My War Memoris: The Freezer Baptizm
here is one word that defined our early nineties on the Slavonian mud, a word that isn’t just a concept, but an entire diagnosis of our condition: podaprati se. Roughly translated to American English, it means "to under-wash." But that doesn’t cut it. It’s not cleaning. It’s a linguistic and hygienic insult to any human dignity. To podaprati se meant, in our half-lit world without electricity or hope, to perform a pathetic, mocking ritual—dip a rag into a basin of lukewarm water, rub your armpits and crotch, and then lie to yourself and everyone else that you’re clean.
And the reality? The reality is you still reek of stale sweat, of that metallic scent of fear that has seeped into every pore, of the damp dust from the trench that sticks to your skin like a second identity. My hair had become so greasy I felt like I was wearing my helmet even when I took the real, steel one off. We were all scratching. We had become an army of mangy strays dreaming of white tiles and steam rising from a bathtub, while the black earth of Ivanovec crusted under our fingernails.
The Burden That Won’t Leave the Skin
Normally, that so-called "teren" on the front line lasted five days in a stretch, and then you’d get three days of rest at home, back in civilization, for your mom’s soup and a real bed. But this... this was an exceptional and brutal situation. 1992, January, the winter biting like a rabid dog. Enemy attacks were constant, heavy artillery barrages, constant gunfire over Ivanovec and around it. There wasn't enough manpower, and not enough weapons. Men were dying, many were wounded, and some simply "stripped" their uniform off because they couldn't take that amount of stress. Men were snapping at the seams faster than their pants on barbed wire. There was no one to replace us because lines were opening up all across the Slavonian battlefield, and men were lacking everywhere. Because of that, we stuck it out for nearly two weeks straight without a break. Two weeks in the same socks, in the same stress, in the same skin that starts to burn from the accumulated filth. That already seriously damages your physical, but even more so your mental health. And so you suffer, you reek, and you wait to either get hit by shrapnel or saved by a rotation that never comes.
Every other day we went to the advanced position. Those are the trenches in no-man's land, where you're a target on a plate, where cortisol lashes you harder than the December wind. Despite the cold, I was sweating like I was in a sauna. But that's not that healthy gym sweat; that's the cold, sticky sweat caused by the constant anticipation of death. When you return to that "safe house" of ours, you’re not allowed to light a wood stove. During the day, the enemy would see even the thinnest wisp of smoke curling from the chimney, which would immediately mean precision shelling of our only stronghold. So you shake from the cold while that death-sweat cools on your back, turning your undershirt into an icy suit of armor.
Aesthetics in the Heart of Chaos
I, of course, was that special kind of idiot. While all the others, guided by pure survival instinct, huddled in the basement around one pathetic heating oil stove that barely warmed one little room, I set up my bed on the ground floor. Why? Because of some visual sense of beauty I had. I suffered from wanting to be in a living room that still looked like a home, despite the draft and the danger. I paid for that love of aesthetics; I was cold, I slept in my jacket, but at least I wasn't packed like a sardine in a damp basement. My ADHD brain, that untamable machine that always looks for a "shortcut" or a new project, was running at three hundred miles an hour. I wanted civilization in the heart of hell. I watched my comrades, Gajo and Jura, huddling by the stove only when night fell and we were finally allowed to light a fire. Night was our only freedom—that's when smoke becomes invisible, and we become human.
My oasis of intellectual strength was a ruined house about ten yards away. There stood a bookshelf, by some miracle untouched by shrapnel, covered with plastic sheeting that kept the books from rotting. That's where I fled when I wanted to forget where I was. I read everything that came into my hands, searching the sentences for some order that no longer existed in our lives. But next to that house, I discovered something that would become my greatest war project: an outbuilding with a massive cauldron for making pork cracklings.
Engineering of a Dirty Soldier
That was that classic Slavonian cauldron for the hog slaughter. A large copper belly set into a sheet metal frame that serves as a stove. Next to it was a well, and next to the outbuilding lay stacked chopped wood. Synapses connected in my brain in a second. I looked at that cauldron, then the well, then that old, rusty "ledenica"—that deep freezer for meat that in every Slavonian household was a symbol of prosperity and security. It was empty, unplugged, smelling of old lard and forgotten summers.
"Why don't I heat the water in the cauldron, and use the freezer as a bathtub?" I thought. It was a crazy idea. Innovation or total loss of sanity? Probably both.
I found the little hole at the bottom of the freezer, that drain valve for defrosting. I lit a candle and with hot wax carefully sealed that opening. I brought a bucket of water from the well and poured it in to see if it leaked. Not a drop. It held! I found a piece of soap and some shampoo that still smelled of pine in the bathroom of the main house. I scrubbed that metal gut until it stopped reeking of pork sides.
I waited for evening. As soon as the sun set, I lit a fire under the cauldron. As the fire started to crackle and sing its first song, I sat by the hearth with a book in my hand. The fire’s warmth slowly dissolved me, penetrating through my layers of clothing—those two sweaters, two vests, and the thick jacket that made me look like the Michelin man. It was a surreal sight: an eighteen-year-old grunt, a recruit of the 132nd Brigade, waiting for water for cracklings to boil so he could take a bath in a freezer, while in the distance, the muted thunder of howitzers is heard.
The Ritual of Returning Among the Living
When the water in the cauldron boiled, I began the process. Ten buckets of scalding water I mixed with cold water from the well inside the freezer until I got the perfect temperature. I stripped. That feeling of nakedness on the front is indescribable. When you take off that heavy uniform, those dirty, sweaty layers that define you as a warrior, only your fragile, white skin remains. You feel like the synonym for helplessness. Naked we are all equal—no ranks, no courage, just flesh and bone. I remembered Schwarzenegger in the movie Red Heat, when he’s all muscular and naked fighting in that Russian sauna. "So, it's all okay," I thought with a dose of cynicism, "if he can be a hero without underpants, so can I for an hour in this freezer."
I leaned my rifle against the freezer, round in the chamber, within reach. A strange coexistence it is: soap, a book, and an assault rifle.
I submerged into the warmth.
"Ah..."
It wasn't just a sigh; it was the sound of the soul returning to the body. That ordinary hot water began to reset my entire organism. About this I could teach today in a psychology class—how those small, mundane tools in impossible conditions bring a man back to life. This was wellness for the soul, spirit, and body. The warmth was entering my frozen bones, dissolving that knot in my stomach that I’ve carried since the first day on the front line. It acted therapeutically; as if you are being reborn, as if you are emerging from the mother’s womb, safe and protected in that metal coffin.
I scrubbed myself till it hurt. I took off layers of mud, but also layers of that invisible misery that accumulates on your soul when you look at ruined houses and fear in the eyes of friends. Every time I would pour fresh hot water over myself from the cauldron, I felt like I was taking a hundred pounds of burden off each shoulder. For an hour I soaked in that water, at moments dozing by the fire that was still crackling under the cauldron and heating that small room. It was the most wonderful moment in my short soldierly life. How the small things in this absurdity of war become massive, and what we in peace took for granted, here becomes sacred.
Of course, somewhere in the back of my brain, a worry pecked. What if the company commander barges in? Will he congratulate me on innovation or punish me for irresponsible behavior? Probably the former, because I already had a reputation that "something was wrong with me" because I was constantly performing some experiments of mine. My need to please myself in impossible conditions clashed with military discipline, but that "behavioral disorder" of mine was my only shield against madness.
Return to Reality
When I finally got out, I dried myself with a clean towel I found in the house. It still smelled of fabric softener. I felt a pang of guilt for rummaging through other people’s closets, but force majeure didn't ask for permission. "Forgive me, unknown owner," I whispered, "but a greater force." I put on clean underwear and new socks. I felt lighter by at least a hundred pounds. Not just because of the mud, but because of that mental weight. I ran out into the cold night, but the cold no longer stung me. I ran through the yard to our house skipping like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, humming to myself because I felt invincible.
I burst into the room where Jura had just lit the stove in the kitchen. The room smelled of wood and dry socks. "Hey, tomorrow we go to the trench again, and then a five-day break," Jura said calmly, not knowing that next to him stands a man who has just passed through the most important wellness treatment in the history of warfare. "Oof, good," I said, crawling under the blanket with such joy as if the war ends tomorrow. That improvised bathtub in the freezer was my personal exorcism, my way of telling the world that they haven't broken me yet. The world was still in flames, Ivanovec was still besieged, but I smelled of soap and pine. And in that moment, that was the only victory I needed. Every drop of that hot water was one bullet fired into the face of despair. And while others dreamed of the end of the war, I dreamed of the next lighting of the cauldron. Because as long as we can create a morsel of beauty in the mud, we are still alive.
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