Goražde still stands
Colonel Richard Westley, OBE, MC on thwarting genocide in Bosnia
Richard Westley, OBE, MC discusses his role thwarting genocide in the Bosnian War
In the summer of 1995 a town few had heard of became shorthand for horror: Srebrenica. Subject to the same threat to exterminate its Muslim population, a similar fate could have easily befallen Goražde were it not for 300 brave British soldiers
The brutal Bosnian War had rumbled on for four years, reducing the once-cosmopolitan heart of the former Communist Yugoslavia, with its Ottoman-era mosques and lush green mountains, into fractured statelets of competing national aspirations. Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) desired independence, fearing a Serb-dominated rump Yugoslavia following the violent breakaway of Slovenia (1991) and Croatia (1992). Bosnia’s Catholics (Croats) feared Serb dominance too, but while some allied with the Bosniak government in Sarajevo, others felt the pull of their newly emancipated ‘homeland’.
Bosnian Serbs jumped at Islamist shadows and estrangement from their kin in Belgrade, drawing into the protective embrace of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and the nationalist government of Serbian president Slobodan Miloševic.
In one of the acrimonious final sessions of Bosnia’s federal parliament, Radovan Karadžic, leader of the far right Serb Democratic Party, warned his Bosniak counterpart of the price his people would pay for independence: “This is the path that you want to take Bosnia and Herzegovina on, the same highway of hell and death that Slovenia and Croatia went on. Don’t think that you won’t take Bosnia and Herzegovina into hell, and the Muslim people maybe into extinction.” With carefully premeditated barbarity Serb militias began to carve off chunks of territory. Armed with JNA weapons and artillery, and led by JNA officers like the infamous General Ratko Mladic, they outmatched Bosnian government forces – a desperate and lightly armed coalition of police, territorial army and untrained volunteers.
Sarajevo was encircled by Bosnian Serbs and exposed to the longest siege in modern history as snipers and artillery pounded the city from the hills, while huge swathes of eastern and northern Bosnia were subjected to the chilling newspeak of ‘ethnic cleansing’ as Bosniaks were driven from their homes by a deliberate policy of violence, rape and murder, designed to reconstruct Bosnia’s hinterland as an ethnically pure extension of Serbia proper.
Flinching from commitment but unable to remain silent while Europe’s first genocide since World War II unfolded, United Nations
Security Council Resolution 819 (16 April 1993) and United Nations Security Council Resolution 824 (6 May 1993) declared six Bosniak holdouts – Sarajevo among them – UN Safe Areas.
Placed under the protection of lightly armed UNPROFOR (UN Protection Force) peacekeepers and the threat of NATO airstrikes against
Serb positions, the initiative was immediately toothless. Supply corridors to the Safe Areas were entirely controlled by the Bosnian Serbs who would shake down UNHCR aid convoys and harass UNPROFOR soldiers, a multinational force whose coy rules of engagement (“deter by their presence”, rather than “defend by force”), small numbers and indecisive leadership at the highest levels left them unable to adequately protect the populations under their care.
“There was a real sense of helplessness,” remembers Colonel Richard Westley, OBE, MC. “Here you were, supposedly one of the most professional armies around, subordinated to the UN, which I always found extraordinary.
The UN is absolutely critical for legitimacy and accountability, but not to command soldiers on the ground. They should set the policy.
The strategy comes from military people.
But when you’ve got so many different troop-contributing nations it’s very difficult to coordinate, and it had no teeth, and
“THIS IS THE PATH THAT YOU WANT TO TAKE BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA ON, THE SAME HIGHWAY OF HELL AND DEATH THAT SLOVENIA AND CROATIA WENT ON. DON’T THINK THAT YOU WON’T TAKE BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA INTO HELL, AND THE MUSLIM PEOPLE MAYBE INTO EXTINCTION” – Radovan Karadžic
therefore it sent peacekeepers into areas where there really wasn’t much peace to keep, and if that peace was [worth keeping], it was relative and not absolute.”
Unsafe areas
In eastern Bosnia, three land corridors stretched out from central Bosnia like emaciated fingers reaching for the beleaguered UN Safe Areas of Žepa, Goražde and Srebrenica. The populations, swollen with Muslim refugees from the surrounding area, were starved and shelled, but had seen off overwhelming odds thanks to the fierce determination of their defenders, the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBIH), and what little support the thin blue line of UNPROFOR could muster.
In February 1995, 300 British soldiers from the First Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers arrived in Goražde under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Riley in order to safeguard its population of some 17,000 people. The bruising experience of earlier peacekeeping efforts had left an impact on the British, who took a more proactive posture despite the limitations of their official role.
Westley – then acting major – led the 100 men of B Company. He tells the story of the British defence of Goražde in his book Operation Insanity: The Dramatic True Story Of The Mission That Saved 10,000 Lives, written with Mark Ryan. “We were not given a mission and therefore the battle group planning staff and the company commanders wrote the mission,” he tells us. “It was sort of a series of bullets: maintaining the three-kilometre (1.9-mile) exclusion zone; reporting on warring faction activity; supporting the UN agencies and accredited people and their establishments; and the only bit of guidance that was actually given was by [Lieutenant General] Rupert
Smith, the force commander [in Sarajevo], who said, ‘Your role is to safeguard the civil population as best you can in a war’, and that became the order under all those tasks that were written.
“The whole thing was pretty untidy. No mission, poor command and control, and very tenuous logistic support – not only for us in terms of weapons, ammunition etc., but also humanitarian aid. We couldn’t get it in and that was one of our key tasks, you know; the delivery of or support to the NGOS. So yeah, talk about being set up to fail.”
The landscape too seemed to mirror the vulnerability of First Battalion’s position. “My initial analysis was isolation,” says Westley. “Tremendous isolation. It sat astride the River Drina and the main road from Dubrovnik through Višegrad and Sarajevo. It’s got bleak limestone mountains to 3,000 feet (914 metres) above sea level around it. Even on a bright sunny day there seemed to be a sort of shadow over Goražde, maybe caused by the high hills, but also a psychological shadow as everyone knew that it was going to happen again – they were going to come back for it.”
As winter gave way to spring, clearing the wooded mountains of eastern Bosnia for ‘fighting season’, First Battalion were expecting trouble. Goražde had come within inches of falling to the Bosnian Serbs in April 1994 and only NATO airstrikes had driven them back from the outskirts of the town.
“If I’m honest, the one thing that was really in the back of my mind throughout this was I know what happens when a town falls in a civil war. You have this built-up animosity, this desensitisation of a population that has been ripped asunder by a couple of years of civil war, and history will tell you that actually not that many people die in direct fighting. It’s usually a massing of troops, and will and intent on one side, and [the other side] loses its nerve and that’s where lots of people die. We couldn’t lose the town. We absolutely couldn’t because
“WE COULDN’T LOSE THE TOWN. WE ABSOLUTELY COULDN’T BECAUSE I JUST DON’T THINK I COULD HAVE DEALT WITH PEOPLE BEING LED AWAY AND MURDERED”
I just don’t think I could have dealt with people being led away and murdered.”
The gathering storm
Regularly visiting Bosnian Serb positions around the town for sometimes-tense negotiations with his Bosnian Serb counterpart, Westley was able to form a frank assessment of their capabilities: “They were quite well resourced, so they had a lot of troops and the troops were reasonably armed. It depended on their rotation how professional they were. We would patrol every single day because they changed over, to see who they brought on: have they got the real heart and fight as the professionals, or were these a bunch of rag-tags that are just holding at the moment because it’s not important? But the one thing they had was the ability to out-range us with their guns.
“They had a fearsome array of artillery, mortars, anti-aircraft artillery depressed into the ground, all of which could engage us from more than five or six kilometres (3.1-3.7 miles) and they were sitting around the town on the high ground, and effectively we had light machine guns and small arms. So I was never fazed by them, but I was aware that, while you can afford to be outgunned because we’re more professional than them, you can’t afford to be out-ranged because you just have to sit there and take it. Unless you get air [support].”
The real warning of a coming attack, though, was the arrival of what Westley referred to as the “ethnic cleansing brigade” – hardened paramilitaries modelled on the Chetnik guerrillas of Yugoslavia’s brutal early 20th century. “Sometimes you would go up there and there would be these rather avuncular chaps sitting in the front line, and all they wanted to do was have a coffee and slivovitz [brandy] with you, because they’ve just been told to be there. But what was key was that we were on top of it. We knew whether it was the old boys, in which case we could not relax, but could soften our posture towards them and find out what was happening, or if you walked up there one day and Chetnik Bill’s there sharpening his knife and you don’t get offered a slivovitz or a coffee
“THE BRUISING EXPERIENCE OF EARLIER PEACEKEEPING EFFORTS HAD LEFT AN IMPACT ON THE BRITISH, WHO TOOK A MORE PROACTIVE POSTURE”
you know, ‘right, we need to be a little bit more alert now.’”
The ceasefire of the previous winter expired on 31 April, and on 8 May General Mladic addressed the Bosnian Serb assembly in its ‘capital’ of
Pale, a town 17 kilometres (11 miles) east of Sarajevo. There the warlord unveiled his grand strategy for the enclaves in eastern Bosnia: “My concern is to have them vanish completely.”
The international community fretted. Dutch requests to have Srebrenica reinforced were overruled by the United States, who instead pushed for a complete UNPROFOR withdrawal from the isolated Safe Areas.
French Général Bernard Janvier, UNPROFOR’S overall commander on the ground, agreed. He told the UN Security Council on 24 May, “The enclaves are indefensible, and the status quo untenable.” 1st Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers would prove Janvier wrong.
On 25 May, after Lieutenant General Smith’s ultimatum to Mladic to withdraw his artillery from the exclusion zones around the safe areas, NATO airstrikes hit military facilities in Pale. Watching the distant plumes of smoke from Goražde, Riley evacuated non-combat personnel to a hideout in the mountains, and the remaining fighting men of 1st Battalion kept watch – Westley’s B Company holding the checkpoints and observation posts (OPS) on the east bank of the Drina.
The battle for OP3
The role of men stationed in an OP – as the name suggests – was to observe, and the idea was that these forward observers on the high ground around the town would be the tripwire that triggered airstrikes, but the British in Goražde were well aware of the
UN’S squeamishness when it came to direct action. They reinforced OPS with fire trenches, ensured they were constantly manned, and patrolled from OP to OP to extend their footprint across the maximum range of the exclusion zone.
Just as crucially, the ARBIH dug its own trenches and bunkers on the hillside behind them, so that if it came to it they’d be able to take the high ground and deny the Bosnian Serbs positions from which they could shell Goražde with impunity. “It was absolutely vital that they were defendable for a period of time,” agrees Westley. “But I always said that it was a finite amount of time because of ammunition expenditure and because they were so prominent [on the hillside]. They were obvious targets. And bearing in mind that most of the town had been registered as artillery targets by the Serbs the year before, it didn’t take too much imagination to realise that if they really went for it and coordinated it then we wouldn’t be able to hold for that long.”
On 28 May the most isolated of the east bank OPS – OP1, which jutted out from the UN lines and offered a vantage point over the southeastern approaches to Goražde – began to register signs of the coming storm. Soon the other OPS and checkpoints began to radio in movement, and on the west bank men of A Company found themselves surrounded and taken prisoner by Bosnian Serbs.
Soon OP1 came under fire from 12.7mm DSHK heavy machine guns, PPK light machine guns and the deadly rattle of AK-47S and their Yugoslav variants. B Company had 55 men in total, spread across four OPS, two checkpoints and the Quick Reaction Force in town. With no heavy ordnance, they could call on only eight light machine guns and a few Saxon armoured personnel carriers – little-loved accident-prone veterans of Northern Ireland.
They were facing hundreds of Bosnian Serbs. Maybe as many as 600, with thousands who could be called up from beyond the threekilometre exclusion zone.
Westley knew OP3 was critical. It overlooked the town, the bridges and the road approaching them. If OP3 were lost, Goražde was as good as in Serb hands, and he knew the consequences would be catastrophic. As the eight men on the vital hill came under fire, Westley got on the radio and urged the liaison officer to rouse 801 Brigade, the ARBIH unit responsible for the defence of the east bank, and sped to Cemetery Valley at the base of the hill to join the Quick Reaction Force.
“I could see better from down in the valley than [the men in the OPS] could from where they were and they were so involved in that close battle,” says Westley, explaining his movements. “We could have got up had we needed to bolster, in 20 to 25 minutes. It’s a hard climb up there and there’s mines on the forward edge of it that had been put there by the Bosnians.
“All I would have done was taken my QRF effectively out of the battle and committed them to one side, and I wasn’t sure where the main axis [of the attack] was coming as they were attacking on all sides, so I had to really hold that. In the back of my mind also was the fact that we may have to get somebody out and I can’t do that if I’ve set them up on OP3 and OP1. So it wasn’t inactivity, it was judging the right time to commit that reserve.”
With the Saxon in Cemetery Valley raking the Serbs with bursts from its machine gun, Westley was able to watch mortar and artillery fire fill the air around OP3, and make out ominous streams of Bosnian Serb fighters attempting to close in on the besieged strongpoints in a pincer movement.
At 3.00pm the men at OP1 withdrew and it fell to the Bosnian Serbs. Further down the river Checkpoint 1 followed as a convoy of approaching vehicles – some armoured – made B Company’s defence untenable, and Westley ordered them back to a more defensible bend in the road. Only one of the checkpoint’s two Saxons made it: the other rolled back into the river, where it became stuck.
Finally, 801 Brigade appeared and began a slow fighting climb towards OP2 and OP3.
At 3.43pm OP2 was surrounded and, facing down anti-tank weapons, its defenders were taken prisoner. Corporal Dave Parry concealed a radio and remained in contact until he finally slipped out of range. The hostages (a total of 250 UN personnel were taken hostage by the Serbs in summer 1995) would be chained to Serb positions as human shields against the threat of NATO airstrikes.
“It was very hard at the time not to launch a raid up there to go and get them back,” admits Westley. “But actually, when speaking to Corporal Parry, it was quite clear that the numbers that were around them... I was probably going to ensure their death or injury if I did anything about it.”
Against all odds, OP3 held for over four hard-fought hours and handed over to 801 Brigade. With the ARBIH in the field, First Battalion withdrew to its base in the town.
The ground around the tattered remains of the observation post was littered with corpses, and Westley estimated that between 70 and 120 Bosnian Serbs were killed trying to take the OPS from B Company. Although 33 men had been taken hostage, no Brits had died in the fighting.
“It went to plan and it went to plan for two reasons: firstly, because we held our nerve, and secondly, because the Bosnian Muslims got out of the town so quickly and got an effective move. It wasn’t explicit and I couldn’t be explicit about it, but [801 Brigade commander] Salko and I had had discussions about how fast he could get people up and how long I could hold, and I told him I thought I could hold for about two hours. We actually held for about four and a half, so I don’t think he complained about that. And we were virtually out of ammunition by the end of that.”
801 Brigade quickly dug in and fought in the hills for a further three weeks to keep the Bosnian Serbs from the town. “They saw what was left of the observation post as just a target, so they very quickly started extending their trenches. By the time I was able to get up there, four or five days later, to see what was happening, the latticework of trenches they had created was remarkable. The speed at which
“WESTLEY WAS ABLE TO WATCH MORTAR AND ARTILLERY FIRE FILL THE AIR AROUND OP3, AND MAKE OUT OMINOUS STREAMS OF BOSNIAN SERB FIGHTERS ATTEMPTING TO CLOSE IN ON THE BESIEGED STRONGPOINTS IN A PINCER MOVEMENT”
they made and bolstered their defences was quite staggering.”
The hostages were finally released in the second half of June. Corporal Dave Parry refused to allow the Bosnian Serbs to issue his men direct orders – and was beaten for it – while A Company’s Lieutenant Hugh Nightingale was tormented with a mock execution.
The shadow of Srebrenica
With the offensive thwarted, the Serbs responded in petulance and opened up a ferocious bombardment on Goražde – the largest artillery barrage British soldiers had been subjected to since the Korean War, as between 300 and 500 shells a day struck the town.
For a month 1st Battalion sat out the offensive in their bunkers – shipping containers sunk into the ground and sandbagged – and emerged at night to wash, exercise and touch base with the town’s defenders, safe from the eyes of artillery spotters. “[For the men it was] very claustrophobic, very boring [and it was] important that myself and the officers got round during the day and spoke to them. I had lots on my mind to keep me busy, they had lots of time to think about it.
“It was tiring because I had to get round every bunker, but it was them I was most worried about because of the noise of being shelled: it is absolutely terrifying and I defy anyone to counter that view when you know you can’t move and all you can hear are explosions, loud explosions and shaking, and not knowing whether the next one is going to find a weak point in your bunker. It’s wearing, and a month of that, it was bad. As soon as it stopped it was important to get out, talk to the blokes, look into their eyes, see how they were feeling and decide if he needs a bit more help, or he’s fine, let’s give them something worthwhile to do and all that, and it was very, very difficult. It wasn’t just difficult for us, it was difficult for everybody.”
On 6 July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces attacked Srebrenica. The ill-prepared Dutch peacekeepers begged for air support, retreated and surrendered, indecisive and overwhelmed.
On 11 July, his victory concluded, Ratko Mladic walked through the streets of Srebrenica, triumphantly handing out sweets to children.
Somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 refugees clustered around the UNPROFOR headquarters in panic, but the Dutch had no protection to offer. On the morning of 12 July, the Serbs began separating the men and boys from the mass of Bosnian Muslim refugees. The women and girls were packed onto buses heading for government-held territory, and the men were murdered.
In his book Westley described the foreboding radio traffic as an airstrike was attempted and withdrawn, and the first survivor of Srebrenica staggering over the hills to Goražde to tell his harrowing story. “Once the tales from different sources came in and there was a realisation of what happened in Srebrenica, I think for all of us in Goražde it was a sense of ‘thank God we held on, and thank God we were postured with our observation posts out’. It was just great sadness and overwhelming relief that it hadn’t happened on our watch. By the time the figures came in we’d left [Bosnia], and I remember sitting down at home, hearing these numbers and thinking, ‘This can’t be right, 8,300?’ and then the verification came in. I was feeling totally deflated – a relief that we’d done what we’d done, but just very sad. I could have broken down in tears.
“We fought them and we stopped them taking over the town of Goražde, and so, while I have regrets about the people that died there and the helplessness of the UN force there, at least I haven’t got to deal with what the
Dutch have to deal with in Srebrenica. I just don’t know how they live with themselves: not a shot fired, no defensive posture, allowed them to come in and bus themselves out and then over the next three to five days, 8,300 systematically murdered. That’s a hell of a thing to live with.”
COUNTING THE COST
At the end of August 1995, the remnants of
1st Battalion left Goražde. It was a tense withdrawal that left them exposed to the furious ARBIH, who feared that abandonment would be the prelude to a renewed Serb offensive, and also the dangerous journey through Serb lines where the risk of ambush and capture was constant. This was a race against the clock as NATO was about to launch an airstrike in retaliation for the bombing of a Sarajevo marketplace by the Bosnian Serbs – the death of 43 by mortar fire was a horror too far after the trauma of Srebrenica.
An hour later, Operation Deliberate Force dropped 1,026 bombs on 708 Bosnian Serb targets and forced them into peace talks.
For their courage and steadfastness, 1st Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers was awarded the largest clutch of ‘peacetime’ awards since the Korean War: one Distinguished Service Order, a Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, three Military Crosses – one of which was Westley’s, for his leadership during the battalion’s tense exit from Goražde – seven Mentions in Dispatches and two Queen’s Commendations for Valuable Service.
But there’s a greater testament to the valour of 1st Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers than any medal. Look at a map of Bosnia and Herzegovina and you see a thin bridge of territory stretching out into the Serb-dominated statelet of Republika Srpska. It’s a geographic anomaly that says simply: Goražde still stands.
“It does give me relief, it also gives me a sense of pride actually and it gives me a sense of pride that my soldiers were brave enough to stand and do what I asked them to do. I always believed they were well trained and I loved them to bits, but the fact that they did what they did gives me huge pride and belief because they really did do something quite remarkable. Part of the reason I wrote the book is I wanted them to receive some recognition for it, because they did do something quite extraordinary.”
“CORPORAL DAVE PARRY REFUSED TO ALLOW THE BOSNIAN SERBS TO ISSUE HIS MEN DIRECT ORDERS – AND WAS BEATEN FOR IT – WHILE A COMPANY’S LIEUTENANT HUGH NIGHTINGALE WAS TORMENTED WITH A MOCK EXECUTION”