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"Oh My God!!! What have I done?"
It's 1 a.m. and I've just sat bolt upright in bed, and am in the process of breaking out in a cold sweat.... Two hours earlier I had cheerfully watched Rick lock all the equipment for the trip into the ground floor office of Voysey House, forgetting that I don't have a key for that floor. To make matters worse, my Psion organiser with all the phone numbers of people who do have keys is in my rucksack, which is carefully stashed with all the other kit in said office.
Tommorrow is Saturday. We have to leave at 06:30. There is no way that anyone is going to be there to open up the office. I can't believe that after all the delays, trials and tribulations, that it was finally my own sheer stupidity that has probably doomed the trip.
Depressed, and realising that there is absolutely nothing I can do about it until the morning, I go to sleep.
What feels like about three minutes later, having been taken in by some vicious propaganda put about by the military that such a time as "Oh five hundred hours" actually exists, I head off to the office.
I'm in luck: by some miracle of forward planning, I had stowed a set of keys for just such an emergency, and forgotten all about them. However, we still have the alarm system to deal with. Code for which is.... yep, in my Psion!
"OK, here's the plan... we've got 40 seconds... You find the keypad, I'll grab my Psion and look up the code..."
73 seconds later, alarms ringing, people running in circles...
Oh, well... we got there in the end.
If you ever want a trouble free, punctual flight, with friendly, efficient and courteous service, I can highly recommend Air RAF...
The safety lecture was a little unusual: "Right gentlemen, welcome on board. If we have a problem on the ground, we will evacuate the aircraft and meet at it's 10 O'clock, two hundred yards away. Escape hatches are located to your left and right, and one on the roof..."
The back of the Hercules was somewhat spartan as can be expected, but surprisingly comfortable. At least for the first hour, after which your bum has gone so completely numb there is no position that will relieve it. The earplugs they handed out seemed a bit unnecessary when they started the engines... they were loud, but not that loud. Then I realised they had only started one - there were still three more to go... By the time they had them all fired up, it was absolutely deafening. Most of the noise being provided by every metalic object in the craft (of which there are a great many) reverberating in sympathy with the engines. The only solution apart from the earplugs was to find your loudest, grungiest, heavy metalist mad axeman solo tape, stick it in your walkman and wack it up to full volume. If you were lucky, you could just about make out the baseline.
We arrived in Split without incident, and were introduced to the marvelous military version of border custom checks: "Right you lot, out you go... onto the coach outside, debrief at Theatre Reception". We stroll casually passed the civillian population having their baggage searched, handbags emptied, fillings extracted etc. etc. Once there, we collect our bags, and all the kit, and meet our driver, Simon. He has just driven 450 kilometres across war damaged roads, through two borders, doing a journey that has been known to take 2 days, in just five hours, and arrived within 10 minutes of us. He is completely knackered, and says there is no way we will make it back to Sarajevo tonight. We give him a cold can of Coke and strap him back into the driving seat.
We head off down to the coast road, which is incredibly beautiful. Miles and miles of little coves and beaches, overlooked by a steep mountain road. After a brief stop to top up Simon's caffeine levels, and to sign the "official" documents required to smooth our way through the next border and customs checks we decided to crack on for Sarajevo. Everything looks pretty normal. Little farming villages, picteresque scenery, pretty countryside, blown up house, burned out tank...
"OK guys, we'll be coming up to the border soon... You'd better hide your notebook PC down by your feet. If we're lucky they'll only check the big boxes in the back. If we're unlucky they'll rip the car apart. At the very least, we'll be stuck there a couple of hours..."
A few kilometres later...
"What was that?"
"I think it was the border... Yes, it was the border, there's loads of police searching that lorry..."
"Is anyone coming after us?"
"Errr... Nope."
"Right then..." (Puts foot hard down).
We can't believe our luck. We had expected hours of checks, intimidation, haggling and finally leaving with about half our kit, and here we were merrily heading down the road without so much as a "just pull over to the side there..."
Mostar. Principal town of Herzeg Bosnia. Blown completely to hell. Whole sections of the town are reduced to roofless, windowless shells, and more or less every house is covered in bullet holes and shrapnel splashes. It's getting late and the light is starting to fade, so we decide not to stop for food and sightseeing, but press straight on. There is a long road between two mountain ranges, along the river Neretva, which takes us all the way to Sarajevo. Simon is not happy. It's coming up to eight o'clock and there is a floating pontoon bridge ahead, replacing the real one that was blown up during the heavy fighting around Mostar. It is guarded by IFOR, and they will close it at eight. The road is more or less empty, and Simon says that this is because the road is "dodgy", and we "really shouldn't be on it after about.. err... now". We get to the bridge, and, sure enough, it's closed. We have to go around. There is a dirt road hastily cut out of the side of the mountain, which snakes around to a narrower point in the river, where a small bridge has been built, then back around to the other side of the pontoon. We head down it...
Just as we get back to the proper road, we come to a bunch of cars with their hazard lights flashing, and a heated discussion going on at the head. Simon stops well back, and we watch. Suddenly the guy doing all the shouting jumps in his car and zooms off down the road. The rest of the cars follow, and we do the same. About half a mile further on, we come to another block. There is a big yellow lorry parked across the middle of the road, with an Austrian car trying to get past. Two policemen are shouting at him. One of them gets really angry and goes to the car for his gun... no, it's only a truncheon. The Austrian backs off, while the police signal us to turn around and go back. Simon is in the process of doing so when the first guy, who is in plain clothes, seems to take charge and start ordering people about. The lorry backs up a little, and we are waved through. The Austrian car and us get through, then they close it off again. There is a huge tailback on the other side. We carry on up the road nervously, as fast as the rickety Land Rover and winding road will allow. Nothing further happens, but we get worried every time we see a group of people or the car in front slows down.
We later learn that once again we have been incredibly lucky. Ours were the only two cars to get out of Mostar that night, and nothing has got through since. Mostar is sealed off. Harris, our contact here can't believe we made it. Several other aid convoys have got stuck, both at the initial border crossing and at the Mostar blockade.
Nothing much else happened, except that the Land Rover would occasionally develop a mind of it's own and wander off to visit the other side of the road, usually just when going around a particularly steep blind corner over a blackened void...
A lot of planes
A plane
Our plane
Howard: "Let me have a go..."
Not all these holes are meant to be here...
130 KPH... Let's get out of here....
