution, and that of your duty officers, is as well. You don’t just mechanically dispatch troops to support task requests from Force Command. Your team’s judgment and sense of urgency saves lives regularly. Don’t underestimate the importance of your team’s role here, Captain.”
I thanked him, saluted, and retired to my cot where I further contemplated my battalion commander’s comments on the crucial role my duty officers and I played during this deployment. I hadn’t seen it that way, given that the majority of our responses to requests were routine and repetitive. However, I could also remember quite a number of dispatches that required our duty officers to stay calm and react quickly when our troops required emergency evacuation or when one of our sections on overwatch guard duty in Sniper Alley had been hit by mortar fire, killing one of our soldiers.
•••
as if to further validate my commanding officer’s comments, a few days later in the duty room I overheard a conversation between the unprofor Headquarters and Spanish Battalion (SpanBat) reporting that a Dutch United Nations Military Observer (unmo) had been hit in the chest by small arms fire in the north of Bosnia. Knowing we had the only military thoracic surgeon in Bosnia, Dr. Ashrami, I intercepted the call and demanded that the wounded officer be evacuated to our camp where our surgeon would be waiting for him. SpanBat wasn’t sure if he could make it that far and other options were being considered. I called Dr. Ashrami to put him on standby and he immediately came running into the ops room wanting the details.
“They’re not sure if he can make it this far, but they agree this would be the best place to evacuate him,” I said, filling him in on the details of the officer’s wounds.
“Get him here, Sandra. Do everything you can,” he pleaded. I tasked the MPs to secure the helicopter landing pad and nervously waited for a response from headquarters. I monitored the discussion and insisted that we were standing by if the unmo could survive the helicopter ride to Visoko.
Twenty minutes later, we received confirmation that the chopper was on its way and that it would arrive in less than fifteen minutes.
It was close to midnight when the helicopter landed just outside our camp and the medical team, surrounded by the mps and a security detachment, unloaded the unmo into the field ambulance which precariously brought him to the operating room. My job was done and now I hoped for the best as I retired to my tent, exhausted. As soon as I entered my tent, empty as all the nurses were busy at the hospital, one of the medical assistants rushed in without knocking and told me that Dr. Ashrami wanted to see me right away. I walked to the hospital tent less than fifty feet away, fearing the worst for our Dutch unmo. There I found Dr. Ashrami, already dressed for the operation in his scrubs, mask, and bonnet, and he told me he had a surprise for me. I was going in to watch the operation.
Dumbfounded, I didn’t dare ask any questions and followed him into the preparation room. I immediately went to see Buanita and she showed me how to scrub and don the necessary uniform for the operation. It was already underway when I got to the operating room and I was told to stand at the head of the gurney. They’d opened up the unmo. I could see his heart pumping as Dr. Ashrami explained where the bullet was lodged and what needed to be done. I was so filled with wonder and excitement that I couldn’t breathe. I was witnessing open-heart surgery!
The operation lasted quite a few hours, but I didn’t. I’d been so overwhelmed at the incredible complexity of the operation, watching the thoracic cage being stretched wide open to extract the bullet, and then the meticulous cleaning up of the torn tissues before piecing him back together, that I’d forgotten to breathe, and before long the canvas walls of the operation room closed in and went black. I woke up some time later on a stretcher, a small square piece of gauze that smelled like turpentine close to my nose, staring into the smiling face of Master Corporal Bill Watkins, one of the medical assistants.
He told me I’d fainted, but not to worry, it happened all the time. He pressed a cup of peach juice into my hand and insisted I drink it. His face was kind, compassionate, and intelligent. After I gulped down the overly sweet peach juice (to this day peach juice makes me think of Bill, who later went on to marry my best friend Mylene), he said that I could go back in if I felt up to it, but asked that I wait a few minutes and take some deep breaths to steady my nerves.
When I sheepishly regained my place at the head of the operating table, they were sewing the chest closed, with wire as thick as clothes hangers piercing the bones on each side of the rib cage. After about fifteen minutes I felt the world starting to close in on me once again. I hurriedly excused myself, saying I needed to get some sleep and barely made it to the tent, then to my cot where I passed out once again.
I woke up early the next morning, still dressed from the night before, with the news that our unmo had survived the extraction of three bullets from his arm and lungs. I whispered a thank you to God for saving the unmo and for giving me the incredible experience of being able to witness His work.