My War Memoirs: Into the Twilight Zone (Chapter 19.)

 

Into the Twilight Zone

The transition from the makeshift barracks—a schoolhouse in Čepin, its walls now echoing the harsh reality of war instead of children's laughter—to the absolute darkness of the open road was instantaneous and profoundly disturbing. Our column, ten military trucks laden with soldiers, tools, and weapons for survival, extinguished all external lights the moment we cleared the periphery of the settlement. This deliberate, desperate act of plunging into a hopeless night was a necessary deceit, a prayer whispered against the all-seeing enemy eye.

In the beginning, while climbing onto the cold metal trailer bed, we were still held by remnants of civilian life—a few jokes, the nervous energy of the uncertain. But the instant the column ghosted forward, the sudden loss of light was a physical blow that instantly muted us. The fifteen of us, huddled among crates of ammunition and rations, became shadows to one another. You couldn't distinguish a face, but you could feel the presence of every man, every breath.

A deep, suffocating silence descended. It was so thick, so absolute, that one could say it was "the unsaid word, the thought not yet conceived." Every man who had sought comfort in a final cigarette snuffed it out in perfect, soundless synchronization with the vanished truck headlights. The tension was palpable, a sharpened edge—a knife you could cut yourself on.

The only sounds were the muffled rumble of the truck’s engine and the unconscious, ragged sighs of my comrades. These were not sighs of fear, though the specter of death was our uninvited companion. No, these were the deep, reflexive inhalations of a soldier fighting for mental clarity. They were conscious attempts to steady the nervous system, to pray silently, to draw in the oxygen needed for concentration.

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 This was, perhaps, the most insidious fear for a warrior: passivity. We were encapsulated in a rolling tin can, utterly helpless against a high-arcing mortar shell or a precisely aimed artillery projectile. The complete lack of control was terrifying. An enemy missile, dropping from the black sky, had the power to instantly erase us in a terrifying flash. Yet, a worse thought haunted us: the agony of a severe wound, the loss of limbs, the painful realization of one’s own disfigurement. Death was a swift release for many; agony and invalidity were the enduring nightmares of every soldier.

The trucks maintained a crucial distance—about fifty meters—a disciplined spread intended to mitigate damage. Should one be struck, the shrapnel would not reach the next, nor would a mortar round landing between two tightly clustered vehicles destroy both. Every precaution was a tacit acknowledgment of the risk.

We slid over a cleared area, an endless meadow that stretched toward the invisible line of confrontation, somewhere past Ivanovac and into the disputed houses of Paulin Dvor. Paulin Dvor was a grey vacuum, a lethal zone where a solid line had yet to be established, a place where control could shift with the morning mist. Our mission seemed straightforward: conduct reconnaissance, clear a few houses, and attempt to establish two new positions before dawn forced a tactical retreat. It sounded routine—a page from a military manual—when the order was issued back in the barracks.

Yet, as we approached Ivanovac, now safely under the Croatian flag, the air in the truck bed palpably congealed. The shift in atmosphere was a physical omen—a sudden drop in psychic temperature that signaled the proximity of danger. We all knew the line was gelatinous, unstable, and could instantly escalate into close-quarters, life-threatening combat. No soldier truly desires to meet the enemy face-to-face, to fight hand-to-hand in the mud.

The truck suddenly hiccupped, the driver skillfully shifting to a higher gear to keep the engine’s roar as muted as possible—a professional touch. In the vast silence, a faint, rhythmic echo of distant artillery could be heard, along with the brittle snapping of automatic rifle fire. The distance was indeterminate; the truck’s own sound muffled the details.

Then, an abrupt sensation: it was as if we had smashed through an invisible dome of security and relative peace, tearing through a veil and plunging into the absolute twilight zone of imminent battle. The change registered instantly in my chest, a cold, wrenching, painful lurch.

"Rifles locked, round in the chamber. Check!" Gajo’s voice, sharp and commanding, sliced through the darkness from the front of the trailer.

We checked. Every soldier slapped the side of his rifle, ensuring the bolt was forward and the safety engaged. It was a mandatory ritual born from a terrible lesson: the accidental wounding of a comrade on Sljeme in '91, struck by a nervous, inexperienced soldier whose finger slipped onto the trigger of an unlocked rifle while exiting a vehicle. The realization of that sudden, pointless loss—a life shattered by fear and inexperience—haunted our every move. A bullet in the chamber, but the rifle locked. This was the discipline that separated the living from the unnecessarily dead.

We drove perhaps another kilometer when the truck's brakes screeched, throwing us forward in a chaotic scramble of bodies and gear.

"What now?" Gajo spoke, his voice tense.

"No further," the driver's hushed reply came as he approached the trailer, his silhouette visible against the slightly less black horizon. "Shells are falling on the road, from all directions, every few minutes. We have to walk the last five hundred meters."

The reality of our situation crystallized: the safety of mechanized transport was over. Ahead of us, our men waited in the perimeter houses, from which we would immediately launch the patrol toward the volatile zone of Paulin Dvor.

"We must retreat before dawn. We're only going to scout and, if possible, establish a line. We'll then pull back, and others will replace us, as the night and the fighting will exhaust us," Gajo confirmed, his voice now imbued with the authority of command.

I scanned the darkness, searching for the familiar presence of Jura in the adjacent truck. I always sought his eyes; they were the gauge by which I judged my own composure. The need for that validation, for the unspoken reassurance that I was performing correctly, was my anchor.

We jumped. Not onto solid ground, but into a thick, cold pool of mud, a sucking, filthy baptism into the final phase of the mission. Above us, the sky was not calm; it was being torn apart by the angry, crackling sounds of incoming and outgoing fire.

In that breathtaking moment, covered in mud, the professional soldier recalled the maxim of Sun Tzu: "The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him." Readiness was all we had now. We were in the zone. We pushed forward into the unknown.