Ministers of War

THE shooting had long since stopped by the time Richard Kent arrived for his tour of peacekeeping duty in Bosnia. But what the American soldier saw in an abandoned warehouse in a village called Kravica still haunts his dreams.

Eight years before Kent’s arrival, Serbian forces crammed a thousand Bosnian Muslim men into the warehouse, where, according to the United Nations’ official report, they were “killed by small arms fire and grenades. Visiting the Kravica warehouse several months later, United Nations personnel were able to see hair, blood and human tissue caked to the inside walls of this building.” By the time Kent and his fellow soldiers saw the building, it was being used to store tractors and manure. The only sign of the barn’s past was a black mold covering the walls, feeding off the rotting human flesh and blood embedded in its crevices.

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Rod Dreher

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THE shooting had long since stopped by the time Richard Kent arrived for his tour of peacekeeping duty in Bosnia. But what the American soldier saw in an abandoned warehouse in a village called Kravica still haunts his dreams.

Eight years before Kent’s arrival, Serbian forces crammed a thousand Bosnian Muslim men into the warehouse, where, according to the United Nations’ official report, they were “killed by small arms fire and grenades. Visiting the Kravica warehouse several months later, United Nations personnel were able to see hair, blood and human tissue caked to the inside walls of this building.” By the time Kent and his fellow soldiers saw the building, it was being used to store tractors and manure. The only sign of the barn’s past was a black mold covering the walls, feeding off the rotting human flesh and blood embedded in its crevices.