The hospital was built of red brick, its walls pockmarked by shrapnel and bullets and the windows blocked with sandbags and wood. The building had undergone a barrage of constant shelling and artillery fire so many of the patients were housed in the basement. It was dusk by the time we arrived and I had to use my torch to negotiate my way down the stairs. I became aware of a terrible smell as soon as I entered; sweet and cloying and overwhelming, the stench of blood and putrefaction. I had never smelled anything like it before but somehow I knew that it was the smell of death.
The floor was slippery with blood, which squelched beneath my feet as I picked my way through the dim light of the basement. The building had once been a public health centre in a thriving city but was now a makeshift hospital in a devastated war zone.
Around me there was a frenzy of movement and noise as doctors and nurses, their eyes red and their faces slack with exhaustion struggled to deal with the constant flow of sick and wounded against seemingly impossible odds. Patients lined the corridor on stretchers, trolleys and tables, anything that could be pressed into service as they awaited emergency surgery. Drip lines dangled from hat stands and some of the wounded moaned or screamed in pain while others lay still with frightening resignation. It looked like a production line in hell.
A woman approached me from Independent Television News and told me that she would like to film me with the evacuees. 'It's a wonderful story' she enthused. 'A UN convoy is trapped in a war zone and you come in to rescue the children.'
Following her through an archway into a makeshift ward, I was stunned by a sight that would forever haunt me. This was the children's ward, crowded with the innocent victims of a conflict not of their making and beyond their comprehension. They had been wounded by shrapnel or sniper fire, mines or rocket propelled grenades, either in their own homes or whilst running a desperate errand for their families. The oldest was sixteen, the youngest a toddler.
Lying in one of the many beds was a ten year old girl called Selma and beside her was Mirza, her younger brother. A shell had exploded close to their house, injuring both children. Unable to walk, Mirza crawled towards his sister who was trapped beneath the rubble. By the time they reached the hospital, it was clear both would need amputations-but in the midst of war there was only enough anaesthetic for one operation and Selma insisted that her brother be treated first. Her arm was eventually amputated at the shoulder with only a teddy bear to bite on for relief from the pain.
Selma's face was swollen and distorted, pockmarked with shrapnel wounds and burns. Her sheets were bloody and beside her on the pillow was a teddy bear with a large yellow nose. With the remains of her arm in an oversized bandage she looked like a small broken doll. Her mother grasped my hand.
'Selma was so beautiful', she cried, tears streaming down her face 'please help her!'
I told her that the doctors could make her daughter beautiful again but in my heart I wasn't sure whether she would even survive.
A sixteen year old girl called Maja Kazazic was lying in a bed across the room. A mortar had exploded outside her apartment, killing her friends and leaving her seriously wounded. Maja's father worked at the hospital and he and his colleagues donated blood two or three times a day but due to the heat and lack of antibiotics, she had severe infections in her legs and one of them had to be amputated. The nurse explained that unless she received treatment soon, she would certainly die. Her father had recently been wounded himself and was lying on a bed close by, his chest covered in bandages. When he heard about the evacuation, he spoke softly to his daughter, explaining that she would be leaving with me.
Word of my arrival had spread and as I left the hospital, a UN officer drew me to one side.
'We are trying to arrange the release of our convoy in return for the evacuation of the children' he declared.
Still shaken by the scenes at the hospital I rounded on him.
'When I first requested UN assistance for this mission no one wanted to know, yet now that you're in trouble you're prepared to use the children!'
'Don't you understand?' He said angrily, 'We are all in danger here. There has been a great deal of shelling and there is no food or water. The locals are desperate and could turn on us at any time. Your evacuation may be the only chance we have of getting out.'
He then tried another tack. 'Look, we have doctors and an ambulance. You cannot carry them all in your own vehicle. We also have helicopters on standby in Medjugorje to fly the patients to the field hospital in Zagreb.'
I thought for a moment. It was too dark to leave with the children now so his negotiations wouldn't make any difference to our departure. If we had to leave without protection, it would certainly be better to wait until daylight.
'Ok'. I said finally, 'Go ahead and negotiate but we have to leave tomorrow morning.'
He and his colleagues entered the hospital, hoping to convince the doctors that my evacuation was part of the UN mission but after a while they returned looking despondent. The doctors had insisted that only the Bosnian army could authorize the release of the convoy and tempers were getting frayed. I went to sit in my ambulance and was joined by Brent Sadler from CNN. He and his camera woman had entered Mostar by trekking through the mountains, carrying their equipment on the back of a donkey. Brent stretched out on the floor, oblivious to the thuds and bangs around us, not even waking when a shell exploded in the car park but I was unable to sleep.
Using my torch to light the stairway, I returned to the basement where the doctors sat talking and smoking their precious cigarettes. I was introduced to Hafid, the neurosurgeon, a slightly built man in his forties. Serious and sad with intense dark eyes, he told me that he and his colleagues averaged twenty operations per day in the appalling conditions.
There was no normal oxygen supply; instead they relied upon the industrial variety and amputations were performed where in other circumstances the limbs might have been saved. Many of the patients had come from West Mostar, evicted from their homes by the Croats and forced across the front line at gunpoint, putting extra strain on the scant resources. The city lay in ruins and of the seventeen mosques only two remained standing. There was no running water or electricity and people were forced to use their furniture for fuel to cook and boil water. The front lines were no more than ten meters apart in some places so the enemy was literally half a street away.
A Spanish Captain from the UN Protection Force joined me as I stood in the hospital entrance and we talked against the background hum of the oil fired generator, the building's only source of power.
'Have the doctors agreed to release our convoy?' he asked.
I shook my head. 'No, I'm afraid not, and the ceasefire will end at one pm. I can wait until noon to give you time to talk to the Bosnian commanders but then I have to leave.'
The Captain bid me goodnight, looking worried as he left me standing alone in the doorway.
As dawn broke, a BBC reporter announced on the Today Program, There has been an amazing turn of events, a British woman has entered Mostar to rescue wounded children and the UN are hoping to come out on her tail."
Later that morning a UN ambulance arrived at the hospital but there was still no sign of movement from the convoy so we began to bring the children up the stairs. As I lifted Selma into the vehicle, I remembered a quotation I had read somewhere: 'No man is taller than he who stoops to help a child.' At that moment I felt like a giant.
Suddenly a car screeched into the compound. There was no glass in the windows, the bodywork was scarred with bullet holes and a crude red cross was daubed on the side. I watched in horror as two little boys aged three and five were carried from the back of the vehicle. Their small bodies were covered in blood and they writhed and screamed in agony. Behind them their mother was led from the car in a state of shock. She was carrying a newborn baby girl with shrapnel wounds to her legs and face.
The scene in the hospital was bad enough, but the sight of those small bodies with their appalling injuries shocked me to the core. As soon as the way was clear I returned to the ward to ask what I could do to help. The doctor told me that he would need two or three days to stabilize them-if they survived. 'Will you come back to get them?' He asked, 'It might be their only chance. The oldest child has serious wounds to his stomach and we don't have the antibiotics to combat infection. The younger boy has shrapnel in his eyes and unless he has an operation very soon he will lose his sight."
I promised him that I would return within a few days.
The father of the injured children was leaning against the vehicle outside with his head in his hands, distraught with grief. To have a child in pain is a nightmare for any parent but he had three, each of them severely wounded. Tears ran freely down my face as I walked towards my ambulance. This war was an obscenity.
We tried to make the children as comfortable as possible in the back of my ambulance while Brent Sadler and his camerawoman squeezed into the passenger seat beside me.
I pulled out of the hospital compound and waited for the second ambulance to join us with the other children on board. Five, ten minutes ticked by and still there was no sign of them. Brent offered to find out what was happening and we waited with the sun beating down on the roof.
When Brent finally reappeared, he was accompanied by the UN Civil Affairs Officer who told me that we would have to leave without the second ambulance. He stated that although it had been promised to me, it might now be needed by the UN soldiers. We would either have to carry all the children inside my own vehicle, or return them to the hospital. I couldn't decide which was worse; to endanger the children by crowding them together in one vehicle or to tell them that they couldn't leave after all. Either option was completely unthinkable. The officer alarmed me still further when he announced that the UN helicopters would no longer be waiting to transport my patients: they had been cancelled the previous night.
My head was spinning. The ambulances were parked in the blazing heat filled with wounded children and the ceasefire would end in forty minutes. I couldn't believe that United Nations personnel were prepared to endanger lives in this way. The local people were equally desperate, knowing that as soon as the convoy left the area, they would be bombarded with rockets and shells. They wanted UN protection and this was the only way they believed they could get it. My own mission was a separate issue for I had entered the city alone and it was clear that the army would not release the convoy in return for the lives of six children. There were fifty-five thousand people trapped in east Mostar, all of whom would be at risk from the moment the UN departed.
Finally I lost my patience and demanded to speak to Cedric Thornberry, UN Deputy Chief of Mission who was trapped with the convoy. The press prepared to follow me when suddenly the officer backed down.
'Its ok,' he said 'The UN ambulance will be with you in a moment.' he said, 'There has been a misunderstanding'.
I received no explanation for the sudden change of plan but at that moment I didn't care. I was just grateful to be leaving.
As I drove through the ruined streets followed by the UN ambulance, a man appeared, hobbling along on crutches in front of my vehicle. It was Selma's father, who wanted to make sure that no one else would impede our departure.
No shots were fired as we crossed the disused airfield that was no-man's land and as we drove through the gates of the UN compound I felt a profound sense of relief.
The children were transferred to a MASH hospital in Zagreb and eventually to the United States.