My War Memoirs: A False Flag (Chapter 3.)

 

The street was my world, a quiet, sun-drenched cul-de-sac that hummed with the easy, constant rhythm of childhood. From the time I could walk, my best friends were the two boys who lived just a few houses down; we were a trio, a trinity of scraped knees and shared secrets. As we grew, so did the street. New houses sprouted like mushrooms after a rain, and with them came new kids, expanding our small circle into a boisterous, inseparable clan of twenty or so teenagers. Our world was a simple one, built on mutual respect and the boundless joy of youth. It was an unspoken covenant, a sacred agreement that transcended any differences our parents might have had.

Then came the new family. They were different, yet not. They moved in from the Obrovac area, a region predominantly populated by Serbs, but they wore no markers of their faith or ethnicity. The four boys, all close to my age, slid seamlessly into our group. One was a bit older and soon drifted away, but the other three became constants, loyal friends with a quiet grace. We simply saw them as us, as fellow Croats, a natural assumption in our homogenous little world. We didn't know they were Serbs; they didn't know we were Croats. Our parents were the ones with the history, the ones who had witnessed the old Yugoslavia, a nation of people that didn't truly exist.

That fragile peace shattered in the brutal year of 1990. While we slept, dreaming of the next morning's adventures, the world outside our bedrooms changed forever. The news on the television, which our parents watched with furrowed brows, spoke of a rising tide of unrest. Rebel Serbs in Croatia, backed by the Greater Serbia policy from Belgrade, began to arm themselves with weapons from the Yugoslav Army. Croatia wanted to be independent, but Serbia, greedy for our coast and resources, wouldn't allow it. It felt like a story from a distant land, a conflict that couldn't possibly touch us.

We were teenagers, more concerned with school, music, and girls than with politics. The lines they were drawing on maps were meaningless to us; we knew only the invisible lines of friendship that bound us together. Then, one weekend, we went to a disco in the city. A smaller group, mostly teens from my school, surrounded my friends. I saw the glint of malice in their eyes, the clenched fists, and heard the whispered threats.

That’s when it happened. A terrible, gut-wrenching moment of awakening. I stepped, putting myself between my two groups of friends. My heart pounded against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat of confusion and defiance. Why were they doing this? What had changed from yesterday? At that moment, I chose. I had to. It was the only choice I could make. I didn't realize it then, but in that instant, the trajectory of my life twisted, changed forever by one act of loyalty. I told them to stop. What you're doing is wrong. The enemy is somewhere else. And that was it, thankfully. It was just a simple sentence that did the trick. I wasn't acting like a hero, and I didn't feel brave, but I was set on making sure there was no conflict. They had a good starting position of patriotism, but the wrong interpretation. It was a smaller group of like-minded individuals, hotheads, eager to prove themselves. This wasn't the mindset of the collective or other kids.

A lie took root in the fertile ground of ignorance and prejudice. My grandfather was a retired officer of the Yugoslav Army, a history that, to the poisoned minds of my peers, meant only one thing: I was a Serb, too. Why else would I defend them? The rumor spread like wildfire, twisting the truth into a grotesque caricature. The boy who sat beside me in class, the one who lived and breathed in my small world, now saw me as an enemy. They called my grandfather a "Chetnik," a slur from a war that ended before we were born.

My best friend on the street, a boy who knew me better than I knew myself, pulled me aside. His face was a mask of concern, his eyes pleading. "Just cool it," he begged. "Just for a little while, until this blows over. Don't hang out with them so much." His words were a balm, born of a protective instinct, but I couldn't understand. I couldn't see the world through his lens of cautious pragmatism. Friendship was friendship; it wasn't something to be negotiated or hidden away in a time of fear.

The whispers grew louder, and I felt the walls of my small world closing in. I was caught between two fires: the one stoked by the lies of my peers and the one burning within me, a fiery sense of justice. One evening, at a friend’s house party, a schoolmate approached me. He had been drinking, his face flushed with a mixture of alcohol and rage. Without warning, he slapped me, a sharp, stinging blow that echoed in the sudden silence of the room. It was unprovoked, a moment of pure, raw betrayal. I had been greeting him, smiling, completely unaware of the poison that had settled in his heart. Others rushed to pull us apart, but the damage was done. My cheek burned with more than just the pain of the slap; it burned with the sting of a friendship lost, of a lie believed.

What they didn't know was that I was a Croat, a boy who couldn't wait to turn eighteen and join the Croatian army. My patriotism was a quiet thing, a legacy from my father, a pure Lika from Perušić, and my grandfather, a staunch Radićevac who had never joined the partisans. My first grandfather, the one they used against me, had thrown up his hands in disgust when the Yugoslav Army fell under Serbia's influence and had pledged his loyalty to a united Croatia. But it was too late. The gossip, the lies, the sheer ignorance of youth had all conspired against me. They had created a story and had forced me to play a part I never asked for.

I was angry, but I wasn’t scared. The injustice of it all hardened my resolve. It only made me want to prove them wrong, to show them who I truly was. That false story, that slap, that deep-seated betrayal—it didn't weaken me. It strengthened me. It firmed my resolve to become a Croatian soldier and fight for a just cause. It was an anger born not of hatred but of a fierce desire to do what was right.

Soon after, the Serbian family, sent kids away, some to Germany, others to Sweden. They never returned, severed from a home they never truly wronged. And my parents, like me, stayed, caught in the eye of a brewing storm. As I grew older, I watched as my peers, the ones who had wronged me, disappeared. When the war came to our doorstep, when our city was besieged, the boys who had so proudly declared their hatred for me, were nowhere to be found. They hid behind their parents' excuses, their bravery a mere façade for a single evening's performance.

I, on the other hand, volunteered at eighteen. I was one of the few from my generation in that year to enlist, to put on the uniform and fight for a country that had, in a small way, failed me. That injustice, that slap, that quiet, brutal moment of betrayal, still lingers with me. I have forgiven them, as a Christian should. But the scars of that time remain, a constant reminder of how quickly friendship can turn to hatred, and how easily a false flag can be raised to justify a terrible deed.