Chapter 1

I don't like formal military parades, but it's a fact of life for every soldier. Later today, the army were to hold the official passing out ceremony of those who'd graduated from the School of Military Engineering. Likely, fully half of this year's recruits would be on deployment in Bosnia by Christmas. It would be unthinkable I not be there - even if I had the choice.

Almira glided in from the bedroom with my number 1s - freshly dry cleaned and pressed to perfection. My EIFOR insignia was emblazoned in the regulation position, the upper right arm - pale blue with the circle of stars of the EU. On the chest were the rows of service ribbons accumulated after 12 years of service in the Bundesheer. Almira was smiling as she hung up the uniform for me. She liked me all dressed up like a peacock - liked being a soldier's wife - liked living here in Aachen in the married quarters of a military base.

She was still in her night gown - a silky confection in white that clung to her body like a glove. I watched as she shimmied into the kitchenette to brew the morning's coffee and smiled as I observed the curves of her bottom sway as she walked. I felt the familiar stirring in my loins and wondered whether we had enough time for morning sex. She turned as if reading my thoughts and her pretty, dark eyes sparkled with mischief.

"You want breakfast?" she asked in her heavy Balkan accent. "You must get ready. We need to be there before two."

"Plenty of time," I smiled - my eyes fixed on her chest with the pert breasts I'd been nibbling on just a few hours ago.

"You must shower," she replied. Almira made every suggestion sound like a command. Her German classes had not yet equipped her with the nuances of the language. On the other hand, my two dozen words of Bosnian were shameful after two years in the country.

"Perhaps you can join me?" I suggested, hopefully.

Almira flashed me an old fashioned look. "I have to get my dress ready," she told me. "Walschen, we have so little time."

'Walschen' was my nickname from when I was little. My real name is 'Walter' and 'Walschen could be interpreted as either 'little Walter' or 'little whale.' I was chubby as a kid and 'Walfisch' was a taunt I'd acquired at school.

"C'mon, Mirie, we have 4 hours. There's no need to panic."

"You always say that and then we have to rush because you want to lie around until we run out of time. Can't you be ready on time at least once?"

"I don't want to lie around. I want to take a shower with you. That's not the same thing."

"Then you want sex!" she sighed. "All the time when we are running late you decide you want sex."

"That is a crime?" I grinned. "To want to make love to my beautiful wife?"

"No, but there's a time and place. We had sex last night. You want it all the time."

"Of course," I smiled, getting up. I walked over to her and put my arms around her slim waist. She sighed again in resignation as she submitted to my roving fingers. I gently turned her around and pulled her silken clad gorgeous body into an embrace. I kissed her long and thoroughly and her body shuffled in arousal.

In my mind flashed a pastiche of images of our most erotic moments in two years of marriage. Nights and days spent in an aura of heady sexual energy. Her lithe limbs gripping me like a limpet - breaths intermingling, moaning, writhing. I thought of our honeymoon in Sardinia and our wedding night in the Hyatt hotel in the town. It was full of American servicemen, I recall, loud and enthusiastic. Always polite, they would address everyone as 'sir' or 'ma'am' or practice German from a phrase book. They were due to take some advance training at one of the technical schools associated with the Bundeswehr School of Military Engineering - part of the NATO personnel exchange program.

It had been an exciting year for me, 2006. First, in February, I was confirmed a full Captain, or 'Hauptmann', and posted to Aachen as a senior engineering instructor. It was a much coveted position and I was very lucky to win it. No doubt my service in Bosnia was of immense assistance in my application. There are few lines of advancement for a field engineer in the German Army and many seek civil employment instead. The Aachen posting allowed me progress with my career and remain in the service I'd grown to love.

In 1997, when I enlisted, I'd little thought to make the army my career. Like many specialists, I was only interested in the training the army had to offer - free, and the best around. The army not only trained, fed and clothed you, you could go on to University and complete a degree at their expense. For most, after a two year probation, recruits then sought jobs with construction or manufacturing companies. That was my intention, also, had not the Bosnian deployment intervened.

The second big event that year was my marriage to Almira. It had taken over a year of form filling and two visits to Sarajevo to face the Byzantine bureaucracy of both the EU High Representative Authority and the Government of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bosnia classified everyone according to 'ethnicity, ' even though they're all basically the same race speaking languages so similar they're really dialects of the same language. All that really divides them is religion. Almira was classified Bosniak/Srbska' and, in that part of the world, that's a big problem.

The events that occurred between the years 1992 and 1994 defy rational explanations. Civil wars are never pleasant things, but the slaughter and brutality of the Bosnian conflict suggests decades old suspicion and hatred between three distinct communities. The scholar would be nonplussed to discover that little of that occurred - and certainly not on a scale that would explain such viciousness.

By viciousness, I mean wholesale massacres of men and boys by the thousands - the systematic rape of 48,000 Bosniak women over two years - ethnic cleansing and the displacement of 2 million people. First the Croatian HVO drove Bosniaks from their homes with tanks. Later, it was the 'Republika Srbska' Forces turn to exert control over virtually 90% of the country driving Moslems into pre-designated 'enclaves' to be brutalised, murdered, raped and raped again.

In 1995, following extensive bombing of Serbian forces by mostly American aircraft, the NATO led IFOR poured into Bosnia to separate the warring sides and to expose to an astonished world just what had been occurring. The extent of the abuse came as a shock - not unlike the astonishment that followed the opening of the concentration camps in 1945.

IFOR became EIFOR and a mission of the European Union. Our contribution of combat soldiers was scaled down and engineer and medical companies were sent, in co-operation with the Dutch, to help rebuild infrastructure and man hospitals. My turn came with the second deployment in June 2001 when I was based at Inglostadt with Engineer Battalion 108.

Sarajevo, Priiedor, Banja Luka, Gorazde, Tuzla, Mostar and Zenica evoked strange feelings in me as the names had a faint echo of the concentration camps of the Hitler war. These Southern Slavic town names had their own grizzly histories to tell, however, of mass rape, massacres and forced removals.

Once they'd contained settled communities of Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks living, more or less, side by side, attending schools together and worshipping at Churches and Mosques in much the same way as Catholics, Protestants and Moslems do in Berlin or Munich. From time to time, I guess, there'd likely be some inter-communal strife perpetuated by crazies, as there are here in Germany. But extremists shouldn't be allowed to set the tone for a community. When those extremists gain political power and make the agenda, then the disaster, which was Bosnia-Herzegovina, would likely be the result.

I-Bn-108 was first based in Zenica - pronounced Zen-ITS-a, in that peculiar habit the Slavs have of altering consonants. We were mainly tasked with reconstructing roads and bridges that had been temporarily repaired by previous EIFOR units. There are thousands of bridges in this country - some very ancient - and many are feats of unbelievable engineering skill. Bosnia, dominated by the Dinaric Alps, steep and forbidding, would be impossible to negotiate, accept by helicopter, if it wasn't for these construction wonders.

Zenica is set in a deep river valley by the fast flowing Bosna on the main road leading to the Croatian port of Split. Like Mostar's the bridge had been seriously damaged by Serb tank shells and repaired with steel beams by the Dutch. Some of I-Bn-108's personnel were tasked with assisting stonemasons brought in from various EU countries to restore the bridge to its sixteenth century magnificence.

Further up in the mountains was the village of Biljanovic - perched on the western slopes of Mount Scit. (Yes, the 'c' is soft and sounds more like 'sh.' It was immediately dubbed 'Scheissenberg' {Shit Mountain} by German and Dutch alike) Biljanovic was reached by a narrow road featuring dizzying gradients and was in constant need of repair due to frost damage. It was while we were engaged in this when we received a special request from some Dutch peacekeepers.

On the Western side of the village lies an idyllic little valley of soft grass with a trickling stream. In peaceful times this may have been featured on a tourist brochure, but now, some of those verdant fields had been killed off.

There was a farm there and a small stone cottage. The family had run sheep and there'd been a kitchen garden and a milking cow. In the barn they'd kept horses and a tractor. This is impossible country to farm without horses or motorbikes and these had been long plundered by rampaging soldiers during the war.

Biljanovic had once contained several Serb families in this mainly Bosniak village. Almira's mother, a Bosniak, had fallen for her father, a Serb, when Marshal Tito reigned supreme in Belgrade. When war began in 1992 Biljanovic first became reluctant hosts to the HVO, who seemed to have left them pretty well alone, then Serb units, who didn't. Almira's Serb father was protection against her mother, and the young Almira, being taken to one of the Serb rape camps. Not so the family's Bosniak neighbours. All Moslem families in the Biljanovic area were either murdered, driven out, or fled. Serb units encamped themselves on the family's farm and availed themselves of their livestock.

Almira's father, Alijan, had strong instincts for survival and endeavoured to get along as well as possible with Republika Srbska Forces. Their units had picturesque names, such as 'The Young Wolves, ' or 'The Blue Hearts.' Alijan had no particular affiliations, but he knew what had happened to his neighbours and was determined that wasn't going to be visited on them.

'The Young Wolves' were often roaring drunk from moonshine they distilled themselves. One day, near Christmas 1993, several of the Wolves decided they needed feminine company and the only women within reach were Almira and her mother. Their drunken demands were more than Alijan could take and soon an argument developed outside their cottage. Guns were produced and Alijan retreated into the house.

These stone cottages in Bosnia are proof against everything except artillery and bullets began to pelt against the granite walls as Alijan bolted the thick shutters. He, like most men, had been a reservist in the Yugoslavian army and, like most reservists, still kept his service rifle. The Wolves were now shouting and laughing as they blazed away at the cottage, but they were stopped short by a single shot from the farm house.

Gossip later suggested it was Almira's mother, Toli, who fired that shot, but, regardless, it hit one of the Wolves between the eyes. The fellow crumpled in a heap to the utter astonishment of his comrades. It took a burst of automatic fire from Alijan's AK-47 to wake them up and impress on their drunken brains they were out in the open. Hastily, they retreated leaving the corpse behind and continued the pointless duel from a distance.

Clearly, though, the family's position was no longer tenable and they joined the thousands of refugees fleeing to UN safe havens throughout Bosnia and Croatia. Fortunately, they chose, not Sarajevo, but the arduous and longer route to Split in Croatia.

The journey would likely be a book in itself, and I know few of the details. To Almira it was a blur of mountain peaks, hiding in forests as armour rolled past below them and the biting cold. Once, a young girl of 9 or so was shot in the stomach as they watched from the trees. The soldiers then left her writhing in pain in the middle of the road until a car came along and stopped. The Serb soldiers then shot the occupants dead and took the car, saving the last shot for the girl. Alijan went and fetched the girl from the road and gave her a proper burial in the woods. Around her neck, Almira recalled, was a set of enamel prayer beads - each hand painted, likely by the girl herself. There were 45 in number - to assist her in reciting the Prophet Mohammed's name the prescribed 90 times a day. Alijan, an Orthodox Christian, knelt weeping over the girl, just two years younger than his own daughter, and blessed the beads before burying them with her.

Bosnians are a tough people and, no sooner did NATO troops enter the country, Almira and her family followed on their heels to recover their farm. What they encountered, however, was a burnt out and devastated cottage and farm. Everything of any remote use had been stripped or destroyed. Some sheep still remained, but only because they could go places no human being could follow. Other stock were shot at long range and their bodies left to rot on the mountainside.

Biljanovic was slowly recovering as Bosniak families returned. There was precious few of them, now, and many of the women were withdrawn and silent in shame. Alijan had heard something of what happened to them and felt pity for their families.

The Bosniaks soon began searching for people to blame for their sufferings. Alijan was the only Serb for hundreds of kilometers and soon Almira and her family became the subject of abuse and harassment. A Dutch NATO unit was stationed in the village and if it wasn't for their presence, Almira was sure they'd have been murdered in their beds. Despite that, however, the flat pasture near the cottage, where once there'd been the greenest of grass, soon began to wither and die. The culprit turned out to be a range of potent herbicides, each one banned in most countries in the West, but, in Yugoslavia, were still used to the present day. A soil test was done by the Dutch and sent for testing to Sarajevo. The result confirmed the stuff would likely be potent for up to a decade. Clearly, the fields were unusable unless something was done to remove the chemical.

And so it came to pass that it was me, as a young Leutnant, who was sitting in the cab of the KDV grinding up that steep mountain road. Behind, it wasn't a tank sitting on the flatbed, but a Hanomag bulldozer. The plan was to scrape off a good 200 milimetres of top soil and pile it up for disposal. We then had to cover it lest the wind blow the toxic melange back over the field. Later, we were prepared to re-sow the pasture and assist the family to restock.

We had a saying in those days that went something like, 'we build shattered lives with bricks and mortar.' The idea was that, by repairing their homes and businesses, we were giving back to the Bosnians some sense of normalcy. Hopefully, that translated into a relief of the feeling of retribution that must touch virtually every home. By setting people like Almira, Alijan and Toli on their feet we'd hoped they had few reasons to want to perpetuate the sort of devastation that had occurred during those three years of fighting.

The theory was sound, but our resources weren't always able to cope with the scale of the tasks. My command in Biljanovic was a small one, just myself and a Feldwebel on a bulldozer. It was hot and dusty at that time of year and the dust wasn't anything you'd want to ingest. We each took turns on the dozer, shrouded in cumbersome NBC suits and masks. We sweated like pigs and could only stand it for an hour at a time. What seemed like a task involving no less than two days, became a week of utter discomfit. That Almira and her family had endured far more, kept us honest in our complaints.