Brothers In Arms

Now the sun's gone to hell
And the moon riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But it's written in the starlight
And every line in your palm
We're fools to make war
On our brothers in arms...

It was early summer 1993. The night slowly began to fall over the river Vrbas in central Bosnia. Pjer, Frka, Deda and I were in the basement of once very beautiful and rich house, which now served as a headquarters for my unit. We were waiting for our commander with the latest instructions for one of the most important missions in order to finally finish the offensive that was supposed to lead to the complete "liberation" of Croatian territories from the Bosniaks. The Bosniaks, with whom Frka and I fought side by side for the first two months, after we moved here from Kordun. In those two months I was able to come together and make friends with a couple of guys in the way that most people do not become close with another person for their entire lifetime. We were brothers in arms. For the last five months I have watched them exclusively through the gun sight...

Pjer and Deda arrived four months ago as a backup against the new "enemy". Since then we are inseparable, we knew everything about each other, as well as the terrain around us. This is why the four of us were chosen for this delicate mission on which could radically change the course of the war in central Bosnia.

We are waiting silently in the basement which still, after all that happened, looks better than many apartments I’ve seen. There are around 40 square meters divided into two rooms. In the smaller one are two beds and a wardrobe that were, as the only survivors, brought from neighboring house before it was entirely destroyed. In the one where we are now there’s a big kitchen table, which we found here when we first stepped into the basement, cluttered with maps and plans. A dozen chairs, shelves loaded with weapons and first aid kits, a barrel of water, a small table on which are located food supplies and a radio receiver. The rest of the big house was eerily empty.

It seems as we are sitting for hours in silence, although in reality it’s probably much less. I'm thinking about my little basement in Osijek that, although still surrounded with sandbags, no longer serves as the only home to my family. Now it’s filled with bags of onions, potatoes, wine bottles... Almost like before I left for the war.

My thoughts are interrupted by Frka who managed to find a box of Camel somewhere in the room. "Come on, guys, help yourself! This could be our last."
"Go to hell you idiot!" Pierre, with his 110 kg and nearly 2 meters, jumped from his chair: "You’ll bring us bad luck talking like that!"
Worm blooded Dalmatian in his mid-thirties, who worked before the war as a lawyer in Jugoplastika, was extremely superstitious and had certain rituals before every mission, which included all but the spread of the negative energy. When I met him his hair was already almost completely gray. Thick black hair turned white for just a couple of months in Vukovar. Ironically, I never spent a day in Vukovar. At the time we were in the siege near Slunj. Shortly after the fall of Vukovar, we fell as well.
After that, I was mainly around or in Karlovac until I came here. Of all the battlefields I’ve seen, Karlovac was the only one that I gladly remember. Because of Mirela.

She graduated in Zagreb just before the war and she returned home to seek for a job when the first bombs started to fall. I met her one (of the few) peaceful evening before Valentine's Day 1992 in a small bar near the river Korana. Frka, Marko, Kiki, Pajser and I were enjoying the cold beer and old stories (after a long time) when she entered with her sister and a friend. She was divine! She had that look in her beautiful blue eyes that instantly made us completely silent, tender creamy lips, loose chestnut hair and a figure that must’ve been created by something supernatural. Or it just seemed to us that way, because we were doomed for months to look only at each other. And those on the other side of our gun sight.

They sat down at the table next to us and bought a round of "heroes of war". In casual and silly conversations our eyes met a couple of times. The war didn’t exist at the time. I felt like I was back in the eighties when life was simple and the whole world was beneath my feet. Then I started telling her about Osijek and the whole scene there, and I suggested that we continue the conversation while taking a walk along the river.
We talked about our childhood, school, college, the past, the future… Everything but the war. On the way back I walked her home which was hardly a hundred meters away from the cafe. Before we parted I took a last glance at the deep blue of her eyes and suddenly our lips met.

Oh God!!! It was wonderful to feel the warmth of her lips on mine. A gentle hand on my tired face after a long, long time. Every woman I loved after her had to share a place in my heart with Mirela. After the kiss that I’ll remember as long as I breathe, I said that I’ll come to see her as soon as I’d have the opportunity to come back in the city. And I returned to my base.

We met like that for the next ten months, around four to five times a month. And in those moments we were only two people in the world, nothing and nobody else existed. She cried every time we had to part, afraid that it was the last time we saw each other. She was braver than I was, I could never think that way. I couldn’t dare to think that this dream could stop suddenly, just as it started.
The last image that I have of Mirela was on one extremely cold December's night. In her dark blue coat with a funny hat on her head she was waving me in tears from the bridge while I was leaving back to the base. Three days later I found out that we are moving to Bosnia early in the morning.

I left a note to one of the guys who stayed there to bring it to her when we leave. I sat for a long time with a pencil and a piece of paper, but the hands was motionless and the brain completely blocked. At the end I just wrote "The cold fingers of December. The New Year is approaching. Who will be next to you when the hands on the clock collide?" It was from a song we both loved.
It was the last time I was in Karlovac, and the last time I saw or heard anything about her.

We have just finished our cigarettes when the commander entered the room and repeated the plan and the importance of this mission. And of course, strict rules that we have to apply at all costs. The most important rule was that no one could know that we were there. Besides the doctor who enabled this whole mission in the first place. After the beginning of the conflict, she remained on their side even though she continued to work for us. Tonight she and the commander on duty in their headquarters in Gornji Vakuf planned a very special night.
As the night was falling, our guys from Kupres started to bomb their positions fifteen kilometers west of the Vakuf, so that we on the southeast would have less attention.

For some time now they’ve already been concentrated almost exclusively to the western front as the major part of our forces was there. We just reminded them from time to time that we’re still here, if you know what I mean. Their headquarters was located just behind the health center, which was now a used as an improvised hospital. Quite close to the city’s south gates.

The plan was that, while the happy couple is having fun on the floor, we go to the basement to find their defense plan and the deployment of units that they’ve put together expecting our offensive. It was that that the doctor warned us about. Everything had to be done very quickly, and smoothly. We look at the plans, memorize them, and disappear without anyone knowing that we’ve ever been there.

We left shortly after midnight, first we took the river Vrbas, then through one little forest and around half past one we were about to enter the city. All the way there we didn’t met a single living creature. Through some sort of dilapidated garage, and around the health center, we arrived to the headquarters just before 2 AM. It was eerily empty.
Everything went smoothly as planned. Deda and I went down into the basement, Pjer was squatting next to the steps leading to the first floor, and Frka was guarding the entrance to the house. It took us no more than five minutes to find what we were looking for, and afterwards we took the same way back.

Frka led the way to until he suddenly stopped and murmured: "Fucking hell!". Moon glow that broke through the thick clouds lit up one small Bosinak boy in a tattered hospital gown standing next to the wall of the garage and looking at us. He couldn’t have more than four or five years.
We all stopped and looked at each other remembering the words of our commander, knowing what we have to do. But no one had the strength nor the determination to do it. Since I was the leader of the group, the responsibility fell on me. Slowly I’ve pulled out my gun and stood still until Frka shout at me: "Shoot, we were supposed to been gone from here by now!"

I remembered how they taught us in training to target the head or heart through the gun sight. But through my gun sight I could just see a scared little boy…
He stood there and looked me in the eyes while I had a gun pointed at him. He didn’t try to escape, he didn’t cry, he didn’t make a single sound. Just one single tear trickled down his face. At that moment, my hands started to shake and I started to cry. He looked at me with his gentle, innocent eyes like a little lamb looks at his executioner before the slaughter. No words could describe the horror I felt at that moment.

I pulled the trigger!

And fortunately, I missed him. The bullet hit the road a few inches past his feet and he didn’t move. All I remember is that I said "I can’t do it!", and we quickly fled. Because at the time we were supposed to already be way out of town, our boys from Kupres started to bomb the city. So nobody could here my shoot. Just the boy...

After we returned, we just told everything we found out to our commanders and we didn’t talk to each other a couple of hours. We never ever talked about what happened there.
A week later we started an attack on Vakuf in which I did not participate because I was with a couple of guys in charge to guard the headquarters. After just a couple of days Gornji Vakuf, Novi Travnik, Vitez, Busovaca, Fojnica and Kiseljak were in our hands.
Approximately three weeks after "that" night I had to bring some documents from Kupres to Vakuf, to the doctor that was working for us. I went into the health center, knowing that she was waiting for me in her office at the end of a small hall that suddenly became endlessly long.
On a rickety wooden bed in the corridor I saw the boy from the other night. I froze! It took me forever to make the next step. With each subsequent step I was more and more sweating and shaking. When I was almost completely near the bed, he smiled at me and asked: "Sir, are you OK?"

Then the doctor I was looking for saw me from her office: "Oh, there you are. Jesus, you're completely pale! Irfan, get out of bed so this gentleman could lie down. ".

The moments that followed were completely erased from my memory. The next thing I remember is that I was in her office, telling her what happened that night. After the initial shock and disbelief she began to cry and told me how Irfan lost both his parents a couple of months ago, and has been with them in the medical center ever since. Because they failed to find any of his relatives. He never mentioned our “meeting” to anybody, he hardly remembers it. 

But me, even twenty three years later, I wake up every night drenched in sweat and self-hatred, with the words: "Sir, are you OK?”

I pulled the trigger…