My War Memois: Surviving the Deadliest Trench in Croatia, 1992
They say courage is just a lack of imagination. In my case, it was pure, unadulterated eighteen-year-old naivety—the kind where you still stubbornly believe that bullets are things that only happen to other people. February 1992 in Ivanovac was unusually warm, but not the kind of warmth that invites you to a sidewalk café. It was a sticky, heavy southern heat that smelled like plowed earth, gunpowder, and that metallic tang of fear that sticks to the roof of your mouth and refuses to be washed away, not even by the jet-fuel brandy the older guys were chugging like water.
Our position? Picture a dog. One of those proud yard mutts strutting through the village with its tail held high. We were the tip of that tail—the most exposed part, the part that gets hit first when the whip comes down. An "advanced position," so far removed from the rest of the "body" that I felt like we’d drifted away from the very logic of warfare. While the rest of the army was back there somewhere, in the relative safety of the rear, ten of us were huddling in this hole, waiting for someone to notice us.
Peering over the edge of the trench was a lesson in surrealism. The meadow around us wasn't a meadow anymore; it was the surface of the Moon, cratered by enemy shells. It was a grey-brown reminder that someone across the way, in Paulin Dvor, really, really didn't like us. Paulin Dvor was right there, maybe two hundred yards out. If the wind blew the right way, you could hear them cursing.
The trench and the paths leading to us were dug deep into the field—at least ten feet down. I looked at those channels and thought: Man, who dug this? While my comrades were bleeding out here weeks or months ago, someone, under the cover of night while tracers tore through the dark, managed to hollow out these tunnels in the middle of nowhere. That wasn't just work; that was pure, concentrated spite.
Getting to our "tail" was its own ritual. We left Ivanovac after midnight, moving like ghosts. We passed through a natural canal, then by two positions that looked like luxury hotels compared to ours. They were tucked into the treeline, shielded by the ruins of houses that served as a buffer. Real little fortresses of brick and branches. As we slipped past, the guys stationed there would pat us on the shoulder.
"Watch yourselves, boys," they’d whisper. "We’ll be praying for you," someone else would add, using that specific tone usually reserved for people you don't expect to see at breakfast.
Me? Being the greenhorn I was, eighteen years old with a beard that was still more of a theory than a fact, I just nodded. I had no clue where I was going. Maybe that was my greatest gift—that blissful, stupid ignorance. It was only later that I realized why the two "smart" veterans in my group had been frantically stuffing salt into their boots and rubbing it into their feet before we left. They wanted sores, infections—anything to keep them from ending up on this "tail." Plenty of guys had already left their bones or their sanity out here. My naivety was both a lifesaver and a curse. Like some wise-ass once wrote: "Blessed are the poor in spirit," because they don’t realize how deep the hole is they’re jumping into.
Morning came faster than I wanted. And with morning came the coffee—if you can call that black sludge coffee—and, of course, the shooting.
We were looking at the enemy with the naked eye. That’s the absurdity of war. You stare at each other, curse each other’s mothers, and then someone pulls out binoculars and you start waving. We’d give them the finger, they’d give it right back. It was like a sick version of neighbors greeting each other over a fence, except the fence wasn't wood; it was mines and concertina wire. The whole day felt like an endless tennis match where the balls were bullets and nobody could ever win a set.
Pop – thud. Silence. Pop – thud.
Time stopped existing in the way normal people understand it. I was in my own personal time machine. My cortisol was so high that reality itself seemed to bend. I felt like I was traveling at the speed of light while sitting in the mud. This superhuman strength kicked in—a focus I didn't know I had. I wasn't tired. I wasn't thirsty. Hunger? Never heard of it. I was just a pair of eyes and ears aimed at Paulin Dvor.
I crouched in one of the safe dips in the trench and just watched. I didn't fire. My rifle, an old piece of junk that had seen better decades, pulled to the left so hard that if I wanted to hit an insurgent, I’d probably have to aim at a tree three yards to his right. There was no point in wasting ammo for "artistic expression."
And then, I met him. Mr. Rifle Grenade.
I saw their reinforcements arriving through the binoculars. Commotion, trucks, dust. I reported it to Jura, my friend and squad leader. Jura, an old fox, didn't waste time. He radioed our artillery to let them know things were cooking over there. The next two hours? Hell. Our guys pounded their positions with such zest I thought the earth would crack open and swallow us all.
When the dust finally settled, I saw the "hero." Some guy, clearly high on adrenaline or pure idiocy, popped up almost to his waist from their trench. He stood up like he was on a fashion runway and opened fire with his Kalashnikov. But on the tip of his barrel, he had something that looked like a weird hat.
"Rifle grenade," someone hissed next to me.
I’d heard about them from my grandpa’s stories about the old JNA army, seen them in barracks, but I’d never seen that "little wasp" in action. It’s a shrill, sharp explosion. It’s not the dull thud of a howitzer. It’s more like someone threw a jar full of angry hornets at you. Shrapnel sprayed around us with that distinct air-cutting whistle. The guy felt like a big man, so he kept "knocking" on us with those grenades for the next hour. He was as annoying as a horsefly in August, but a lethal one.
Finally, one of our guys had enough. "Srele, your turn," Jura said, handing me his rifle with a grenade already mounted.
They showed me how to brace myself. "Watch the kick, kid. If it’s not tight against your shoulder, it’ll rip it out of the socket. If you lose your balance, this damn thing ends up at your feet, and then we’re all toast."
I got into position. My heart was thumping against my ribs like a trapped bird, but my hands were steady. That’s the damn cortisol again. I peeked out of the trench to find the target, and what do I see? I see a grenade. But not just any grenade—one flying directly at my head.
Sounds crazy, I know. People say you can’t see a bullet. And you can’t. But a rifle grenade? It moved slowly, lazily through that thick February air. I watched it travel, a black dot getting bigger. And then, halfway through, it started... sputtering. I swear to God, it looked like an old car running out of gas. It was clearly some "home-made" junk or way past its expiration date. It plopped into the field thirty feet in front of us. Didn't even explode. It just hit the mud with a thud and stayed there—a reminder that in war, even the gear has bad days.
"My turn," I thought.
I fired. The recoil nearly sent me back to kindergarten, but I held on. My "wasp" whistled exactly the way it was supposed to. It landed right where it needed to—dead center of their trench. The guys patted me on the back. "Nice one, kid. Good hit."
But you know how we are. There’s no big celebration. Someone just grunted: "It’s all for nothing if nobody’s screaming over there. We miss, they miss, and around we go. Total nonsense."
And it was. Looking back from this distance, that entire day was the peak of the absurd. Twenty-four hours on that advanced position felt like one single hour. Time compressed into one long, unbroken moment of focus.
It was only when the relief arrived and we pulled back to the safety of a house basement that the adrenaline armor shattered. The moment I sat on the edge of the bed, the "shakes" hit me. Not from the cold, but that deep, bone-rattling tremor. My body finally realized where it had been. It lasted for a good hour—my body literally dumping all the stress I’d been soaking up like a sponge.
Jura and Gajo walked into the room. They saw me hunched over, shaking so hard my teeth were chattering. They just walked up and nodded. "Srele, you’re good," Jura said. "We’re surprised how composed you were. We didn't expect that from a rookie."
That was my medal. Bigger than any piece of tin. I was "good." I survived the tail of the dog.
Today, sitting here writing this, I realize that day defined me. My naivety saved me because I didn't know everything that could go wrong. My courage wasn't that I wasn't afraid; it was that in the middle of that madness, while grenades were coughing in mid-air, I managed to stay a guy who was just, well, doing his job.
War is tennis with bullets, and we were just underpaid players in a match that never ends. But hey, at least I played that set the right way.
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