It was shortly before Christmas during the Yugoslav civil war that I heard a news report: operations (including amputations) were being carried out in a field hospital near Sarajevo without anaesthetic because supplies had run out. Other casualties were dying of infections because they had also run out of antibiotics.

As someone who will do anything to avoid Christmas, and jump on any excuse to indulge in a spot of truck-driving, the solution seemed obvious ...

A fantastic team effort by a group of friends meant that we were able to approach every single pharmaceutical company and Health Authority in the country in just 48 hours.

The result was 3.5 tonnes of medical supplies, most of it donated by Glaxo. Ryder came up trumps with the loan of a brand-new 7.5-tonne truck, Sutherlands paid for the fuel, Jarmain & Co insured it for us and P&O donated the ferry passage.

We did have one small problem with the insurance: there was an exclusion for war zones. This meant that we were only insured as far as the Austrian-Slovenian border. As I didn't reckon my credit card would stretch to a replacement lorry, I started looking around for solutions.

I phoned a ridiculous number of insurance companies, all of whom laughed at me. I then figured that there were a number of charities doing humanitarian aid runs to the region, so they must have figured out a solution. One of the main ones I knew of was run by a little old lady in Birmingham. She was running an amazing operation, with several trucks a day heading out there. I phoned her and asked her what she did for insurance.

"Oh, it's no problem," she told me. "The UN operates a special insurance scheme for aid trucks - you can buy the insurance at the border for $30." Sorted - or so I thought.

We had one other paperwork issue to resolve: morphine is a Class A controlled drug, and needs to be signed for by a doctor. Neither the pharmaceutical companies nor Health Authorities could hand it over to us without that signature.

That was resolved when a GP friend stepped in and signed for it. Except that ... one Health Authority came up with an additional box of morphine after all the paperwork was done. They were happy enough to hand it over on the basis that they'd had a signature for the previous batch, but as this box wasn't listed on the paperwork, technically that made us drugs-runners ... We put that box into the very back of the truck and hoped that none of the Customs officials dug too deep!

We drove non-stop, three drivers operating on a 4-hours-on, 8-hours-off shift. Of the two resting drivers, one slept while the other had one simple but vital job: look out for Low Bridge signs! We had been warned that the insurance did not cover damage caused by dozy drivers colliding with bridges.

When we reached the Austria-Slovakia border, we looked in vain for a UN office to purchase our war-zone insurance. We asked the officials, none of whom knew anything about it. We asked other truck drivers; they didn't know about it either. Finally, I spotted a truck from the Birmingham charity and dashed over to the driver.

He laughed: "There's no such thing. We just tell her that so she doesn't worry." So the trucks are actually completely uninsured? "Yes."

The news did not fill me with seasonal joy, but I figured that we'd come that far and weren't about to turn back now. I had visions of thumbing down a passing army Chinook helicopter to air-lift the remains of our truck back into Austria before we called the insurance company ...

We arrived in Split on on Boxing Day, stopping for breakfast at a cafe before heading to the local UN base:

At the base, we were told that we could either continue on the final 20km to the field hospital ourseves the following day, or we could hand it over in Split to be taken on by UN convoy. There would, we were told, be a briefing at 7am the next morning which would give us the information we needed to make our decision.

The briefing was conducted by a British army Major. I'd always assumed that swagger sticks had been abandoned a century or two earlier, and now only existed in sitcoms; I was wrong.

The briefing was incredible. With the aid of large-scale maps, and in crisp, slightly-bored tones, the Major proceeded to show us the situation as of that morning, and what they expected to transpire within the next 24 hours.

The main route in went straight across the front and was described as 'inadviseable'. There was, however, a secondary, more circuitous route. We were told that there was little action expected there in the next 24 hours, but it was still beset by 'light sniper fire' and one part of it had 'a few drunken soldiers celebrating their recent advance by throwing grenades around'.

We decided that being killed by light sniper fire or a drunken soldier was not a notable improvement on being killed by heavy fire or sober soldiers, so opted for the coward's way out. Our truck was offloaded with great rapidity by British squaddies. They also diagnosed and fixed a problem with the tail-lift with the kind of efficiency which would have put the AA to shame (a relay had frozen overnight in the sub-zero temperatures).

We were told that the road we had come in on was now back in the thick of the fighting, so we would have to take smaller roads back. We were given a bunch of maps with hand-drawn markings showing where we should and shouldn't go. "Obviously these are classified, so please destroy them once you are out of the country."

I'm pleased to report that the truck made it back home without a scratch: