In the UNPROFOR mission, back in 1995, there were lots of tales of war gags in Sarajevo that were too funny to be true. However, people swore they were true stories and I registered several of them.
One of such stories occurred among the recently created Muslim Army (ABiH) ranks, at the start of the confrontations, in 1992. Allegedly, some arms’ dealers managed to escape the Serbian control and bring into the besieged city a couple of 82 mm mortars, with a few boxes of its grenades. The problem was, the Muslims did not have soldiers trained in using mortars and the amount of mortar grenades available did not permit much practice or instruction. Therefore, the ABiH Command randomly selected a small group of fresh combatants and assigned them the noble task of becoming artillery “gunners”. Mind you, artillery is one of the most demanding Army Branches, requiring sharp calculations, thorough awareness of meteorology and knowledge of the equipment.
The small group of gunners was assembled and someone explained the theory of operating a mortar. The instruction had to remain at the theoretical level, because they couldn’t afford loosing ammunition with training – even the final demonstration would have to be “on the job training”, aiming at the Serbian neighborhoods of Sarajevo. On the following days, those gunners fired several rounds of mortar towards the generic direction of the Serbian lines; and that was it – they were “qualified”.
Shortly after their “qualification” the ABiH Command decided to hit a certain Serbian position, in order to retaliate a Serbian mortar attack. One of the gunners received a set of binoculars, a scale, a note pad and a walkie & talkie radio, and moved out to an elevated position where he could see the Serbian position and talk with his mortar comrades. Two other gunners were assigned a mortar tube, some 82 mm grenades, and someone point out the direction and distance where their target was.
The gunners fired the first round and the grenade impacted more or less at the correct distance but frankly left of the target. The man at the observation post used his radio and issued instructions with the necessary corrections to the gunners:
– “The distance was correct; but you need to correct the azimuth 100 meters to the right.”
The radio man waited for the second round to be fired, in order to readjust the firing parameters; but nothing happened. Sometime after, the radio man contacted his comrades again, asking why haven’t they fire again; and the answer he got was:
– “Stand-by! These things are very heavy. We’ve already re-positioned the mortar tube 100 meters to the right; but now we also have to carry the grenades.”
As a result of their inexperience, those gunners didn’t realize that all they had to do was to turn the mortar tube a certain number of degrees to the right and fire again; not to move the weapon the 100 meters.
“That’s Silly”; one may say, but that was the way the ABiH learned their War Lessons. Months later, those gunners were striking targets as accurately as any other mortar specialist.
OPen samento 