Other issues soon became apparent, including the fact that some PROM-1s were unstable. The only way to handle them was to destroy them in situ. ‘We like to blow ‘em where we find ‘em’, he added

The officer admitted that once buried, the devices were difficult to spot, especially when the ground was thick with grass and shrubs, which is how it gets in the Balkans in summer time. You only need to brush against one of the PROM-1’s minuscule protrusions to cause a reaction. When that happens, the bounding mine is hurled a couple of feet into the air and the blast that follows will kill just about everything, and everybody, nearby. It wasn’t surprising that one of the hallmarks of Balkan minefields was the number of dead domestic animals found in them.

Trouble was, the man added, ‘the business part that protrudes above the ground isn’t much bigger than a matchbox.’

According to Colonel Richard Todd, then still a youthful American Special Forces veteran with much experience in both mines and ordnance that dated back to Vietnam, you have about a 60 per cent chance of being killed if you are within 30 yards of the explosion. ‘It happens so fast’, he added, ‘that most of those involved usually aren’t even aware of what is happening’, he reckoned over dinner on our last evening in Zagreb, the Croatian capital.

By then, Todd had been working with mines in the Balkans for several years. He explained why the PROM-1 was deadly.

‘Unlike the “popular” Yugoslav PMA-2, the blast mine that you find everywhere in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, the PROM-1 is what is termed in the trade, a group fragmentation mine.’ It was designed, he explained, around the original German ‘S’ mine, which caused such terrible damage in World War II and which the Allies notoriously dubbed ‘Bouncing Betty’. That language was carried over into the Vietnam era, but it’s in little use today among mine-clearing specialists.

‘The trouble with the PROM-1 is that it has a devastating effect when it blows… a bit like a proximity fuse on a mortar or artillery shell going off right alongside you’, he commented. ‘And because it can be laid with multiple trip wires, as the war progressed, it became the obvious weapon of choice among the Serbs. They liked using it because a single PROM-1 could take out a group of people, or even a squad of soldiers on patrol.’ Not everybody might have been have killed, he maintained, but the casualties were horrific.

Towards the end of the war, reckoned Todd, the device was increasingly deployed in urban areas. ‘They’d been laying them in Kosovo, Bosnia and here in Croatia, almost as if they had a license to do so’, he said.

‘Some mean weapon, and not to be trifled with’, Colonel Todd warned.

When Richard and I met the colonel for the first time, he was at the head of a UN Mine Action Team in Zagreb and he had files full of PROM-1 incidents, some of which made for disturbing reading.

In spite of multiple warnings, PROM-1 casualties continued unabated. A member of his team was killed shortly before we arrived. Operating with dogs in an area-reduction programme, the operator obviously did not spot the mine that either he or the pooch tripped. Two shards of shrapnel penetrated his brain and he was dead in an instant. It was a most unusual phenomenon that his dog, working only yards away, was unharmed. As someone said afterwards, ‘Miracles happen… even in the Balkans.’

There was nothing whimsical about me and Richard Davis setting out for the Balkans to accompany a mine-clearing team during the course of their duties. Indeed, Richard had been involved with related disciplines for many years. It was he who, several decades before, had invented concealable body amour – otherwise known as ‘bullet-proof vests’.