A Mother’s Need to Help Creates a Convoy of Hope to War-ravaged Bosnia
by Linda Allen
Carol Gray has FRSA attached to her name because of her humanitarian work in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Ghana. She has become a consultant to the UN, and is routinely de-briefed by the British armed forces when she returns from humanitarian visits.
returned from her first convoy journey into Bosnia, it was three weeks before she could be approached by anyone other than those closest to her. No one visiting a ware zone for the first time sees what they expect to see. War correspondents and photo journalists print graphic images in newspapers and on television screens that provoke horror and disbelief, but nothing compares with reality. Of all war scenarios, genocide and ethnic cleansing involve the greatest disregard man can express for fellow man. What Carol had seen and experienced could never be erased from her memory, from her soul, from her daily living. As Carol stepped out of the truck at home in England from what was intended to be a once-only effort, her husband Stuart realized immediately that once was not enough.
Her work began as she watched on British TV the faces of Bosnian mothers trying to shield their children from the horrors around them. She saw the panic in their faces and was overcome with compassion. “I value my family. If I was in their position, I would want someone to help me.” And so as Christmas approached, Carol put the word out that she wanted to send supplies to victims of the Bosnian war. The response was overwhelming, and took on the proportions of a tidal wave. Word went out, an article appeared in the local paper and in less than four weeks, her initial call for help resulted in the collection of thirty-eight tons of supplies.
Carol arranged for two companies to haul the supplies to the London charity and, with only two days to go until the delivery date, felt very near her objective…then the phone rang. It was the London charity. Funds had run out, and they regrettably would not be able to the delivery the supplies she had collected..
A feeling of dread took over Carol. All those supplies, all those volunteers, what would she tell them? All those families she wanted to help, what would she do?
The next morning, Carol opened the newspaper to see a large article about her efforts, all the people involved, all the supplies they had collected, and all the people they would be able to help. She felt sick until Stuart pointed out a small article underneath her photograph. It said a Convoy of Hope was going to Bosnia, and anyone interested should call the number provided. Carol called immediately and was told all she needed to do was acquire vehicles for her supplies and join the group that was headed to Bosnia. She went out that day, sold her Mercedes SL automobile and bough a 28-foot truck capable of carrying seven-and-a-half tons of supplies. There were a few people who thought she had gone mad, but there were others, including her daughter Samantha, who volunteered to drive the trucks and go with her - enough to take all the supplies.
Stuart insisted that he be the one to go on such a dangerous venture, but after examining all the facts it became apparent that it was most in line with their family values for Carol to make the trip. As young woman, Carol had a serious bout with cancer, so serious that members of her hospital team gave her no hope of surviving. A visiting Australian surgeon, well known for his experimental cancer surgery, felt Carol was too young to give up on and obtained permission to operate on her. He saved her life by replacing most of her circulatory system with plastic tubing. The surgery required that so much metal be left inside her, that she sets off the security checks at airports. The importance of this in relation to her journey to Bosnia is that she is uninsurable. However, Stuart, a successful businessman, is well insured. When a person voluntarily enters a war zone, all insurance benefits become mull and void. Carol had no insurance to lose, whereas the family would lose all Stuart’s benefits should he be killed while in Bosnia.
So Carol’s first time away from Stuart was a two-week, 3,000-mile journey through France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia into Bosnia as part of a 110 vehicle convoy. In Croatia, the 400 drivers were called together and a request was made for volunteers to enter crisis areas to deliver supplies. After all the planning and work that had gone into collecting and packaging the supplies, Carol wasn’t about to drop them off in a warehouse. She and her daughter raised their hands to volunteer. Only two other hands went up. The supplies were transferred to army trucks, and Carol, Samantha and the two other drivers discovered a new definition to fear as they drove through devastated countryside still riddled with mines.
A land with a unique political and cultural history was being destroyed. Great religions and great powers in European history had combined here. Many of the beautiful building still standing when Carol took her first trip would disappear over the next few years. The state library in Sarajevo would be destroyed. The Oriental Institute,, home of an irreplaceable collection of manuscripts illustrating the Ottoman history of Bosnia, would be reduced to rubble by shelling. Mosques and minarets, including some of the finest examples of sixteenth-century Ottoman architecture in the western Balkans, would be demolished. The town of Vukovar, a jewel of Baroque architecture, was totally destroyed. All this with the intention of erasing any trace of the culture that had evolved through centuries. As well as destroying the living, the memory of the past was to be eliminated as well.
Only a few months after Carol’s first convoy to Bosnia, Admiral Jeremy Boorda, Commander of the United States Navy, was incensed by the flights he took over Bosnia. He ordered his pilot to fly down and buzz the Bosnia Serb “capital” of the Pale from an altitude so low that the blast from the aircraft smashed every window in Pale’s main street. Along with Carol’s, many hearts were breaking for these people.
Carol and the other drivers met up with Canadian peacekeeping forces at the Bosnian border and continued driving. As they traveled, a dreadful small was in the air - something Carol didn’t recognize, but something very foul. She soon learned what it was. They drove into a town where the entire village of 381 people, many of whom were elderly, had their throats slit and their bodies cut into pieces, many of them stacked on the furniture in the homes. It fell to the Canadian forces to identify and bury the bodies. Surprised to see two women, one soldier began to discuss the situation with Carol and suddenly burst into tears Carol put her arm around him and sat on a nearby tree trunk with him while he sobbed about the things he had seen.
As the trucks moved into the delivery areas, Carol discovered one reason for her making this journey. The women had been so badly treated they ran from the men who came to delivery supplies, but when they saw Carol, they wanted her arms around them while they grieved. On their hands and knees, they kissed her feet in gratitude for what she had brought them. Nothing could have prepared Carol for the agony of these women’s eyes. They had seen their grandchildren’s throats slip in front of them and watched them die. Their daughters were taken to rape camps and their husbands were drowned in the pools in their own gardens. Carol would never forget what she saw in these women’s eyes. As she left Bosnia, she knew that part of her would stay with these women always.
Carol’s home in Sheffield is a beautiful, 400-year-old farm with large wooden beams and Inglenook fireplaces. Upon her return from Bosnia, Carol drove the truck up the long garden drive and saw everyone there to greet her. As she stepped down from the truck, Stuart knew immediately that Carol would go back to Bosnia. No longer blissfully ignorant, she had seen reality in all of its dreadfulness. And she has gone back, more than twenty times. At first, it was every six weeks, but after eighteen months, the stress began to take a roll on her health and she had to turn the work over to other volunteers for about nine months while she regained her strength.
Her goals became bigger and her plans more thorough. And the rewards have been great. The beauty of one person trying to achieve something based on a principle she believes in, the worth of the family, has gathered momentum and spread to many areas of need. Starlight UK is the registered charitable trust Carol now runs from her home. It is unique in that aid is distributed individually instead of put in warehouses where much of it can be sold on the black market. Everything used in the charity office is donated. The only overhead is the maintenance of the trucks.
These vehicles have earned their own place in the volunteers’ hearts. They are called by the names of the people who have donated them and are equipped with CB radios. Just like people, no vehicle driven into a war zone is insured. These trucks have taken volunteers over shell-holed roads and mounds of rubble. In Sarajevo, the people took shelter in sewers and dug out six-foot tunnels for the soldiers and themselves to escape. In some spots, roads have caved into these tunnels. When it rains, these spots fill with water and are indiscernible from puddles. At times, the trucks have fallen into these holes up to six feet deep and had the wheels sheared right off. Incidents like these mean ongoing repairs since nothing can happen without the trucks.
During the last five years, Carols has been an advisor to the United Nations, Implementation Force(IFOR) and the UK Ministry of Defense. They respect her ability to enter areas the peace forces could not. She has received many awards, and although the gestures have been much appreciated, they are tucked away in a drawer. “If anyone deserves an award, it is Stuart”, she says. “He takes over as mom and dad as well as running his own successful business and serving in community functions while I am gone”.
Although the shelling has stopped, Bosnia is bankrupt and destroyed. There is much to do. With each convoy, Starlight UK has a purpose in mind. On one visit, at a front-line medical center, Carol heard dreadful screams, she approached a doctor and asked to see what was happening that could cause the child such pain. He refused, but told her that the child had stepped on a land mine and had a foot blown off. Gangrene had set in and the doctors were having to amputate the child’s leg below the knee with no anesthesia. Carol went home with a new purpose - medical supplies.
In England, prescriptions that are not collected by patients must, by law, be incinerated. Carol made contact with a doctor who arranged to save these early-release prescriptions drugs and donate their lunch hours to packaging and labeling the drugs. When Carol delivers the drugs to Bosnia, doctors will walk miles to obtain them. To date, more than $4.5 million worth of drugs have been donated.
There are always more people than food parcels, and Bosnians were walking miles to reach the convoys only to receive nothing, even after convoy members gave out everything they brought with them for their personal needs. So Carol went home and began fund-raising efforts to purchase supplies to remove mines and purchase seeds, gardening equipment, milking cows and chickens. Volunteers helped people dig and plant their gardens. The volunteers are rewarded on return visits by seeing rows of vegetables growing and people with food to eat.
The stories are endless, the guardian angels many, but more importantly, Carol Gray has demonstrated what one person can do to change lives when principles are at work and goals are established. “I’m just a very ordinary person, an ordinary mom and wife who’s happened to get involved in something that has just escalated. I don’t know where it’s going to end, but I’ve had some of the most wonderful experiences in my life. And if I give it up tomorrow, I will count these past few years as a miracle that God has permitted me to witness”, Carol summarizes.
So as Dusan Tadic takes his place in history as the first individual since Nuremberg to be convicted of crimes against humanity for his systematic destruction of Muslim civilians in Bosnia, Carol takes her place in history as one who rebuilds and reestablishes the faith of Bosnians that there are those in the world who still value them as members of the human family. And as they run from their homes screaming with excitement every time she returns, her rewards are indestructible.