A Life's Worth

This is the true story of Magnus Ernström's time as a UN soldier during the Bosnian war. A biographical tour de force bringing to life the Swedish battalion's fight to save civilian lives from ethnic cleansing. A sometimes violent battle fought not only against war criminals but sometimes against Magnus’ own people: the UN, the Swedish government and different significant political interests. We meet the little people in real-life Bosnia - pawns in a game of power and money. Everyone is struggling to survive in the muddy terrain of grey and scarred Bosnia and Herzegovina. The price is high for all participants; even the Swedish UN soldiers are slowly becoming more brutal, cynical and deceptive as they are constantly living on the brink between life and death.

The story follows the author's inner and outer journey chronologically over six months. First, we meet Sergeant Hägg - a cheerful man who has already experienced war horrors and moves up the military hierarchy with a combination of a warm heart and calculating cynicism. Next, Öhlund is a Stockholm policeman originally from Skellefteå in Northern Sweden who collects the ruins of wartime atrocities and uses his physical strength to negotiate with the former Yugoslavian sides. But above all, we follow - through the eyes of a soldier - Swedish battalion commander Colonel Ulf Henricsson. He goes his own way and is subjected to devastating criticism. But when the battle is won, he is hailed as a hero. Suddenly he has created a unique position for the Swedish battalion in Bosnia.

The story escalates in dramatic tension as one of the three parties to the conflict fights fiercely to prevent the Swedish battalion from entering Bosnia. The other two sides are simultaneously fighting in the area of responsibility of the Nordic battalion. Slobodan Milošević is doing his utmost to find excuses, as is the Bosnian Serb "king of the bridge" border guard, who decides who gets to cross the bridge into Bosnia. Although UN soldiers are not allowed through, the other two sides keep attacking the civilian population of the other. Finally in that chaos, Ulf Henricsson is forced to take a stand and ask himself why the life of an elderly Bosnian refugee woman is less valuable than that of a Swedish soldier.

A Life’s Worth is an unusual eyewitness account. A Swedish UN soldier's experience of the terrible war in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and the brutal game that was played.