Death As a Way of Life

Unending war has become an occupation force, seizing village after village of Bosnia and Herzegovina in its vicious grip. Across trenches and rubble- strewn no-man's-lands reminiscent of World War I, Bosnian and Serb soldiers blaze away on dozens of small battlefields. TIME photographer James Nachtwey spent the past two weeks on one of those battlefields, between Brcko and adjacent Muslim hamlets in northern Bosnia.

Irregular Serb forces captured and "ethnically cleansed" the center of Brcko of its mainly Muslim population last year. Now they are trying to push south to widen their land link to Serbia. The hamlets stand in the way. Their defenders are local Muslim youths, sons of farmers and shopkeepers, of families who have known one another and worked together all their lives. At first, the fighters were no more than a self-declared militia; today they are a veteran unit of the Bosnian army.

Their professionalism has come at a terrible price. The soldiers' cemetery begun in the village of Rahic a year ago contains 370 graves today. Grief is constant: for every funeral, the whole village turns out. Even so, Muslim soldiers do not call for military intervention from abroad. Just lift the international embargo on arms shipments to Bosnia, they say, and they will handle this war. Meanwhile they have dug themselves deep into their native soil and are beating back Serb attacks with little more than the firepower of rifles and grenades.

Leaving the area with these pictures, Nachtwey drove southwest and reached Vitez six hours later. Suddenly, machine guns opened fire from both sides of the road. Nachtwey floored the gas pedal and drove through a solid kilometer of gunfire. Miraculously, only one bullet penetrated the car, hitting the passenger-seat headrest. He learned later that the gunners were neither Serbs nor Muslims, but Croats.