Brotherhood & Unity PBF: The War in Bosnia-Hercegovina 1992-1995

[Petey]

@Navaronegun

I won’t comment a whole lot here. I did a tour there with SFOR and 2 in Kosovo, and then later worked at Urosevic/Ferazai for the US while living in Skopje (hour-long commute!) for a year. So while recognizing Serb brutality and crimes for what they are; I am unfortunately blatantly aware of the equal levels of inhuman criminality on all sides in the conflict. To quote a United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) forensic pathologist I knew well, “You know its funny. People make all sorts of claims, but forensics and even DNA tests really can’t tell you the ethnicity of whoever is in a mass grave we find.”

So since my personality is infused with a soldier’s dark, resigned humor about such things and I expect no “packaging” because aside from bromides for an audience there is no such thing as a “good war” (and I never expect one to be portrayed as such, and kinda scoff when they are…) and would make flippant and to the vast world unfunny dark references to Ratko and stuff like that in the posts, I’m bound to probably incredibly and absolutely offend somebody or many people with my posts unintentionally, I’ll prolly be a bit quiet here. I know when to keep my mouth shut on the Internet.

It was such a complicated war. My wife’s father was a Serb and her mother was a Croat but they lived in Bosnia. Everything was great in her childhood until she was 15 and then all hell broke loose. Neighbors who were friendly were now poisoning her dogs and ransaking her house while her father was out driving serb soldiers around the countryside.

Her father eventually died to 3 Bosniak bullets and then in order to protect her family, at 16, she was recruted into the Croat army. She calls herself Serb because of her father but at 16 she was being trained as a sniper to kill Serbs. After a few months of that, she and her mother and sister fled to Spit, Croatia. They had to walk through forests for 4 days, eating leaves and berries and whatever else they could find as they had to flee as quickly as possible.

They were refugees in Croatia for a year and were granted asylum to the US. Her stories are horrifying and she has a hard time talking about it and definitely has PTSD over that whole time period. From great childhood to all out war and survival…I just cant fathom it.