From Photojournalist to Peacekeeper – My Bosnian Adventure

I’d been a stringer (part-time photojournalist or writer for the news media) since 1982. I started with United Press International, then switched to Agence France – Presse (AFP) when they made inroads into the US. Getty Images bought the AFP archives, and some of my work for AFP can be found here:

https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?editorialproducts=all&family=editorial&phrase=john%20ruthroff

The Getty Images archives are incomplete, but I’m getting ahead of myself. This page focuses on The Balkan Wars of the 1990’s and my involvement.

NOTE: The author took at the images below, unless otherwise credited.

NOVEMBER 1995 THE PARTIES AGREE TO TALK.

Yugoslavia broke apart shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Tito, who played Yugoslavia off against the west, couldn’t contain the nationalism that surged into the heads of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. The tensions between the groups, the Croats mostly Catholic, the Bosnians mostly Muslim and the Serbs mostly Russian Orthodox, quickly became ugly. Thus the term “ethnic cleansing” was born. Fighting began, and atrocities, fueled by past rivalries, became the norm, with one of the worst events being the killing of over 8,000 Bosnians by the Serbs in the Massacre at Srebrenica in July 1995. This event seemed to make the warring parties realize that nobody was going to win on the battlefield, thus peace efforts were began.

When the peace talks started at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, AFP sent a few of us to cover the event. It doesn’t stretch the imagination to believe that the leaders of the countries despised each other, so it was pretty rough sailing. Eventually, they all got serious.

There was a crisis point in the peace talks when it appeared that no deal was possible. Due to what I considered to be the heroic efforts of the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian affairs Richard Holbrook (not the guy in this picture), it eventually all came together. Holbrook later wrote a book “To End A War”, which is a revealing narrative about how it all happened.

Sometimes a newspaper/magazine will publish the name of the photographer, and sometimes not. The above image is from the Washington Post. The image was easy to get. Having no chance to get a shot from ground level I simply stood on a chair.

US Secretary of State Warren Cristopher and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. Trudjman left the talks for a bit, but rejoined them. The photo has a big “Getty Images” stamp on it to prevent those who don’t pay a fee from using it.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, President of the so-called “Federal Yugoslavia”, talks to the press.
Milosevic died while on trial for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, forcible transfer (ethnic cleansing) and the like.

The Peace Deal is signed. But given the animosity between the parties, will it hold?

ONE YEAR LATER

All parties agreed that the only way to make this stick was for military forces from other countries to enter the region and enforce the peace. This fell on the US, Poland, Norway, Russia and others. So, one year later I find myself on an Air Force C5 Galaxy flying from Altus AFB Oklahoma to Frankfort Germany, then on a C130 from Frankfort to Taszar Hungary, which was the staging base for US forces.

Each country had its own ROE (Rules of Engagement) instructions.

ROE card for Hungary. While there was never any fighting as such in Hungary, it was declared an “Imminent Danger” zone, thus the reason for issuing the ROE card. The ROE cards for Bosnia and Croatia read the same as this one.

Next day we moved from Taszar, Hungary to Slavonski Brod Croatia. A few days later we went over the Sava River (which serves as the border between Croatia and Bosnia in that region) and on to Camp McGovern, just outside of Brcko Bosnia.

This sign was posted on the Bosnian side of the Sava River. Task Force Eagle was the name for US Army units in Bosnia. The castle is the symbol of the Engineer Branch of the U.S. Army. The symbol at the lower right represents the 1st Armored Division, and at lower left (if I recall correctly) the Engineer Brigade Headquarters.

Just over the Sava River. The mud on the bottom of my boots was only the beginning. I’m sitting on a pillow I came up with somewhere as the military version of the HMMWV (Highly Maneuverable Multi purpose Wheeled Vehicle) was short on creature comforts. The next day we traded our stock HMMWV’s such as the one above for an armored variant. Photo by SP4 Carol Brett.

Our new home, Camp McGovern. I have my foot on a helium tank we would use to inflate our weather balloons. On the right is a dish antenna we used to track our flights. In the near background is a M109 105mm Self-Propelled Howitzer. Beyond the berm are the tents we stayed in. The place was a mud pit. Eventually the engineers leveled the mud and dumped a two foot thick layer of rocks that took care of the mud. Photo by SGT Michael O’Dell.

What we did. From top to bottom, a balloon, a parachute, and a little white box that is a radiosonde. The radiosonde would send back altitude, temperature, pressure, relative humidity and the tracking antenna would derive wind speed and direction. This information would be sent to the FDC (Fire Direction Center) which would correct the aiming of artillery in event they needed to provide fire support. Happily, it never was needed.

The former Yugoslavia was one of the major producers of anti-personnel and anti-take minds for the Warsaw Pact (the USSR and their allies). When Yugoslavia fell apart there were literally hundreds of thousands of mines that were scooped up by the warring parties. The normal method of doing this is for the parties laying down the mines to make a map so the mines could later be removed. But there wasn’t much “normal” about the Balkan Wars. This map was produced by the Mine Action Center in Tuzla.

The warning and legend of the minefield map. After looking at it for the first time I didn’t get that warm fuzzy feeling I like to have.
The BIH/HVO stands for the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and HVO for Croatian Defense Council, which is what the Croats named their army. The VRS is the Army of the Republic of Serbia (HVO and VRS are in the Serbo-Croatian language). Towards the end of the war the Croats and Bosnians became allies of a sort, thus the were grouped together as one entity on the minefield map.

Close up of the minefields near Camp McGovern (approximate location circled in blue). “KANSAS” refers to the nickname the Army would give various roads. Mines were my greatest fear.

ETHNIC CLEANSING 101. Two methods of doing this were (A), burning the roof off the house so it would be unlivable. The brick structure on the left (many of the roofs were of some thatch material, which was easy to burn), or (B), simply shooting at people until they left, or just killing them. The little black dots on the white house are where bullets either ricocheted off or penetrated the wall.

Many of those that were suspected of being involved in war crimes were still on the loose. We were issued instructions on what to do if we came across any. ICTY stands for “International Tribunal for The former Yugoslavia”.

The commander briefing us on the mission of the day. From R to L, me, CW2 Scott, CPT Gregory, and SSG Peyton. I always carried my M16 barrel down in order to keep the rain/snow out of it. Others did not. Photo by SP4 Juan Hernandez.

Not an uncommon site. Eventually an M1Abrams tank had to tow this one out. Each and every vehicle had to have IFOR painted on it After being there for a while, IFOR (Implementation FORce) was changed to SFOR (Stabilization FORce). THe vehicle in the background also has IFOR on it, you just can’t see it because of the mud.

MEDIVAC Blackhawk choppers sitting on ready pads. Notice the Red Cross on the white rectangle. They saw frequent use, most often for evacuating civilians who had stepped on land minds.

History repeating itself. There were “up armored” vehicles, meaning that the armor was put on after they were manufactured. They were incredibly heavy, which is why they sank in the mud so easily. The windows were 4″ thick bullet resistant glass.

Since everything is camouflaged, it’s difficult to see what exactly we are “wearing”. From top to bottom, Kevlar helmet, wet-weather jacket, pouch containing first aid equipment, Atropine auto injector, Kevlar flak vest, two pouches which each held four 30 round clips of M16 ammunition, water canteen and so on. Photo by SP4 Carol Brett.

The vehicle in the center is an M992 Field Artillery Ammunition Support Vehicle (FAASV) which carried ammunition for the M109 Howitzers (background just left of center). Crossing thru the photo can be seen wooden pallets turned upside-down which gave us an ersatz sidewalk to help stay out of the mud. In the background is one of the guard towers. Beyond that is the berm that any attacking force would have to climb over. They would not have had a good experience.

After I retired, I kept my Class A uniform, I suppose for nostalgia. When the fourth of July or Veterans Day would roll around I would occasionally be asked to grant a short interview. I did a few times. So I’s break out the uniform, afraid that I wouldn’t fit into it, but I did and still do, which delights me to no end 🙂

Did we do any good?

While it may sound self-serving, I think we did. There is a saying that the absence of war is not peace, but the absence of war is certainly a start…certainly better than war. Eventually passions cooled to some extent, and the Balkans have be relatively peaceful for the past 22 years or so. Of course that fact that the European Union poured about $3,000,000 in to rebuild certainly helped, and that many countries came together to keep the peace was, I think, also key. But as of 2025 new mass grave sites are still being discovered. The ITCY was disbanded in 2017, so no accountability will be forthcoming.

“How soon time will cover all things, and how many it has covered already“.
– Marcus Aurileus

FINIS.