Description
John Burns Business Card and Telex:
On December 23, 1992, CNN sent a convoy from Belgrade into Bosnia to do a story on the first Christmas in Sarajevo after the outbreak of war inside the besieged capital. With a full set of gear, supplies, and our crew, we needed several cars in the convoy. We were also joined by John Burns from the New York Times.
John covered the Bosnian conflict from the beginning to the end. In 1993 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting “for his courageous and thorough coverage of the destruction of Sarajevo and barbarous killings in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
As the convoy entered Bosnia and approached a mountainous pass where some trees were burning on a ridge line, it looked like military activity might be taking place close to our position. My driver took his eyes off the roadway to look for military activity. By the time he looked back, our Landrover was veering off the road. Trying to get back on the pavement, he over corrected, and the car started to skid off the icy asphalt. The next thing I knew, our armored vehicle was tumbling down the side of an embankment, landing upside-down in a shallow river.
At first we could not get out of the damaged vehicle. The laminated glass was too thick to break and the steel-plated doors were all jammed and wouldn’t open. Large containers of fuel were leaking inside the car, but it was diesel (which doesn’t ignite as easily as gasoline), so we weren’t as worried.
The rest of our team, in the cars following us, stopped and began to pry the doors open. Once we were able to free ourselves from the wreck, John Burns took out his satellite Telex and sent messages to his office and CNN to get help. He requested medical aid and assistance in clearing up the accident.
Here is the text:
23 DEC 1992 1001 HRS
John Burns, New York Times
FOLOING IS A REPEAT 0F A MESSAGE I HAVE SENTBY A SATELLITE TELEX TO OUR LONDON 0FFICE, WHICH YOU WILL HAVE PROBABLY HAVE RECEIVED BY NOW. ALL THE ARRANGEMENTS WE NEED ARE AS OUTLINED BELOW. WE WILL HOPE THAT WE CAN GET A TRUCKAND A CAR TO THE ZVORNIK BRIDGE SOUTH OF LOZNICA AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, BUT IN ANY EVENT, WE WILL BE WAITINGFOR YU FROM 1 P.M.. JACKIE SYMANSCKI ASKS THAT YOU TELEPHONE CNN ATLANTA AND ADVISE THEM WHAT HAS OCCURRED, EMPHASIZING THAT WE DO NOT BELIEVETHAT DAVE RUSTIS TOO BADL HURT, ALTHOUGH HE AND BOBAN, THE INTERPRETER, HAVE CERTAINLY HAD A VERY LUCKY ESCAPE. THE VEHICLE FELL 40 FEET DOWN A SHEER RIVER BANK OFF AN ICY ROAD IN THE MOUNTAINOUS COUNTRY WEST OF ZVORNIK. WE ARE TOLD THAT SEVERAL OTHER VEHICLES HAVE GONE OFF THE ROAD AT THIS POINT, SOME WITH RESULTS MUCH WORSE, SO WE ALL FEELTHAT DAE AND BOBAN HAVE BEEN LUCKY. I SAW THEACCIDENT MYSELF FROM DIRECTLT BEHIND AND WAS NOT AT ALL CONFIDENT AFTER WATCHING THE CAR ROLL TWICE AND LANDING ON ITS ROOF IN THE RIVERBED THAT WE WOULD FIND EITHER OF THE OCCUPANTS ALIVE. NO OTHER VEHICLE WAS INVOLVED. ARRANGEMENTS ARE IN HAND TO GET DAVE TO A HOSPITAL IN ZVORNIK, AND AT THIS TIME I CAN HEAR HIM LAUGHING BELOW ME BY THERIVERBED, TALKING TO JACKIE, SO I THINK EVERYTING’S GOING TO BE FINE. I AM SENTING YOU THIS MESSAGE BY SATELLITE-TELEX FROM MY CAR ROOF, SO LET US HOPE THAT THE WONDERS OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY ARE GOING TO WORK FOR US HERE IN DEEPEST BOSNIA. AS I WRITE, AN AMBULANCE HAS JUST ARRIVED, 40 MINUTES AFTER THE ACCIDENT, SO MATTERS NOWSEEM WELL IN HAND.
URGENT FOR TONY BEARD
23 DEC 92 1025 HRS
TONY, I AM SENDING THIS MESSAGE FROM BESIDE A RIVER BED IN BOSNIA, WHERE THE CNN CREW HAVE JUST HAD A FAIRLY SERIOUS ROAD ACCIDENT. COULD YOU CALL THE CNN PEOPLE AT ROOM 719, HTATT REGENCY HOTEL, BELGRADE, TELEPHONE (3811) 222-1234, AND ASK THEM TO ARRANGE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE TO HAVE A TRUCK AND A CAR SENT TO THE ROADBLOCK ACROSS THE DRINA RIVER AT ZOVORNIK, SOTHAT WE CAN LEAD THEM TO THE CRASH SITE TO RETRIEVE ALL OF CNN’S HEAVY EQUIPMENT, AS WELL AS TO CARRY UNINJURED PASSENGERS BACK TO BELGRADE. TELL THEM THAT DAVE RUST, THE CAMERAMAN, HAS BEEN INJURED, BUT DOES NOT LOOK TOO BADLT HUIRT. WE ARE ARRANGING FOR AN AMBULANCE TO PICK HIM UP FROM HERE AND TAKE HIM TO THE HOSPITAL IN ZVORNIK. , WHENCE HE WILL PROBABLE NEED TO BE TAKEN TO BELGRADE. . BUT AT THIS MOMENT WE DON’T THINK WE WILL NEED AN AMBULANCE. THE CNN LAND-ROVER IS HEAVILY DAMAGED, HAVING ROLLED OFF THE ROAD INTO A RIVER GULLY, AND THE TWO OCCUPANTS ARE LUCKY TO HAVE SURVIVED, I WAS IN A CAR BEHIND THEM, AND WAS NOT INVOLVED. I WILL ADVISE OF MY OWN MOVEMENTS LATER. IF YOU COULD ASK CNN BELGRADE TO TRY AND GET TO THE DRINA RIVER BRIDGE AT ZVORNIK BY 1 P.M. , WE WILL BE THERE TO MEET THEM AND LEAD THEM TO THE CRASH SITE. PLEASE EMPHASIZE THAT THEY SHOULD TELL CNN ATLANTA THAT DAVE RUST DOES NOT APPEAR AT THIS MOMENT TO BE TOO BADLY HURT. HE ISCONSCIOUS, AND TALKING, AND COMPLANING OFSHOULDER PAINS. THE DRIVER WAS CNN INTERPRETER AND FIXER, BOBAN, AN HEAPPEARS TO BE UNIJURED. I WILL REMAIN LOGGED IN UNTIL I HEAR FROM YOU.
The CNN crew continued on to Belgrade where we were granted a one-on-one live Christmas Day interview with Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. Our car was taken back to Belgrade, repaired and we eventually drove it back to Sarajevo. John Burns made it back to Sarajevo before Christmas. He spent Christmas there and two years later filed the following story for the New York times:
CHRISTMAS ON THE ROAD — SARAJEVO:
JOHN F. BURNS; Under Sniper Fire In the Cruelest Month
Dec. 25, 1994
If Christmas is a time for surprises, New York Times correspondents have had their share: along with the Japanese Santa and tree-trimming Muscovites there were the Serbian snipers, the bullets in Beirut, the tragic fire in Tennessee.
In writing of their most memorable Christmases away from home, 10 correspondents range around the world; some recall elegant feasts, in a Swabian castle or a Hong Kong hotel; others cannot forget the fruitcake they could not possibly eat in Somalia, the joy radiating from a Saigon cathedral, or the tearful Mass in Sarajevo. All remember how they counted their blessings.
Somehow, it seemed right that Christmas in Sarajevo was the one that nearly didn’t happen at all. Toward dusk on Christmas Eve of 1992, in the first winter of the siege, a colleague and I who had lived in the Bosnian capital through that first murderous year paused on a hillside above the city’s heart to look down once more on the pitiful vista of blasted buildings and once-grassy parks that had been turned into cemeteries.
Below, in a city made white by its first winter snow, little stirred. Above, somewhere in the Serbian-held heights, probably in one of the sandbagged bunkers hung with Christian Orthodox icons that the Serbian besiegers used for their assaults on the city, a sniper was peering through his sights. Suddenly, so close that we could feel the disturbed air, two shots from an automatic rifle cracked past.
Unlike thousands of others who never had a second chance, we scrambled down the hillside, out of the line of fire. That midnight, amid the flickering candles of an old Roman Catholic church that was one of the few buildings in a stretch along Sniper Alley not to have been razed by tank and artillery fire, we had special reasons to be thankful that we, at least, could still mark the season of peace and goodwill.
The church was not the only place where melancholy and tears replaced the normal jubilations. Outside the Holiday Inn, home to the small corps of reporters who had not flown out aboard one of the western military transports shuttling in and out of the city, clusters of hungry people waited for foreigners who might part with a candle, or a chocolate bar, or a tin of sardines.
This Christmas, secure with my family, I will think of those I left behind, enduring their third winter in their prison city. I will think of the prayers spoken on that Christmas Day two years ago, for relief from the misery, for help to end the starvation and the killing. I will think of my Bosnian friends, many of them spending this Christmas without family members killed in the war, who looked to Western sojourners in their city as the harbingers of eventual salvation. And I will wonder whether the false hopes we brought weren’t, in some way, the cruelest edge of that mournful day.
