Remembering June '92: In the morgue at Koševo we counted 157 corpses of fallen Army members

It was June 8, 1992, the day the operation to break the siege of Sarajevo began. Days before that, behind the Institute of Hygiene in the center of Sarajevo, I watched as soldiers of a new brigade, which they called the East Bosnian Brigade, lined up. There were about 100 to 150 young men, neatly dressed in military uniforms. It was supposedly a secret operation, but they immediately told me that these young men were preparing to break the siege of Sarajevo from the northern side via Poljine. 

Some other units would join them. It was no secret. Unfortunately, everything was public. Many people I met knew more than I did. Although I was a journalist, some individuals, ordinary people, told me details of that operation called "Storm 92". 

Early in the morning, Operation "Storm 92" began. In the city, there was talk of massive casualties among the fighters and the complete failure of the operation. After only an hour or two of explosions and gunfire, the city fell into a terrible silence. There was talk of numerous fallen Army fighters, and soon it fell silent. 

Seven to ten days after that operation, my colleague, journalist M., called me. We met, and he suggested: "Come with me and don't say anything." It was a sunny day. We climbed some narrow alleys, then main streets towards Koševo, and finally arrived at the Clinical Center. My colleague M. told me to be quiet and let him do the talking. I obediently followed him, not knowing what it was about. We came to the entrance of the morgue. At the door stood a large man, dressed in a green hospital uniform.

"You can't come in here," he said sharply. He was probably the coroner. My colleague stammered: "We heard that the bodies of our fallen soldiers were exchanged. We came to identify our relative." 

The coroner immediately changed his expression and let us in. We entered a long room tiled with white rectangular tiles. A heavy stench of decomposing human bodies hit us. And then a terrible sight appeared before us. On both sides, on stretchers raised about twenty centimeters off the ground, lay human corpses. In that first room, there were about sixty dead. Thirty on each side. I remember my friend turned away from those bodies and looked me intently in the eyes. "Aaaaaaa," he let out a bitter sigh.

His face flushed unhealthily and almost turned blue. That coroner in green appeared, and we began to examine the faces of the killed. They were younger people, between twenty-five and thirty-five years old. I noticed that the bodies were almost intact, but the faces of these people were sunken, and the area around their noses had collapsed into their skulls. Later, I would learn from the coroner that someone from the Chetniks
had destroyed their faces with a blunt object, perhaps a hammer. Probably to make them harder to identify. 

We passed through that room and in the next found approximately another 60 people. In the third room, we saw about thirty more people on the same stretchers. And behind a nylon curtain, we heard the sound of running water. Someone was probably washing the bodies. 

My colleague looked at me and asked: "What is this?" He looked lost at the ground and paused for a long time. He suddenly turned to me and asked again: "What is this?" 

"How many dead are here?" he asked me. "I don't know, I didn't count," I said, also lost. All the time, I heard a buzzing in my ears and felt as if I were outside this world. Suddenly, my friend's voice jolted me: "Let's go back to the beginning and count these people." 

I obediently followed him again, completely lost. At the door, two elderly people suddenly appeared. A tiny old man like a spider, a beret on his head, his face gaunt, emaciated. He was dressed in an old, worn greenish jacket and some dark, crumpled trousers. And next to him, a tiny old woman dressed in dimije and a matching blouse made of the same fabric. 

She had her hands crossed over her stomach and occasionally wiped her eyes with a small cloth. They walk ahead of us, while M. says, you count those on the right, and I'll count these on the left. We count and say the numbers. My friend adds them up, and so we go through three rooms of the Sarajevo morgue. 

It comes to 155 dead. M. is desperate. He tells me: "Let's count again." I stopped in front of him, took him by the arm and said: "Let's get out of here, friend, please." At the exit, we met that large man in the green uniform again. "Did you find your man?" he asked us. M. said no and quietly asked the coroner: "How many dead are here?" "One hundred fifty-seven," he said just as quietly and quickly turned away from us. 

We went down into the city without a word. It seemed as if we had fallen silent forever. My friend and colleague M. looked at me, raised his hand, and went towards his apartment on Marijin Dvor. 

He never spoke to me about this event again. When we fall silent, we probably think of that wonderful, brave, sacrificed youth.     

Today, June 8, 2016, a remembrance was published in the daily newspaper. With twenty-five names. All killed at Vidikovac.