Operation Palladium Our front gate and bunker. Just across the street there’s a local CD shop, which sells so-called pirated (Bosnia has no copyright laws) software and music for $3.50 - $5 a CD.

So far I’ve bought Elvis (Love Collection, Gold, The Concert 1999 World Tour (must be a Bosnia only release, I don’t remember The Big E touring in ’99)), jamiroquai, Led Zed, Springsteen, R. Miles, Van Morrison, Eros Ramazzotti, U2, Lenny Kravitz, Ministry of Sound, Disco & Dance music, Des’ree, some mixed French music, Barry White, MC Solaar, some Croatian music, and so on, plus CDs loaded with software.

Camp Normandy, Tomislavgrad, Bosnia-Hercegovina (BiH)

Having a bad week? Beat up a friend in a hockey game.

We have a gym in the camp. I don’t use it.I run and bike instead; sweating indoors is

undignified. Sorry Mom. (She’s an aerobics instructor.)

This was our hand-over of authority parade.

The view from the bunker.

Our Area of Responsibility

A badly shot-up, ski chalet.In the Spring, some of the mountain passes were snowy.

A local house, typically several generations live together.

Our patrol vehicles; we patrol night and day.

If you look closely you’ll see the outline of Josip Broz Tito’s face in this roadway. There are also several sets of woods planted on mountainsides to spell out “Tito”. He was the Communist Partisan leader during W.W. II who later ruled Yugoslavia until his death in 1980. Tito was a true Yugoslav: father a Croat, mother a Slovene. His war-time HQ was around Drvar, BiH (later renamed Titov Drvar in his honour). Note: my father is a road construction consultant. Dad - commence the Mike Finner project now, over.

People

Refugees, visiting to check their ethnically-cleansed, destroyed homestead.

Laundry ladies at the camp. Local Police displaying nationalist (Croat) insignia (a no-no).

Armed Forces in Bosnia (locals) meeting our HQ element.

Why we’re here

Clockwise from the right: a destroyed house in the Malovans, a refugee looking at his destroyed homesteadnear Glamoc, and finally another destroyed home just down the road from the first one.

The End