I was 11 when the war in my native Croatia started in 1991. It was a War for Independence from former Yugoslavia, known as the Homeland War.
Recently, seeing numerous comments on social media about the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel triggered some not-so-pleasant memories from my childhood. It’s easy for people to cheer for wars far away from the comfort and safety of their own homes. Many of these loud voices take an often fabricated superior moral stance on conflicts about which they are largely ignorant, advocating for and praising the killing of people. As a war survivor, it sickens me, angers me, and saddens me at the same time. What do any of these people know about the horrors of war and living in the midst of one?
Most of the time during the occupation, we were prohibited from attending school and instead played outside our apartments and houses. Still, we never went far because the bombs dropped from the skydaily. Rebel Serbs and their paramilitary, together with the Yugoslavian Army (JNA), would bomb us from the air, but mainly from the ground with rocket launches. They had occupied little over one-third of Croatian territory, with the first line of defense being just 5 miles away from where I lived. So the rule was — don’t go too far! You needed to be close enough that when you started hearing the explosions in the distance, you had enough time to hide in the shelter. The sirens would blare incessantly, and people would run from the streets toward shelters or rush down the stairs from their apartments. They were bombing the town, the schools, the hospitals, and other civilian areas all the time, not only military checkpoints.
As weird as this may sound, living like that became the new norm. They would start shelling, and we would hide and spend a few hours or even days in the shelter. Then — for whatever reason — they would stop bombing us. We would go out and continue living our lives as “normal.” According to various sources, including the Croatian government, NGOs, and international organizations, the estimated number of deaths was above 15,000, with the majority of those — around 9,000 — civilians. These casualties, besides soldiers killed in combat, occurred from a variety of causes, including shelling of cities, massacres, ethnic cleansing, and other war-related violence. Those numbers don’t include the veterans who committed suicide after the war or died from other illnesses that could have correlated with war in some way.
Innocence, Lost
One peculiar thing happens when you’re a kid in a warzone — your games adapt to the scenery. Back then, when we were a part of communist Yugoslavia, we didn’t have Nike shoes, Levi’s jeans, or Coke. So, anything from the West would be fascinating to us. That included bullets. I remember my dad would bring home different kinds of bullets he got from who knows where. It’s worth mentioning that we never had a right to own firearms as Americans do. People in America don’t realize how rare it is, even today, for some people to be around guns. You would never see a real gun or bullets in person unless you went to military training. But we kids started collecting them and comparing who had the coolest or rarest kind. I kept the bullets my dad gave me in a heart-shaped plastic box that was covered in gold glitter. In a way, carrying that around was like having a tiny part of him with me.
I cannot imagine my 4-year-old daughter having the childhood that I had. And I hope she never does experience anything like it. Knowing our history, though, I don’t exclude the possibility. Even in our modern times, we see savage killings of innocent children. So, I pray every day for all the young people affected by these two ongoing wars. No kid should be robbed of a childhood in that way. When you survive a war during childhood, you grow up so fast. Overnight, almost. The years other kids spend in play and fun, you spend being afraid for your life, hiding in shelters from constant bombing, and feeling lucky if you got to eat food that day or use the restroom during cease-fire periods. Showering is not a priority. Surviving is.
I guess the most fascinating aspect about my remembrance of the war is that it feels so surreal most of the time. It’s almost as if I’m remembering a movie I watched and not the actual events that happened to me a few decades ago. Even though that dreamlike flashback could be true for all of the events from everyone’s past, I notice people’s reactions and the questions they ask when I am telling some of the stories. They are so surprised by the calmness and detachment I radiate while telling those stories that I sometimes even suspect they think I am lying just because I am not sobbing.
But I did cry. I have probably cried more times in my life than I have laughed. Who knows, maybe I am out of tears. I think living through the events I have experienced, and I’m not just talking about the war, made my emotions numb in a way. There have been times I couldn’t say the word “dad” without crying. To this day, I can’t watch war movies because it’s way too triggering. And only recently, about a few years ago, I could finally enjoy fireworks without having a panic attack.
Who Doesn’t Enjoy Good Fireworks?
I will never forget my first 4th of July fireworks. I was living in NYC at the time, studying acting, and was in my mid-20s. Everyone knows NYC’s 4th of July fireworks are one of the most fascinating displays worldwide. I had never seen anything like that before because Croatia had forbidden them for many years after the war.
My friends had been discussing the 4th of July for days, and I was very excited about it. I had no idea I would get the PTSP reaction once it started. When I heard the first whistles of shells launching, I sensed a little discomfort in my stomach, and the fireworks report began. Everyone around me was woo-hooing, clapping, wowing from admiration, and all I wanted to do was duck and locate the nearest shelter. I couldn’t breathe, my stomach felt like someone sucker-punched me, I was desperately gasping for air, and I had a full-blown anxiety attack. I felt disoriented in the crowd and lost sight of my friends as I frantically glanced around me while covering my ears in an attempt to mute the whistle/cracking noise. It was so reminiscent of the war bombing — so realistic — that I couldn’t believe that both this realistic event had just occurred and that my response, while frightening, had been just as real.
Thankfully, one of my friends was nearby. She helped me get up, took me inside a bar (if I even recall that correctly), and held my head firmly, looking me in the eyes and repeating, “Breathe, breathe, Barbara, just breathe,” as she was taking deep breaths with me to calm me down. Thankfully, in a few minutes, I did. After that, I avoided fireworks until I spent New Year’s Eve in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in 2017. That was the first time in my life when I was able to enjoy the beautiful scenery of magnificent fireworks without having a panic attack. I felt a bit nervous initially and towards the end because it was a long report session. But overall, it was finally a pleasant experience. All it took was 22 years after the war.
Another example of those childhood horrors is that during the war, we had to put tape over our windows in a checkered pattern so the glass wouldn’t shatter when the grenades would explode. We were also always required to pull down the blinds over windows as soon as the darkness came, and we had to turn on the lights. The reason for this macabre routine was because you’d be an easy target for planes and other rockets, so the inhabited areas needed to be as dark as possible. There were no street lights, either. And so, after the war ended, it took me years to be comfortable in a room that was bright from light and didn’t have blinds. That became even more prominent when I lived in NYC in a skyscraper on the 26th floor. I felt so exposed and vulnerable living there that I ended up buying dark curtains to hang so I could relax in my room once it got dark in the evening.
These were just some of many examples of small, everyday occurrences most people take for granted that trigger PTSP for many people like me who have survived a war. With Veterans Day just passing, I don’t even dare to think about the trauma soldiers experience from the events they witnessed or were required to do in combat.
A Fallen Hero
Once the war started, all of my dad’s friends got drafted. Military duty was mandatory during Yugoslavia when men turned 18, so they all had training. My dad was tech-savvy and stationed in crisis headquarters to help with the tech equipment, data monitoring, and military tactics planning. I remember one night overhearing him talking to my mom in the kitchen about a photo he had seen of a pregnant woman slaughtered with her belly cut open with a knife. They had stuffed her belly with dead kittens, which made it impossible to even know where the baby ended. I had nightmares about it for years, only admitting this to my mom when I was 20 years old.
I am sure that was just one in a line of many atrocities he saw during the war. People will read about these horrible stories and think it’s not true, but it often is. Something very dark happens to people’s souls and minds during a war. It’s as if someone switches off the humanity in many people. Is it a coping mechanism or general evil that exists deep within? I don’t know, but I do know that something changes inherently in everyone involved — in the aggressors and the victims, too.
And so, one day, just a few months after the war began, my dad got fed up with sitting in a warm office while his buddies were all fighting in the first line of defense, so he volunteered to go to the front as well. He put on his old JNA (Yugoslavian army) jacket, Wrangler jeans, and a hat and went to the crisis headquarters to get a gun.
They gave him a WWII-era rifle. At the beginning of the war, Croatia got an embargo on weapon delivery, which debilitated Croatia from defending itself from JNA, one of the strongest armies in Europe at the time. The only weapons we had were what some people saved from WWII, the police weaponry, and what was left over after the seizure of the JNA’s barracks across Croatia. That also created opportunities for illegal arms trade, which is inherently evil as it gave birth to many war profiteers, but in this case, it literally saved my country.
One day, not that long after my dad went to the battlefield, I came home from spending some time playing outside of our apartment and saw my mom crying. She told me my dad was injured and that they had taken him to a hospital in Zagreb (the capital) for an operation. My aunt, her sister, lived there, and we packed our bags and went to stay with her so we could visit my dad.
We found out later he was on the battlefield and got shot in the head by the sniper. This was how it happened: The first line of defense was in the village Mošćenica, which is halfway between my hometown, Sisak, and then occupied Petrinja. His troop was in a bunker resting after the recon of the area. They were sitting around a tree log serving as a little coffee table, and the pot was on it. Little did they know that there was a sniper in an abandoned house across from them who had an aim at the log through their firing port. So, whoever was the first person to reach for the pot would be the perfect target. My dad was that person. There was no gunshot sound. He just fell on his friend’s lap.
At first, they didn’t even realize he had been shot until the blood started trickling from his head. He was rushed to the local hospital and then transferred to Zagreb. Doctors performed an operation on his brain and told us he was in a coma but that the chances of him waking up were slim. He was alive for three more days, and then he died. A day before his passing, when we visited him, he squeezed my hand as I was holding his. They told us that was a good sign. But it wasn’t. The doctors later explained it was probably a random nerve reaction, but I always thought of that moment as his way of saying goodbye to me.
We had to return to my hometown, Sisak, to prepare everything for the funeral, so we left the next day. Our dad’s friend, who was also his sergeant, gave us a ride in an official military vehicle. It was a black Mercedes limousine with a bright red velvet interior. Ordinary people didn’t have cars like that. It belonged to one of JNA’s generals or highly ranked military personnel and was seized during the war. It was weird to feel privileged in a way because we would have never had the opportunity to ride in a car like that under different circumstances.
The Time I Almost Died
As we drove back from Zagreb, an alert rang out in my hometown, signaling another bombing attack. We could see huge smoke from the refinery — one of their favorite targets during the war. I often wonder if the Serbian paramilitary was just incompetent or if God saved us because had they hit the right place in the refinery, my entire town and its surroundings would have blown up into oblivion. There were no cars on the road. Everything was so weirdly serene in a way. I was getting carsick, and I asked them to stop. They told me we couldn’t stop since we had to arrive in the city ASAP because of the shelling. But I was feeling worse by the minute and told them I would vomit inside the car, so they stopped.
I got out, and as I took a few big breaths, we heard explosions. The sergeant immediately pulled me back into the car, and we started driving. At that moment, I didn’t even feel sick anymore. It looked like a scene from a speed chase movie. The car was turning onto my street when we felt such a loud explosion that our car bounced, and we saw windows shattering from the roadside store and surrounding buildings. A giant smoke engulfed the middle of the street as we passed through it, stopped the car, and ran inside my building to hide. Everything happened so fast, like a flash.
When we entered the shelter, everyone gaped at us with surprise. Where had we come from? How did we even make it? The sergeant looked at my mom and said, “Do you realize if we hadn’t stopped for those few seconds for Barbara to catch some air, that bomb would have fallen directly on our car?” Nobody spoke for an hour after that. I think we were all processing what had just happened. That day, our lives were spared by the grace of God, but one of the neighbors got killed when he went to his apartment to use the restroom. The shrapnel went through his neck, killing him on the spot. They found his body on the staircase when the sirens ended the alert.
My dad was buried two days later, just a few weeks before my 12th birthday. I couldn’t bear to watch them drop his casket into the ground, so I stayed with my grandma near the cemetery. When the sirens started wailing in the middle of the funeral, everyone had to rush to the nearby shelters. They didn’t even have the time to perform a gun salute in his honor.
The agony of war continues, never pausing for tears or sorrow. The tradition at the time was to have an open casket, and I had never seen a dead person prior to that moment. My mom and sister were crying inconsolably. His body was so cold, his skin so pale. I hugged him for the last time, and then I placed that plastic heart-shaped box with the bullets we had previously thought of as “cool” in his pocket.
To this day, a patch lingers of that spot on the road where the bomb fell. I still pass it every single day. But over the years, memories have become less painful. They are my testament to survival, to the strength inherited from a fallen hero, and to a future where my daughter’s laughter can ring freely, untainted by the shadows of war.
My personal ordeal during Croatia’s Homeland War parallels the harsh realities faced in today’s conflicts in Ukraine and Israel. These stories serve as a powerful reminder of the tragic toll war takes on human lives, particularly children. By sharing my narrative, I hope to lend a voice to those suffering in conflicts worldwide. Together, we must work towards a world where peace prevails, safeguarding the joyful laughter of children everywhere. In the end, that war may have stolen my innocence, but it could not extinguish my spirit. As I watch my daughter play, her laughter juxtaposed against my past, her joyful world untouched by the horrors of mine, I know that the greatest victory of all is in the simple, unspoken promise of a better tomorrow all humans strive for. A promise I will carry forward, one heartbeat, one word, one story at a time.
