Bosnia Nights

Prologue
The rockets fired every so often briefly lighting up the sky. We were running through a town trying to take cover. I was a Poručnik in the VRS can’t say I was proud to fight under Mladić nor can I say I was proud to have fought in the war. I was called up about a year and a half ago and they gave me the choice to prove myself in an officer school. I graduated after six months. A lifelong friend of mine, Boris Kovač was under my command, the kids back home had nicknamed him Mišo because his mother is a Croat but the joke wasn’t well thought of since she’s from Istria not Dalmatia. A number of my men were students including our engineer Zupan and our medic Bobienski. We were all conscripted except for a farmer named Vuk Stojanović who volunteered for the sake of killing Muslims and Croats to suit his Chetnik lifestyle and sadly for him I haven’t committed such crimes and don’t plan either. In the distance we then seen a church and graveyard were we would take cover from the artillery.

Chapter 1
Chapter 1 We began to rest as we were out of aim of the artillery. “That’s our own damn artillery bombing us” shouted McCourt as he lay down to take a drink of water. “What are you reading Jackie?” Babić asked Zhang who before answering glanced then said “It’s a World War 2 memorial”. Stojanović then turned to Zhang and said “Hej Valter what is wrong with your eyes?” then Zhang answered “Nothing why?” and Radić said to Stojanović “Chinese naturally have eyes like that” then Babić continued “Yeah Draza unlike your family the Chinese don’t get their eyes through incest like how your cousin got his”. We all laughed but Vuk got up and was about to hit Babić but I threatened him by telling him he “would be shot if he didn’t calm himself”. Boris then went over to me and asked “Hej Milan do you remember that summer when we went to the Montenegrin coast?” and I replied “Summer of 87 how could either of us forget”

I remembered one particular day as it was yesterday. Me and Boris were walking down a beach trying to pick up girls like any single man would do. We walked into a bar and asked for two cokes despite Boris’ best efforts to try and prove/lie we were eighteen. A pretty girl was sitting beside us. “Hej Milan” said Boris pointing his head towards her and I turned around “Zdrava” I said to her and she turned around greeted me. She smiled at me and we started talking a bit. She eventually asked me my name and I told her “Milan Nikolić” and I told her I was from Bosnia and where about. She never knew as it was only a small town of 4,257 people but she was from a similar sized town in Montenegro. She also told me her name “Marija Vidić” and asked me if we could meet later. I did and I went back the next year to find her after a whole six months of slagging from Boris between then. It would later turn out me and Marija would marry after convincing her to move to Bosnia and have two children together, Zlatan and Milena. Now however I wish I had stayed with her in Montenegro.

The artillery stopped and we decided to move on towards our objective which was very unclear at this point.