Vares part V

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... Suddenly Col Ulf Henricssons Jeep comes out of nowhere. The short statued but oh- so powerful Colonel steps out starts yelling out orders to us Swedes aswell as to the HVO solders. The HVO soldiers looks at him in surprise. Suddenly Henricsson is dominating the situation- as only a man of his calibre can. He disarms the situation completly. We just ride away. Left behind is the croatian soldiers with mouths gaping!

We return to the camp to report about what the refugees of Stupni Do had told us.
Descision; Now we will go in to the village! Two mechanised platoons from the eight and the tenh companies are chosen out for the mission. For the first time in a very long time Swedish troops gets the order to be prepared to take grounds in an offensive. The platoons is divided between taking the northern and the southern inroads to Stupni do and takes off.

At the same time we take Col Henricsson to the Bobovac brigade's HQ. There the Croatians are told that they get one last chance to let us in volontarily, otherwise we would go there anyway!

I'm not shure about what exact word were exchanged, but their commander comes out, taking his Waz Niva and driving ahead of the convoy to see that we were let through to the village.

Quite undramaticly wee meet up with the other mech platoon that had taken the northern inroad. There there are also a armored Jeep with a suicidal TV-tem in it. Col Henricsson descides to use the moment given and invites the TV- team to come along and document what has happened. Henricsson walks together with the TV- team, in front of our SISU when we were slowly rollong in to the village of Stupni Do.

Not a house in the village had been spared. Everything had been blown up, burned and destroyed! At first sight the village seems to be copletly empty of humanbeings, but just after a couple of minutes we find the charred remains of a human. After a closer look, we finds around 20 more dead bodies, among them a child about 8-10 that apparently had been kicked to death. Three womans that had tried to hide in a cellar had had their throats cut- and had been shot in their heads. They were still holding each others hands. Later when pioneers were lifting out the bodies, they discovered that one of the womans had been booby trapped with a handgranade in her armpit. Luckily it just fell down on the floor without detonating...

... To be continued