My War Gone By, I Miss It So

"Don't shoot, don't shoot," the three soldiers cried out to their comrades as they staggered up the rain-sodden slope towards the Muslim lines at the end of the Novi Travnik. The BiH troops scrambled out of their bunkers among the trees, stumbling down the narrow trenches to take up their positions on the knoll of ground overlooking the Croat-held houses little more than a hundred yards below them. These were confused moments, though once in place it took the fighters only seconds to understand the full horror unfolding before their eyes.

The men approaching them were their own, captured days earlier during a dawn infiltration of the Muslim lines by the HVO. Now, forced back across no man's land, the prisoners lurched unnaturally up the hillside. Their hands were strapped to their waists. Improvised claymore mines were attached to their chests, linked to the Croat houses by coils of wire that unraveled slowly with each stop of their robotic progress. The human bombs were returning home.