SOME 900 veterans will gather at the National Memorial Arboretum tomorrow to mark the end of the war in Bosnia.
Thirty years may have passed since the conclusion of the conflict in former Yugoslavia — but for Army cook Steve Gallagher, the war’s never ended.
By his own admission, Steve, who turned to drink and is still battling the effects of PTSD from his time in Bosnia, never had the delicate skills required to work in an officers’ mess.
But if you needed a chef to cook for hundreds of troops in the heat of battle, he was your man.
And in the spring of 1995, father-of-two Steve found himself in the infamous Siege of Gorazde, where British troops protected the Muslim population from the Bosnian Serb Army that had encircled the town.
Gorazde was one of three Muslim enclaves deep behind Serb lines.
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During the three-year bombardment, around 500 civilians were killed.
Steve was with the 1st Battalion, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and was among the 25,000 British troops sent to Bosnia as United Nations Peacekeepers from 1992 to 1995.
Steve, 52, recalls: “We’d been less than an hour at Sarajevo airport and you could hear shooting in our direcation. It was a rush.
“Then we headed towards Gorazde. By car, it was three or four hours away but it took us about 36 hours because at every opportunity, the Serbs would block us.
“It was a horrible journey, past burnt-out buses. They stopped us at a sawmill where they reckon a lot of bodies were cut up and chucked in the river.”
Eventually, the British troops arrived in Gorazde, where Steve says it was “snowing and muddy”.
‘500 shells a day’
“Our camp was right next to a sports stadium,” he says. “We just had a Portakabin to live in.
“Electricity was quite hard to get working all the time because of the lack of fuel and supplies coming in.”
Despite this, Steve managed to feed 150 British and Norwegian troops using a battlefield No 1 stove, which he says was “like cooking with a flamethrower”.
He says: “The Serbs were dug in on the mountains in what looked like First World War trenches, looking down on us and about 50,000 Muslims in an enclave.
“They could see us and we could see them. We were constantly being shot at by snipers.
“Then, for two weeks, a proper First World War battle was going on — they would use our camp as a target to hit.”
As the siege dragged on into summer, food became scarce.
Steve, of Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, says: “You couldn’t get convoys in or out, so we went down to two meals a day and had people with suspected scurvy. A bag of sugar was worth 50 Deutschmarks at the time, about £20.”
Steve volunteered to work in a former bank building in the town, with a team of Norwegian medics.
Part of his job was to protect the food but by now, he had started regularly drinking a local hooch to help calm his nerves.
He recalls: “It was real bad kit, probably made of methylated spirits, if I’m honest.
“At first I used to drink it with water and a little bit of orange juice.
“By the end I was just drinking it neat, about one litre at night, just to go to sleep. No one knew about it, because you get in trouble if you’ve got a drink problem.”
I still have visions of them . . . I see where the blood was, where they got blown up. It really messes you up
More than 30 soldiers from the Royal Welch Fusiliers were among troops taken hostage and chained to a bridge for the world to see on TV.
Steve says: “We were listening to it on the radio with the medics. Our boys were speaking Welsh, and they were saying their outpost was being attacked, so we knew we were going to be getting attacked soon in town.”
When the attack on Gorazde finally happened, the Serbs were firing 500 shells a day down on the town.
Part of the “hearts-and-minds” peacekeeping mission was to befriend the local people and every morning, a group of children who had lived with war most of their lives would arrive at the bank to see the soldiers.
Steve is still haunted by the day he organised a birthday party for a group of the children.
He says: “The war siren went off again, artillery was coming in and all the kids ran from our compound to be with their mums and dads.
“But there was one boy, who was about 12, who lived two miles away. He wouldn’t go, so I shooed him off.
“He got less than 50 metres away from us, and artillery blew him up.
“I got hit by the blast wave. But thankfully, we had the SAS and the Norwegian medics there. They worked on him for a couple of hours and saved his life.
“A couple of days later, two of the girls were killed. I still have visions of them . . . I see where the blood was, where they got blown up. It really messes you up.”
Military chiefs presented the then-Prime Minister John Major with Operation Screwdriver, a daring mission to extract 350 British troops from Gorazde under heavy Serbian fire and fly them to Italy.
‘No regrets’
Major was not impressed with the risky plan but by August, Steve and the Welch Fusiliers had left Gorazde.
He quit the Army Catering Corps the following year and served with the TA until 2004.
Steve, who is married to Jane, 55, and has two sons, George, 26 and Henry, 23, suffered from nightmares and chronic pain in his shoulder, and used alcohol to self-medicate.
He found work as a supermarket security guard but became so aggressive, he had to quit.
It’s been 30 years and I’m still battling but I have no regrets about joining the Army. I would still do what I did
In 2017, three days before Christmas, Steve stood on the cliffs at Beachy Head, planning to end his life.
Luckily, he was talked out of it by a military charity he called in desperation and realised he needed help.
Steve was finally diagnosed with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as well as chronic pain fatigue and is unable to work.
He has been alcohol-free for seven years and thanks to the Royal British Legion, hopes to compete at the 2027 Invictus Games with the Team GB wheelchair basketball team.
He also hopes to one day return to Bosnia with other chefs who served and have suffered from PTSD.
Steve says: “I didn’t realise that everyone who came back from Gorazde was struggling.
“It’s been 30 years and I’m still battling but I have no regrets about joining the Army. I would still do what I did.”