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The Trap
The Trap
The trap was simple,
To eyes trained for Northern Ireland it was laughable.
The bait, a brand new oversized colour TV,
Balanced precariously on a stack of wooden packing cases,
Which once, and perhaps still, contained anti tank mines.
All were clearly visible from the road,
In the gutted, long-looted bungalow.
The only item of value for seventy miles.
The man who laid the trap was a genius,
He knew us, but he knew his target better!
The small hamlet was once Moslem, as evidenced by the achitecture,
And the stones in the Graveyard.
The residents, long gone.
Victims perhaps of Serbian ethnic cleansing.
The trap was laid by the troops of the joint Bosnian/Croatian brigade,
A Moslem/Roman Catholic amalgam who were withdrawing from the main village.
The intended victims?
Not us, the NATO troops overseeing the uneasy truce,
We could afford to be careful!
This trap was set for the returning Serbian civilians,
Who having fled the mass murders of the Autumn campaign.
Were due to return under the Dayton agreement.
To destroyed homes, shattered lives and mines.
We cordoned off the house with red mine tape on all sides,
We hung the triangular warning signs in five languages.
We found another trip-wire in the garden.
And we crossed tree branches, a local sign, on the path.
Then we continued, we had many houses to check.
On return to our base we made our reports and fell into bed.
Clearing the mines was a job for the Serbs,
But their civil authorities would not return for some time.
Three days later, the first refugees returned.
With carts pulled by starving horses,
On foot, carrying, or pushing all their possetions in wheel barrows, they all came.
The old and the sick, walked too,
The seventy odd miles through the snow from Banja-Luka.
And when they got back the first thing that they did was to loot from neighbours not yet returned,
Or dead.
You must always remember.
Barbarism is only three days,
Or nine meals,
From us all!
I saw the old man come past with his mule and his cart.
I made him nervous,
He’d been looting,
An oven from a farm in the next village,
Some roof tiles and firewood.
No concern of ours!
He turned left in the centre of the Serbian village
And headed up the hill towards the Moslem ghost-town.
Half an hour later we were rocked by a mighty explosion.
The bungalow was gone.
We found a shoe, with a shattered foot in it.
The mule, lay dead in the traces,
And on the cart, neatly coiled,
Our mine tape and the warning signs!
