Krunoslav Keteleš

“That was the beginning of all madness. And I was blessed in disguise to sign in. They knew my father was a cameraman. They told me: ‚You also look in the camera, you can shoot, so you will aim at aircrafts.‘ Off I went. Originally I wanted to join the marines, but then suddenly there was no sea, no marine forces were needed, but antiaircraft defence. So they sent me to a specialisation, to shoot from my shoulder, mobile missiles called missile 2M. And actually after that, when I came back, they sent to a small hill above Peljesac so that I could see the sea. On my left I could almost see Dubrovnik, and Neum on right. And I was supposed to wait until an aircraft flies over. And shoot it down in case it was not ours. But back then no aircraft were flying at all. So I was just sitting there up on a hill looking at the sea, sweating in my boots and uniform.”

“When I figured it was not a normal army service, which is usually pretty easy to cope with, you go home for two weeks and then return and do as they say again, well this was not the case, it was war. And at that moment you become a mercenary rather than a soldier. When they sent us to the front, there were stories amongst people, fairy tales about masked special Croatian units coming at night cutting young boys´ throats. They simply try to paint an image of an enemy, so that you start to fear to defend yourself or fight again someone. As the shooting began and tanks started to run, then one began to fear for real. You feared something will shoot you and you will be dead. That is the kind of fear almost crippling; you are not able to think, nor walk, nothing at all. What do you do? It is war and you cannot do anything on your own. But that lasted, I don’t know, three of four days, weeks. Then it is over. And you stop walking in a crouching way, stop wearing the helmet, stop watching and listening to every sound, because it would have made you just crazy, and you resign.”