A Christmas Story

Former journalist, broadcaster and intelligence analyst Paul Harris recalls Christmas Eve 1991 in the war-torn Balkans.

Christmas Eve 1991 outside the mortuary in Djakovo, Croatia. This young woman has just seen the body of her husband, who was tortured and executed by the Serbs. PHOTO: PAUL HARRIS

For ten years Scot Paul Harris worked as a freelance journalist and photographer in many embattled parts of the world, including the former Yugoslavia, Algeria, Sudan, Somalia and Sri Lanka. Forced into retirement afer a directive for his assassination was issued by international terrorists, he is now based in East Lothian, from where he embarks as a guest lecturer on cruise ships.

In this excerpt from his recent memoir, More Thrills Than Skills: Adventures in Journalism, War & Terrorism, he describes his first encounter with ‘the shooting war.’ The passage first appeared as an article entitled ‘Christmas in Croatia’ in The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday.

It is the season of goodwill to all men and a small Christmas tree illuminates the bleak corridor outside the mortuary at Djakovo Hospital, just a few kilometres from Croatia’s eastern front. The bodies of the three Croatian National Guardsmen were brought in around midday on stretchers and laid out in the whitetiled room for post-mortem. Still dressed in their dark green camouflage uniforms, their features were frozen at the moment of death. The yellowed palour and the staring expressions of seeming disbelief at their fate lent them the appearance of skillfully executed waxworks. But waxworks they were not. Brutal execution was what had cut short their lives but a few hours previously.

Their features aged in death, these three young men were just 23, 25 and 28 years old. They had all lived in the same village of Sodolovci. They had all been friends and they had all joined up together to protect their village from the Serbian irregulars, the Chetniks who had started to infiltrate the area. With the fall of Vukovar last month, the front line gradually edged nearer and nearer to the village and now the front line fighting is all around, reaching the beleaguered towns of nearby Vinkovci and Osijek.

Last night the three had set off from their village on a night patrol. When they had not returned by dawn, search parties were sent out. Villagers combing the woods discovered their bodies in a shallow grave. It was evident they had been shot, but the full horror of their death was only to become apparent with the post-mortem.

Their commanding officer arrived. Solidly built, self-assured, you could sense he was a

‘These men were taken prisoner. some of the wounds may have come in the fight, but they were shot in the arms later, tortured and then killed.'

leader of men. No time was wasted, he had done this before. Deftly, he emptied the pockets. Useful items of equipment were retrieved for future use, document and papers laid aside. Then the bodies were stripped. This was heavy work. Rigor mortis had set in and the bodies had to be cumbersomely manhandled by the officer and two young female doctors.

Paul Harris at a whisky launch in the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana

Soon the manner of their death became apparent. All had been shot many times in both arms. But these wounds were not the cause of death. Their bodies had been cut with knives and then two of them had been finished off with knife wounds to the heart. The third had died when his head was battered and crushed, possibly with a rifle butt.

Dr Shelko Milic, head of surgery at Djakovo Hospital, was in no doubt about the sequence of the night’s events. ‘These men were taken prisoner. Some of the wounds may have come in the fight, but they were shot in the arms later, tortured and then killed.’

The door to the mortuary was opened to let in the cold fresh air and dispel the rising stench. Every so ofen the young girls would go out into the fresh air in their bloodied white overalls, wipe their brows, gulp down the clean air and then return to their bloody work.

The soldiers and doctors standing around the door are transfixed by the horror. Nobody notices a little old man making his way to the open door. He looks old – very old. Old enough to have seen three of these wars. His face is deeply wrinkled and weather-beaten – the face of a man who worked his life on the land. His jacket – probably his best – is a couple of sizes too big and flaps around. Too late, the soldiers see him, but he is too quick for them. Lowering his head, he weaves between them like a hare in flight and then is at the mortuary door peering in at a vision of hell. Tere is silence for a brief moment as he takes in the scene and then a desperate, piercing wail. ‘Mou sin. Mou sin.’ My son. My son.

Led gently from the mortuary, he breaks free from the soldiers and, clutching his head in his hands, he runs to and fro, hither and thither, wailing piteously. Tears are now running in rivulets down those aged wrinkles on his face. He is inconsolable. All attempts at comfort are shrugged away.

Other relatives arrive. One young wife collapses at the door of the mortuary and is carried away by two soldiers. The doctors carry on with their gruesome work. And all the while the old man continues his anguished dash around the mortuary building.

Half an hour or so later I prepare to leave. The doctors are wiping the blood from the walls of the mortuary. Dr Milic sucks pensively on a gold cigarette holder. ‘Yes, I am a professional and I have seen this before. But it is still very difficult for me.’ There are tears in the eyes of a soldier standing at the door. The commanding officer makes unrepeatable observations about the Chetniks. And the old man continues his anguished progress in a frenzy of personal despair, repeating over and over again in frenzied disbelief those same two words. ‘Mou sin. Mou sin.’

More Thrills Than Skills: Adventures in Journalism, War & Terrorism, by Paul Harris, pub. Kennedy & Boyd, £19.95