Michael Nicholson - Natasha’s Story: How a nine-year old orphan was rescued from war in Sarajevo

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Much of Natashas story is personal, therefore a little of it must be left untold. Nothing of substance is lost, that I promise.

Much of Bosnias story is also my own account as a reporter and witness. But some of it is not and I am indebted to the corps of honourable British correspondents and colleagues who for month after month braved the rigours and horrors of the Bosnian war to report it. Their dispatches helped me fill in the gaps and I salute them... Robert Fox, Patrick Bishop, Marcus Tanner, Martin Bell, Tony Birtley, Ed Vulliamy, Maggie OKane, David Williams, John Sweeney and others.

My special gratitude to Michael Montgomery, who first introduced me to Ljubica Ivezic orphanage. My thanks to Dr Mark Wheeler of London Universitys School of Slavonic and East European Studies, for his help with the historical background, to Felicity Rubinstein for first suggesting the book and to ITN for giving me the space to write it.

Finally and as ever, my thanks to Diana who, after twenty-five years, must have thought the worst was over!

This book is dedicated to Natasha

and all those she left behind

CHAPTER ONE

This is not one tale but two: of Bosnia and of one of her children. To read the one you must read the other; their stories are interwoven, their fates entwined. Natashas begins in besieged Sarajevo and ends in England. Bosnias starts with Independence and finishes in bloody oblivion. Here, then, are two stories of a land that died and of a child that was reborn.

I first saw Bosnia from across the River Drina in Serbia. It was the summer of 91, the Serbs had begun their war on Croatia and the killing fields were already staining red the old map of Yugoslavia. I was not new to the destruction business but the ferocity of the Serb battalions as they swept across the country startled me as it shocked every correspondent who came to cover that war. Such devastation, such brutality, so many dying.