Rendezvous Dover. That’s where the trouble first started. Four of us were travelling together – Orlando, Willie Stirling, Jamie Bartlett and myself. We’d trundled down from London in one of five articulated trucks, ready to pick up the pallets of scoff being assembled in a dockside warehouse. The plan was to drive down through Europe from Calais to Trieste in Italy, then cross the border into Croatia, through Croatia and into Bosnia. We’d only been going a few hours and Orlando was kicking up a fuss already. The artic’s suspension was not to his liking. He’d been shaken and rattled about enough. The prospect of several more days rolling across Europe was too much for him. He got on the phone direct to Mick Jagger and explained his predicament. The next moment we were at the Avis office in Dover hiring a brand new Jagger-funded saloon with a smile on Orlando’s face. I wasn’t smiling though. You get to know people pretty quickly in my game and I was having serious doubts about Orlando already. The fact that he was related to Fitzroy MacLean who had liberated Yugoslavia in the Second World War could really open doors for us. But I was starting to think that he was a bit too impatient for my liking.
Orlando, Willie, Jamie and myself drove eighteen hours non-stop through Europe and ditched the hire car in Trieste. No breaks. No sleepovers. Orlando was in a hurry. He always seemed to be in a hurry.
In Trieste, he busied himself making last-minute arrangements. We dumped the hire car and had an overnight stay. The next morning our expense account turned up – a briefcase stuffed full of dollars. Grease money. Oh no! For me it was an instant hit of déjà vu – another case full of valuables to protect. Another security headache. Mind you, that cash would come in pretty handy on the road ahead.
The plan was for the four of us to catch the bus across the border into Croatia to await the arrival of the artics at a UN warehouse on the outskirts of a town called Rijeka. We climbed aboard this ramshackle bus to head for the border. It was rammed full with locals, a scattering of journalists and ourselves. We rattled along and the terrain got steeper as we headed south. To our right we got spectacular views over the Gulf of Venice glinting in the distance. After a few hours we reached the entry point into Croatia and were waved down to stop. A heavily armed, mean piece of work got on the bus. Dressed head to toe in a black leather coat with huge lapels, he had a peaked cap, gloves and a pistol in a holster. I had to stifle a smile. He looked just like a member of the Gestapo. I half-expected to see David Niven or Anthony Quinn lurking in the shadows. He worked his way slowly down the bus growling in a heavy accent, ‘Papers! Papers!’
When he came to me, I thought he was going to say, ‘What are you doing here, Mr Bond?’ Instead he grunted, ‘What is your purpose here, Mr Winner?’
I rolled out my standard cover story. ‘I’m a freelance journalist.’
He stared at my passport. ‘What are all these stamps from Africa and the Middle East?’
‘Conflict zones. I’m an international correspondent. I travel all over the world.’
It took him a full two hours to go through the whole bus and check everyone’s papers. Satisfied we weren’t up to anything sinister, he eventually disembarked and waved us on.
We joined the artics in Rijeka and drove south along the relative safety and flat terrain of the Croatian coastal plain, heading to a second UN warehouse near Split. We would go on from there to the bordercrossing town of Metkovic, down near Dubrovnik. There we were planning to turn east into Bosnia. Our route would then take us northeast up past Mostar, Sarajevo, Zenica and on to Tuzla.
The boy soldiers were having a whale of a time. They were as excited as a cage full of canaries. They’d obviously seen too many films. ‘Look at me. I’m in a war zone. Wow!’ To them it was a romantic adventure. To me it was a deadly serious operation. I was getting more and more concerned by the minute. As we drove along, I’d been evaluating the weather, the maps and the terrain. Not good. Not good at all. I broke the bad news to Orlando.
‘We can’t go on the main roads through Bosnia. They won’t be safe.’
‘Never mind that nonsense. We’re only carrying humanitarian aid. No one will attack us. Push on! Push on!’
‘I can guarantee you the Serbs will have DF’d all the main roads with their artillery. Nobody will be safe.’
‘Push on! Push on!’
Orlando missed his calling in life. He should have been a general because he knew how to drive men on no matter what the situation. I attempted to take control again. ‘The main roads will be an open invitation to the Serbs to fire on us with tanks and mortars. We’ll have to go over the mountain passes instead.’
He agreed to that, but then I gave him the next piece of bad news. ‘Hairpin bends. Steep gradients. Snow and ice. Articulated trucks. Not a good combination.’
He was puzzled. He couldn’t see where I was leading.
I spelt it out. ‘Artics. They’re just not made for going over mountains. They’re too big and heavy and they haven’t got four-wheel drive.’
He raised his voice a few more decibels. ‘What do you mean? We’ve got to PUSH ON.’
‘Look,’ I insisted. ‘We’ve got to get all this stuff off the artics and onto four-ton trucks with four-wheel drive. Those mountains are fearsome. Worse than the Brecon Beacons where I did selection. We’ll never get over them in artics.’
‘And how do you propose to do that?’
‘We’ll grease the locals in Metkovic and get some smaller trucks.’
‘Very well. Push on!’
My words of warning had obviously had their effect on Orlando. He must have got worried about negotiating the roads ahead in artics. After an overnight in Split where we met up with David Rieff, the American journalist, he promptly acquired two luxurious Range Rovers. We drove on in convoy with the artics, turned east and soon reached another UN warehouse in Metkovic.
Orlando, his Range Rover and his suitcase went off to scour the town for freelance owners of four-tonners. It’s amazing how persuasive a fistful of dollars can be. We eventually amassed a convoy of around fifteen small vehicles. Not only that, but to my amazement up trundled two Warrior APCs from the Cheshire Regiment to escort us over the mountains. That’s impressive. I thought. My opinion of Orlando was rising, perhaps I had been too quick to judge. That must have been some gift of the gab to persuade the top brass in the Cheshires to loan us a couple of APCs.
Now all we had to do was transfer the supplies from the artics to the four-tonners. I went off and did a recce. All the aid material was on pallets. We needed a forklift truck to transfer it. I knew I’d find one in the depot somewhere.
But what I didn’t expect to find there was my first Walter Mitty of the campaign.
23
Port and Stilton
The Walter Mitties were alive and well in Bosnia! From the moment the SAS exploded across the world’s media with the Iranian Embassy siege in 1980, the Walter Mitties have been crawling out of the woodwork, seeking excitement and reflected glory, their deception made that much easier by the Regiment’s policy of never commenting on anything. I have met any number of men claiming to have been on the balcony at the Iranian Embassy without knowing who I was. If they’d all been there, the balcony would have collapsed under the sheer weight! Then there are the young thrusters trying to impress the women in the pubs in Hereford, who get themselves a tan in the middle of winter and claim to have just come back from a secret mission abroad with the SAS. These ones are harmless enough. What is more sinister are those who, driven by greed and by the media’s ever more demanding requirement for sensational material, exploit a gullible public and publish books and articles telling outright lies and upsetting the families of dead comrades. They show the Regiment in a bad light and make hundreds of thousands of pounds in the process.