I spent four months walking on crutches, like a run-of-the-mill wounded soldier. Soon the rubber tip on the right crutch wore down, and the crutch made a distinct sound. My dog would recognise the sound of me from a hundred metres away. I called him Humpy Horsie, because he’d started ambling after he survived distemper and had a hump on his back due to his unnatural gait. We lived in that house as refugees. Horsie would happily jump on me, together with a pack of neighbourhood strays. He obviously liked the smell of alcohol, I always came home drunk. There was no way I would ever fall, although I walked on three legs. After the fight with Ramo Puškar, when I hit him over the head with it a few times, the crutch was all bendy like a downhill ski pole. The morning after, my old man straightened it on the wood splitting block with an axe.
It was a joy being wounded. You get cigarettes in hospital, the meals are good and regular. Your friends come to visit you with cans of Skopsko beer. Some of them probably envy you. Girls, too, eye you differently; you’re a seasoned warrior now. Tales of your heroism go round, you hog the limelight at piss-ups. You tie your hair into a ponytail with a stocking suspender your friend gave you. Politicians hold you in high esteem. They give you two boxes of Macedonian Partner cigarettes. You give a TV interview. And all that because your girlfriend got married in Germany and it became all the same to you whether or not you died on the next line you were sent to.
* * *
A clump of ash, half the length of a cigarette, falls onto the shiny tip of my boot, polished with lard. The sun is coming down from its zenith to our side of the river. In the hillside neighbourhood of Tećija, a single-storey house hit with incendiary bullets is burning. It’s much easier this time round, we move down the main street, lined with houses, no need to run. Like a demarcation line, the Una splits the town in two. We got the shabbier part, with endless factories that dream and croak in the fog, and the railway station that phantom trains speed through. Most of us used to live on the other bank of the Una, now out of reach.
‘What are we supposed to do on Sokolov Kamen?’
‘Nothin’, we’re goin’ to harvest some mushrooms. Caesar mushrooms are the size of an ’andball up there.’
‘Fuck Caesar mushrooms,’ Žile persists ‘how far is that feathery cunt’s crag anyway?’
‘Round an ’our and an ’alf,’ shouts Zgemba.
‘It’s an op, no two ways about it,’ Žile continues ‘across the Una, through the mine fields, then attack.’
‘Well, are we commandos, or wot?’ Zica speaks up.
‘Right you are, Zica, in this episode we all die, like on telly.’
* * *
We’ve passed through our sparse minefield. We’re descending a steep canyon. Down below flows the Una, snake-like, green and blue. A group of commandos and a company of trenchies are already on the other side. We’re going as a supporting unit, to relieve the commando platoon that broke their line. Before the war this place was an enormous hunting ground. Sokolov Kamen, falcon’s bluff, looms high above us. It’s a giant block of rock stuck into the foot of Mala Gomila hill. Gravel slides from under our boots and rolls down, drawn by gravity. After fifteen minutes of descent we reach the railway. We pass underneath it through a small underpass. I duck down to dodge a cobweb. The drops of dew caught in it preserve the light of the morning stars. Hari the Kike and Neđo Head of Mutton are dragging the body of a dead commando. Kike gives me about two fistfuls of rounds. We’re low on ammo. I’ve got only one magazine, the one that’s already in my rifle. Žile, ever an enthusiast, is going without a gun. Bajrama’s Boyo is kitted out like a brave, only his tomahawk has got a rubber head, so he’s slinging a bolt-action M-48 over his back. Before the war, Bajrama’s Boyo chopped up his front door with a chainsaw when the police came to evict him.
Just before we climbed down the canyon we ran into our brigade commander, down by the Mijić family houses. He swaggered about as if he’d just captured three-quarters of the known universe. Caesar and Napoleon were mere pawns compared to him: the quintessential stuffed peacock. His left hand never let go of his Motorola, whilst he gesticulated lavishly with his right, as if the other person could see him. He told us there was an abundance of weapons and ammunition waiting for us on the other bank. An HQ signals officer gave Zica a Motorola along with brief instructions on how to use it. After that we called all radios Motorola, because that was the first brand we were introduced to.
The corpse Kike and Muttonhead carry is dressed in an American camouflage uniform. The man had come from Croatia, where groups of our people, mostly guest workers from Western Europe, formed units and trained. He had crossed the entire occupied Croatian territory on foot and met his end here.
We cross the river on an improvised raft slapped together out of two lorry tyre inner tubes connected with rope, floored with beech planks. A steel cable is stretched from bank to bank. At our crossing point the river is only twenty metres wide. We go one by one. The Una is low in September. Rocks of tufa, overgrown with reeds, jut out of the water. The bank is rocky, doesn’t lend itself to landmines. We climb up to the asphalt road. It is thinly coated with moss. For thirty minutes we climb up the canyon. The climb is almost alpine. Bajrama’s Boyo reluctantly discards his rubber-headed tomahawk. Halfway to the plateau we meet the company medic and a fighter who had heart palpitations from fear. Like two jackdaws they’re resting on a tree growing out of a crack in the rock.
‘Look at that cove, as sallow as a lemon,’ Zica says to me.
‘The devil’s stroked his fore’ead.’
‘Done for, poor sod.’
The cardiac patient was completely lost. He stared at us, unable to say anything. His lips were as white as if he’d kissed a vampire.
At the plateau the situation was less than brilliant. A hundred and fifty men were pushed into three dells, like sheep in uniforms. They held a mere three or four hundred square metres of space. Like three coffee cups of territory. Every now and then they were being plastered with cannon. A cannon shell is super fast, immediately after the firing comes the detonation. The officer in command at the plateau was as befuddled as a pigeon that’s just shat itself. He was looking at the map, trying to explain something to Zica. Vowels, consonants and spit came out of his mouth at random. Word fragments. Just as we were about to go on recce, a salvo from a multiple rocket launcher crashed onto our positions. Panic was army general. Men dropped their guns and fled down the cliff. Žile took an M-53 machinegun with a long belt from a fleer. He pined for a machinegun like someone pines for a sports car. Being a machine gunner was a matter of prestige. Seventeen trenchies were WIA, some slightly, some severely. We fancied ourselves proper dogs of war, but that bubble burst like a hymen when the rocket launcher opened up. I was overcome by low fever. We took up positions behind hornbeam trees and waited for the infantry assault. I helped Žile by holding the ammunition belt of his five-three. They fired sporadically and randomly at our tight line. Bullets ricocheted and whizzed high up in the air, knocking bits of bark off the trees which landed on my hair. Driven by fear we returned fire, we fired like mad. It looked as though they were putting out probes. River fog was driving down the canyon. Night found us lying behind the trees. None of us had slept, because of the cold, and the rush of the skirmish. In the dark, our eyes were out of combat. Our ears still had a function. We fired at every noise coming from in front of us. Dormice leapt from branch to branch screeching like children. In the morning, Žile announced that his haemorrhoids