War Memoirs: Dancing Like Turtles Under An Artificial Sun
They say war makes you feel like a hero. They’re lying. Most of the time, war just makes you feel like an overcooked noodle.
It was falling—that thin, relentless Slavonian winter rain. Not the kind of downpour that washes you clean, but a sneaky, pervasive dampness that seeps into your pores and your thoughts. We were moving in those oversized military ponchos, hiding both rifles and rucksacks beneath them. In the dark, we looked like a tribe of mutated Hobbits who had taken a wrong turn and ended up in the quagmires of Eastern Slavonia instead of Middle-earth. Forty-five pounds of gear on my back was doing its job; every step was a grueling battle against gravity and the sticky mud that sucked at my boots with a characteristic squelch, as if the earth itself were mocking us.
Every so often, someone would gracefully take a seat in that muck. No screaming, no drama. Just a quiet, resigned grumble under their breath that packed more profanity than a sailor's dictionary.
"Where’s Zagor Te-Nay when you need him?" I wondered, still tasting that surreal dinner—a meal with the distinct aroma of comic book paper. I guess that was the standard for us volunteers: food designed to prep you for becoming a cartoon character.
We didn’t take the usual route past the church in Ivanovac. This time, they led us down the main road toward Divoš. We hugged the edges of the houses, moving quietly, as if apologizing for our own existence. Ahead of us, at the very edge of the village, loomed a wall of sandbags several meters high. In the dark, it looked like the rampart of some ancient fortress—the only thing separating us from the eyes of those on the "other side."
Choreography for Turtles and Divers
The sky was alive. Every few minutes, a burst of tracer rounds would streak across the blackness like some demented firework display. Every quarter-hour, a flare would go up. Ironically, the rain was our only ally. There’s an unwritten rule: when it drizzles, the detonators on mortar shells get finicky, so the artillery stays quiet. You find a sense of security in the very thing that’s soaking you to the bone. Life is full of these petty cynicisms.
"Run, now!" the guy in front of me whispered as we reached a courtyard. "Open ground. Uphill. A hundred yards to the ditch—we stop there."
And he took off. But man, his form! Bent knees, a weird half-squat, absorbing the noise—he looked like a cross between a ninja and a bloated dwarf. I couldn't help it. In the middle of that kill zone, my faithful companion found me: hysterical laughter.
"Laughter is the devil that drives out fear, or fear is the devil that calls forth laughter." I don’t know who said it, but at that moment, we were Snow White’s seven dwarves on a bad trip, sprinting headlong across a meadow.
Front Row Seats to the Enemy Theater
And then, of course—BOOM.
It wasn’t a shell. It was a flare. Enemy side.
The sky ripped open. Suddenly, the world turned orange and white, brighter than high noon. We were caught dead in the middle of that open space, lit up like we were on a theater stage, the lead actors in a tragedy that was just about to start.
At that moment, my brain decided to go on a coffee break. Total paralysis. A single second that felt like an eternity. Now what? Run like a rabbit or try to become part of the muddy landscape? None of my comrades had taught me how to act when you become a live target under an artificial sun. That’s what I get for jumping into this war headfirst, trying to learn everything on the fly.
Pzzzt, pzzzt, pzzzt.
Three rounds. Sniper. They whistled past about five yards in front of me, sounding like angry hornets. That ricochet echo has a specific sound—it’s the sound of someone’s intent to erase you from the land of the living.
I hit the mud. My poncho and rucksack made sure the landing was anything but graceful. I lay there with my face in the muck, my mouth twisted into a fixed, adrenaline-fueled grin. "Get on your back, you idiot," I thought, "at least see what kills you."
I tried to roll over. Do you know what a turtle looks like when you flip it on its shell? That was me. The rucksack had me pinned. I flailed in that mire, cursing the gear, the war, and my own clumsiness until the flare finally burned out.
The darkness became my best friend again. I jolted up, tried to stand, but the pack dragged me back. Splash! Another round of mud to the face. It took a second try, rolling sideways, to finally peel myself off the Slavonian soil and sprint those last twenty yards to the ditch.
I dived into cover like an arrow, slamming into the back of the guy ahead of me. He acted as my shock absorber, and a second later, three more guys piled on top of me. We were like fallen dominoes in olive-drab ponchos.
"Easy and quiet," Jura whispered as we gasped for air.
I lay there, feeling my heart thumping against my ribs like a trapped bird. In those few minutes, I’d learned more than in twelve years of school. I learned that a second of indecision can cost you your head. I learned that heroism isn't the absence of fear, but the ability to laugh at the turtle on your back while snipers use you for target practice.
As the old song goes: "Youth is too fast, and death is too slow."
Or is it the other way around? In the ditch, dripping with rain and mud, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that you're still here, crazy-brave enough and lucky-clumsy enough to see the next sunrise.
We lay there stacked on top of each other, a tangle of legs and rifles, while our breathing slowly synced with the silence of the night. The adrenaline was receding, leaving behind that metallic tang in the back of my throat.
"Did they see us?" I blurted out, mostly to myself, as the mud began to dry on my cheek. "I mean, the flare... the sniper... were they actually aiming at us, or just shooting for the hell of it?"
I knew the math. They were only a few hundred yards away. If someone had truly decided that I was going to stop being an eighteen-year-old and start being a statistic that night, I wouldn't be sitting here thinking about the taste of comic book paper. I’d be a hole in the dirt.
"They shot because they felt like shooting," someone croaked from the dark beside me, his voice sounding older than all of us combined. "Pure boredom, kid. They saw shadows and decided to stretch their fingers. Just an impulse."
That realization hit me harder than the sniper round. There’s something deeply insulting about your life hanging by the thread of someone else’s boredom. It wasn't a clash of titans; it wasn't an epic battle from the history books. It was just a game of Russian roulette where someone else was spinning the cylinder because they were bored waiting for the rain to stop.
Life teaches you fast. In a split second, you pass or fail the test of courage without even knowing who the proctor was. Reflexes, experience, and that crazy luck that follows drunks and fools—you need it all at once. That’s the thin line that separates a real soldier from the "mannequins" in uniform who strut around the rear. That’s the difference between a hero and the "smart-asses" who watch the war on TV, while we here, in the ditch, learn that survival is sometimes just a matter of someone’s lazy trigger finger.
"All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players," Shakespeare wrote a long time ago. He just forgot to mention that in our play, the spotlights are signal flares, and the applause is the whistle of bullets past your ears.
"Move out," Jura commanded quietly.
I stood up, more carefully this time, balancing the weight of the pack. Two hundred yards more to the position. We were in cover, but the scent of those "hornets" still lingered in the air. It’s amazing how fast you grow up when you realize you're just someone’s target for entertainment.
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