In 1993 Tony Gardner was just another Kiwi on his OE when a friend talked him into a dangerous plan - transporting medical supplies into the besieged city of Sarajevo.

"Everywhere you looked (there was) mortar damage, RPG damage, many bullet holes. Sarajevo was beaten up, and sore, and ugly."

In 1993 Tony Gardner was just another Kiwi on his OE when a friend talked him into a dangerous plan - transporting medical supplies into the besieged city of Sarajevo. The Bosnian War was raging and the sustained encirclement and bombardment of the historic city appalled the watching world.

Tony was living in Munich and at a dinner party one night an American friend named John Ashton asked him what he thought about the war. Tony had to admit that he didn't know very much about it. But a seed had been planted.

"From somewhere came the idea that we should travel down into Croatia to refugee camps there and take people some winter clothes. And just that relatively simple experience, I suppose, was the beginning of it."

Tony had no medical, charity or NGO experience, while John Ashton had worked as a journalist in Beirut and was in Munich recovering from a gunshot wound he had received in Sarajevo. After that first short Croatian trip Tony, John Ashton and another Kiwi, John Coghill, began to talk about going instead to Bosnia and taking medical supplies instead of clothes. Tony readily admits that they had very little in the way of a plan and even less of an idea of what they were doing. But the naivety of their approach was also its virtue.

"It's a simple idea to think that you can help people. And if you keep it simple, then your chances of having an effect are greater."

The three men formed the Emergency Medical Response Agency, or EMRA. They hustled hard for publicity, support, money and medicine. Soon they were ready and after loading up their Land Rover - known, not entirely affectionately, as The Beast due to its size (and its personality) - they began their first trip into the Bosnian war zone. Taking a series of back roads, they hoped to avoid as many military checkpoints, manned by ill-disciplined and dangerous militia forces, as possible.

Their first stop was a ruined church south of the city of Mostar: one of the first indications of the true nature of the conflict. To Tony's eyes, it was obvious that the damage was not just the accidental result of battle.

Diary Entry 30.05.94

"The three bells in the peak of the roof were shot almost completely to pieces, the target of intense gunfire. It was a completely shocking sight, piercingly vivid against the clean blue sky. Testimony to the wanton destruction and tribal hatred…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details