Photography by Roger Richards

Text by Roger Richards

 

The shells began raining down as the sun was rising. I was in the middle of one of those early morning dreams between sleep and wakefulness when the first round came in, a sound like a train locking up its brakes while going at top speed.

I was on the floor when it exploded in a shower of concrete and glass only a few, yards away. My companions in the room at Bosnia TV-Radio, a Spanish television crew, had not heard the round coming in, but were instantly awake after the explosion.

“More incoming,” I yelled at them, for already there was the sound of other shells on the way with their payload of death and destruction. We grabbed our flak jackets and raced for the nearest “safe area,” so called because only a direct hit from a high explosive shell would prove deadly. Two more shells hit the same floor of the building as we dashed for safety. The Serbian artillery gunners really meant business this morning.