War Hospital

by Sheri Fink

  “Go into the next room and call Selma to come make coffee,” he says, again and again. “I’m tired. I can’t wait any longer. I’m going to fall asleep. Why did you take my bed to the other room? Why didn’t you leave it here? I can’t be bothered to go all the way to the other room. I just want to go to sleep here.”

  They call his name and splash his face with water. He shakes his head and for a moment appears more lucid and oriented. They get him to lie down and rest awhile.

  Someone on the mountain has a working radio. The news from Sarajevo is that Srebrenica has fallen and the population is making its way through the forests toward Tuzla. To Ilijaz, it seems like the kind of information that should be kept secret, not publicly broadcast so that the enemy can hear it. And if the capital knows what’s happened, then where is the Bosnian army? Why isn’t anybody doing anything to help them?

  The air is still and quiet, punctuated only by the sound of infantry weapons in the distance behind them. It gives Ilijaz hope that perhaps the Srebrenica soldiers are fighting back.

  * * *

  THE DUTCH U.N. HEADQUARTERS back in Potočari, where most Srebrenicans have gone seeking safety, is another chamber of hell this Thursday afternoon. Through limpid eyes, nurse Christina Schmitz watches Bosnian Serb soldiers beat up a crazy man. “Horror,” she writes simply to MSF headquarters.

  Yesterday morning, after the Dutch surrendered and the shelling finally ceased, Serb soldiers descended on the Dutchbat compound from several directions, setting haystacks and houses ablaze on their way. Wearing strips of bullets across their chests, hefting assault rifles, and dressed in various uniforms, including those taken from the United Nations, the Serbs were soon demanding weapons from Dutch U.N. soldiers. By afternoon, they roved freely through the crowds gathered in the factory complexes around the compound, making threats and herding the increasingly terrified Srebrenicans onto a line of empty passenger buses and trucks arriving from throughout Serb-held eastern Bosnia. The vehicles, the soldiers announced, would safely “evacuate” civilians toward Muslim-held territory. However, the soldiers picked men and boys out of the waiting crowds, directing them into a separate van and later to a nearby house guarded by soldiers with German shepherds—for “questioning,” they told the Dutch, and to compare their names to a list of “war criminals.” Christina heard gunshots nearby.

  Christina found Serb General Mladić and tried to protest the proposed method of evacuation.

  “Do your job,” he told her, and walked away.

  The operation lasted well into the evening, removing thousands from Potočari in a matter of hours. The Dutch soldiers mainly watched, dazed, some crying, and the troops managed to follow only one convoy all the way to Tuzla.

  Christina was traumatized. After spending the day shuttling back and forth with water and rehydration fluid for the crowds sweltering outside in the burning sun, without shelter or means of sanitation, she finally reached the point of absolute exhaustion. Yesterday evening, for the first time, in a moment of desperation she telexed MSF headquarters and asked to be replaced.

  Just an hour’s nap downstairs in the Dutch medical bunker under the care of a Dutch surgeon restored her strength, and she returned to action. She assessed the situation again at 9 at night, walking outside to find a still-large, panicked crowd. Buses were still coming. Men were still being separated. Bosnian Serb soldiers were firing in the air.

  “It’s horrifying outside,” she reported to MSF headquarters. “The world has failed here. A complete enclave has been wiped away. Srebrenica doesn’t exist anymore.”

  The night cast terror on Potočari. Clutched with fear, people didn’t sleep. The terrible sounds of gunshots, screams, and other awful noises caused waves of panic to roll through the crowds. Small groups of Serb soldiers, some wearing Dutchbat uniforms, infiltrated the groups of refugees and selected people to take away. A Dutchbat medical orderly came across two Serb soldiers raping, in view of other refugees, a bloodied young woman who seemed to be, as the orderly would later describe it, in “total shock… totally crazy.” A few Srebrenica men committed suicide. By this morning, stories of rapes and killings abounded, and clusters of dead bodies had been discovered, including by a stream where many children went to fetch water.

  Earlier in the evening, dozens of wounded patients were put on U.N. trucks bound for Tuzla, accompanied by a Dutch anesthesiologist. At 2 A.M., Christina was awakened to prepare for the return of three dozen of the patients. The news puzzled her. She was grateful, at least, that since the U.N. compound went off red alert, the rest of the Dutch medical team had come out of their bunkers to help and had opened their medical facilities and drugs to the population. Around the same time she was awakened, a fourth baby was delivered in the open, on a dirty stretcher in a dark, muddy, wet corridor with everyone watching.

  Today, three more women went into labor and delivered, perhaps triggered by the stress. One baby was stillborn. The patients who were rumored to be on their way back this morning never showed up. Their convoy was stopped on its way to Tuzla—men of military age were removed, Bosnian nurses working for MSF were led away, and the rest of the patients, many immobile, were told they had to walk four miles to Bosnian government–held territory. The Dutch anesthesiologist protested, and the thirty-three patients remaining on the convoy were turned around and driven back in the direction of Potočari. The vehicles were stopped at the yellow bridge, the former front line, and the wounded were eventually taken to the health clinic in Bratunac.

  For all the tribulations of yesterday, Christina could still believe it, at least enough to report it to headquarters, when the Dutch commander told her last night that the Bosnian Serbs weren’t going to enter the U.N. building and they weren’t killing any men. But today, another truth is asserting itself in prickly moments of half-realization, making it harder and harder to avoid a different conclusion. This morning, someone asked her to go behind the factory to check on rumors of bodies there. She refused—it was a job for the military observers, not MSF. But later, while she was standing outside, a local man in his mid-twenties, carrying a baby and escorted by a Serb soldier, approached Christina in tears. One of MSF’s translators explained that the Serb soldiers were taking the man away and there was no one to care for his baby. His wife was dead. There were no grandparents. Christina took down his name and the baby’s name.

  Then, as the man sobbed, Christina had to gently separate him from his baby. The soldier immediately pulled the man away to a nearby house. It occurred to her that the man would never see his daughter again, but she chased the thought away. Hundreds of family members were getting separated from one another in this massive exodus from Srebrenica. She would make sure this baby’s father was traced.

  This afternoon, her third day here, Christina has distracted herself by finding about a dozen new patients outside to bring into the compound for treatment. She tells headquarters that most of them are either old and exhausted; old and crazy; or young, exhausted, and freaking out. Although people are being separated before her eyes, she is overwhelmed and unable to comprehend the totality of what is going on. Everything is happening in real time—there’s no one here to interpret it. Christina wishes that everyone who had the power to stop this mass exodus could be standing beside her, seeing the violence on the faces of the Bosnian Serbs and feeling the panic and desperation of the population as they are herded, like animals, toward the buses, running for their lives, holding their screaming children to their breasts, and dropping and leaving behind the possessions they’ve managed to bring with them this far.

  She receives a situation report from MSF headquarters saying that 20,000 detainees are being transported to Bratunac stadium. Christina realizes that the promise of protection the United Nations gave Srebrenica by designating it a safe area means nothing. She has never experienced anything more horrible in her life.

  She’s in constant contact with MSF Belgrade. MSF country sections are fielding dozens and do
zens of media calls. Christina feeds them information. Some of her dispatches are carried in a French newspaper, Liberation. MSF headquarters staff make public calls for protection of the population and try to send in supplies and more expatriates.

  By the late afternoon, the only remaining refugees are the 5,000 gathered inside the stinking, chaotic Dutch compound, where toilets overflow and new mothers have stopped lactating from the stress. Several hundred men remain here, 251 of whom allow their names to be recorded on a list for the Dutch. Others refuse out of fear the Serbs will see it. The Serbs demand that those inside leave the compound, too, and the Dutch agree, even helping to ensure their orderly removal through a corridor created by tape. The men, pleading not to be handed over to the Serbs, include family members of Dutchbat’s local staff. The Dutch order all of them out of the compound.

  The Dutch second-in-command reassures Christina that the Bosnian Serbs are not touching men who aren’t soldiers. Her experiences these past few days convince her otherwise. She takes a step nearly unprecedented in MSF—she insists the local male medical staff members stay with her. The internationals should be evacuated tomorrow, and she’ll make sure that all the male medical staff members and any female staff members who want to stay be evacuated along with MSF.

  After everyone is gone except the patients, medical staff, and some of their family members, Serb soldiers come to inspect the building. They receive a list of the patients and spend only ten minutes inside, seemingly shocked and disgusted by the conditions in the compound—the smells, the shit, the bedraggled look of the patients. Christina takes the opportunity to ask for an escort to town to pick up the patients she had to leave behind in the hospital two days ago. She’s driven quickly to Srebrenica with a U.N. military observer. She finds three elderly patients in good condition sitting where she left them. Someone has given them biscuits to eat. The Bosnian Serb escorts are afraid that Srebrenica soldiers might be hiding in the hospital rooms, so Christina and the U.N. military observer have to carry the patients to the pickup truck themselves. She spots three more elderly people in the social center and brings them to the truck, too.

  Outside the windows, she sees Serb soldiers everywhere, looting. She watches TVs and washing machines being loaded up and livestock being herded north. Srebrenica, a city she’d started to love, feels strange and empty, a city populated by cast-off belongings instead of people.

  * * *

  AROUND FOUR THE SAME AFTERNOON, Thursday, July 13, a Belgrade television reporter rides with Serb soldiers along the asphalt roads northwest of Potočari, stopping at a meadow in Sandići where dozens of Srebrenica men who’ve surrendered to Serb soldiers are seated on the ground under guard. The soldiers, holding automatic rifles with rounds of ammunition slung across their necks, instruct the captives to call for their friends and family members still in the woods.

  “Ay, Nermine!” a thin, bent graying man in a wet T-shirt yells through cupped hand for his son in the nearby woods, “Come here. Don’t be afraid of the Serbs.” Gunshots crackle in the distance.

  The cameraman continues down the road in the car as joyful folk music plays on the radio. Along the roadside, posted every several yards, a Serb soldier stands or crouches by a guardrail or behind tall grasses that grow to his chin, looking out into the hills, thick with deciduous trees and blooming with flowers. He carries a set of binoculars or a powder-blue U.N. hardhat, and always a gun, frequently with his finger on the trigger. He wears camouflage clothing or a T-shirt and pants, or a black headband, or a grenade on his belt. He cups a free hand to his mouth and yells into the woods at the Srebrenicans still hiding there.

  “Come on, guys!”

  “Come on, hurry up!”

  The cameraman stops on the road where gunners on two boxy armored vehicles take turns firing their top-mounted anti-aircraft guns into the lush, green hillside. Rip goes one gun, with a burst of smoke and a streak of light that heads for the hillside, lighting it up for a moment before it disappears into a cloud of smoke and dust. Thump goes the answering impact. Rip, thump. Rip, thump. Casings clatter to the ground; the gunmen whistle and aim their guns with steering wheels. A line of figures appears on the crest of a hillside. Rip… rip… the figures fall down, thump… thump.

  * * *

  MILES NORTHWEST OF THE FIRING and the asphalt road, Ilijaz’s group lines up to walk again around 5 P.M. Just as they’re about to depart, a lone shell explodes at the edge of the forest, at a safe distance from everyone.

  It’s almost as if it didn’t want to hurt anyone, just to say, “Why aren’t you on your way yet?”

  They start down the north side of the mountain, slowly descending its steep, rough surface toward a river whose banks, they are warned, are mined. It’s still light out when they near the river and turn right to follow a path along its course. Few can resist the siren call of the rushing river, and hundreds clamber down, Ilijaz among them, to gulp its clear, cold water. The water is so beautiful, so comforting and precious that they stop to splash around, heedless of the fact that the cool night is falling. It is the Drinjaca, the same river that flows, farther west, through šekovići.

  They come to an old, wooden bridge and cross it into the burnt Muslim village of Glodi. Daylight fades as they follow an old country road out of the village in silence.

  I don’t like this quiet. Something bad is going to happen.

  A message whispered down the column beckons Ilijaz to come to the front.

  Who’s calling me? Why?

  Thinking it is probably an emergency, Ilijaz puts his best friend Naim in charge of the group, takes another man with him, and starts out quickly alongside the column to catch up with the front. After more than two hours walking uphill at a brisk pace, they reach a bottleneck where the path diverges from the road, crosses a roadside ditch, and disappears into what looks, in the dim light of dusk, like a tall beech forest. Ilijaz hears some vague complaints from the people ahead, but ignores them until it is his turn to cross the ditch. Numb with exhaustion, Ilijaz can barely keep his eyes open.

  He descends into the complete darkness of the forest and sees a wall of skyscrapers rising before him, squeezed around narrow staircases that lead downward. He tries to put his feet on the steps, but can’t force them to work. It’s like finding himself paralyzed in a vivid bad dream.

  I must be starting to hallucinate.

  He slaps both hands over his eyes.

  I am in the forest on my way to Tuzla, I am in the forest on my way to Tuzla… Someone’s calling me from the front of the column. Maybe someone’s wounded.

  He opens his eyes. He sees only forest.

  “What are these buildings doing here?” he hears other men ask. Ilijaz turns around and slaps his companion to prevent him from experiencing a similar vision. Then he hustles back up to the edge of the forest to warn the others.

  “Certain visual effects are possible when you walk down into the forest,” he tells those waiting their turn to descend. “Don’t be afraid.”

  For the next half hour, they feel their way through the forest. Then the column stops moving. Ilijaz and his companion continue alongside to its front.

  “Who called for me?” Ilijaz asks. The men at the front don’t have an answer.

  “What unit are you in?” Ilijaz asks them.

  “The 284th brigade.”

  That is right. That is the unit that is supposed to be leading the column.

  When he asks, “Where’s your commander?” they say he went ahead with a scouting unit of about 100 people.

  This seems strange. Suspicious.

  “Why are you standing here waiting?”

  “We’re waiting for couriers to come back with commands for us to proceed.”

  “Hey! My son’s not feeling right!” a man calls from somewhere behind Ilijaz. Ilijaz walks fifty yards back to find a man lying on the ground with his father leaning over him.

  “He’s dying,” the father says. Ilijaz bends down to examine the ma
n and hears the rhythmic sound of snoring. He isn’t dying; he’s simply so exhausted that he went to sleep standing and then fell to the ground.

  Ilijaz and his companion sit down to wait, deciding to nap in shifts. It will take at least two hours for the others to catch up with them.

  “Wake me up in half an hour,” Ilijaz says.

  * * *

  ILIJAZ OPENS HIS EYES. He looks around. His companion is on the ground beside him, fast asleep. Ilijaz doesn’t see or hear anyone else nearby. Perhaps they’ve slept for hours. Ilijaz awakens his companion, who claps his hands to his head, upset at his lapse. They sit there for a while, unsure of what to do, all alone in the dark, unfamiliar forest. It seems they’ll have to wait for daybreak to proceed.

  Then they hear people yelling at one another. A man cussing at the top of his lungs runs past them.

  “Fuck! I know this way really well,” he says. “There are no Chetniks here. Someone is screwing with the column!”

  Ilijaz turns to see the column coming up behind them. He and his companion scramble to their feet and join it.

  Around dawn they reach an asphalt road beside a river and stop. The column falls apart as people wait and try to figure out where they are and where they should go next. There is no sign of the scouting group that went ahead.

  The medical group catches up. During the wait, people panic again. A man rushes from the river tearing off his clothes and yelling, “Airplanes!” with his arms spread out like wings. “They’re Chetniks!” he shouts, and then gunshots crack the air. He kills several of those unlucky enough to be standing nearby, then commits suicide.

  If we stay here much longer, we’ll all have psychological breakdowns.

  Ilijaz gathers a group of leaders, and they discuss which way to go. Someone figures out that they’re on an old, abandoned asphalt road that runs from northeast to southwest between Zvornik and šekovići. Ilijaz figures that since they’re coming from the south that means Zvornik is to the right. They must go left. Left is west. Left is toward Tuzla.