This year, we spent Memorial Day in Vukovar, Croatia. That was not the objective of the trip, it was just one part of a Balkans regional tour on the Danube River. This day, however, did give us an opportunity to experience something both unique and sad, or maybe not as unique as I used to think.
But before I explain further, understand this post is not a comment or insinuation about how military members are honored in the US or any other nation; my previous posts still reflect my thoughts about Memorial Day.
The riverboat started in Romania, then moved to Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, and terminated in Hungary. It was a bit different from previous trips in that the history of the Balkans was our primary focus, not much touristy stuff. From the Turks invading in the 1400’s to the Bosnian war 500 years later, the saying in the Balkans is “we were always fighting with somebody, and sometimes it was with ourselves.”
As I implied, though, this post is about others, specifically non-military survivors of war. On a day trip inland from the boat, ten of us were hosted by a B&B owner and her daughter, Anna. We were served local brandies and pastries, and a heartbreaking story.
Anna was seven in 1992, and while at school one morning, the local authorities came and told the children to go home, gather what they could carry in two hands, and get back to the school. Anna and her grandmother were put on a bus and evacuated to a refugee camp in Hungary. The mother and father stayed behind (no room on the bus), but the mother eventually made it to the camp. More on the father in a few lines.
Anna’s mother waved off any questioning about what she had gone through by saying it was of lesser importance; Anna was our host, and this was her time. (My thought on this in a few paragraphs.)
Anna told us as a child she hated her mother for sending her away, for abandoning her. Anna admitted it was only after she married and had daughters that she realized the sacrifices she herself would make to protect them. Forgiveness for her mother’s actions followed.
It was eight years before the family could return to their home. Anna’s father would not be with them---he is still listed as MIA. Croatian national policy is to list non-recovered persons as MIA until a physical body is positively identified, and there are still mass graves to be located and uncovered. My assumption is that Anna’s father may be in one of them.
In 2000, the house was virtually a shell, burned by either the Serbs who occupied it or by artillery fire. All the belongings were gone, presumably stolen or destroyed. In the last twenty-five years the government has provided funds to rebuild, but only to the original square footage of the outline of any remaining foundation. Anything larger was to be at the expense of the landowners (no one had jobs initially, which led to the birth of their cottage/B&B industry which brought in the economic resources to add barns and other outbuildings).
A lingering and dangerous issue is the number of landmines still scattered throughout the countryside (allegedly the Serbs refused to provide maps of the locations). Anna’s husband is a “professional” mine remover and is currently deployed to Ukraine to help with minesweeping operations there. Anna certainly worries about his safety regardless of his location; Kiev is about seventeen hours away by car (for perspective, Houston TX to Albuquerque NM is fourteen to fifteen hours via I-10/I-25).
Signs of this relatively recent European war (exclude Ukraine) remind Anna and her mother of those terrible years: bullet/shrapnel holes remain in the exterior walls of most of the village’s public buildings, and Anna’s mother uses an expended 155mm artillery shell in her garden to hold a flowerpot.
Our time was up; we thanked Anna and her mother for their hospitality and candor. The bus trip to the boat was quiet and gave us an hour to reflect.
To help you understand what occurred in the 1990’s in this part of the world I suggest two movies and one book. The first movie is “Behind Enemy Lines” with Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson. This is a highly fictionalized Hollywood story of a Navy pilot shot down over Bosnia but the critical point is the pilot discovers mass graves, records that information, and is hunted by the Serb army to prevent him from releasing the information. (The real shoot-down was USAF Captain Scott O’Grady who evaded capture and was rescued after six days on the ground.)
The second movie is “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” and the focus of the storyline is the abduction of Croatian women who were mass raped and held in sex camps for the Serb soldiers. (My instinct tells me this tragedy is why Anna’s mother deflected our questions.)
A side story in the movie is an affair between a Croat woman and a Serb commander who were lovers before the war but are now on opposite sides of the ethnic cleansing going on around them. The movie was filmed in Hungary (the Serbs wouldn’t touch it) but many of the actors are Croats and Serbs who lived through the war. It was also filmed in the Serb/Croatian languages (and released in an English-language version).
The one book is “Serbia Explained: A Country at the Crossroads of the World” by Srdjan Ristic, although it is not on Amazon yet. The author spoke onboard our ship about the history of conflict in the former Yugoslavia from the occupation of the Turks up through the 1880’s, the development of tribal identification and separation of the Serbs and the Croats through WWI, WWII, and the Cold War, how the opposing religious beliefs were formed, and why the War in Bosnia started after Josip Tito died in 1980.
In short, the conflict some 30 years ago was not simply based on ethnicity, religion, race, tribal affiliation, or geography. It is all that and truly complicated, more so than I could ever explain in these few pages.
Now, back to my opening; my thoughts on future Memorial Days will include the survivors of war, the innocent non-combatants, especially the children. This Memorial Day was humbling for me, and I will never forget the experience.
And today I sit safely in my house typing at my computer, but if I received an emergency alert on my iPhone that said I had one hour to evacuate because an enemy force had just destroyed most of Denver and was heading south on Interstate 25, I wonder what I would gather to carry in my two hands.
As usual, best to all, and be safe out there.
