Krunoslav Keteleš

“Actually until the unfortunate war broke out in Yugoslavia no one felt people speaking different languages or comes from a different cultural environment. I had friends and didn’t even know their nationality. There were Slovaks, Hungarians, Serbs, Macedonians, and Albanians, everything possible. Already at the elementary school they had different colour of skin and religion, but no one cared they were different. I went to the military service in 1991, when the war broke out. (...) In the world they kind of knew something is about to happen. But I lived in Vojvodina, which was multicultural and we still didn’t believe it. Still nobody admitted that something like this could happen. So I went to the obligatory military service saying to myself: ‚I will never flee anywhere, not to America or Australia.‘ We had a family over in Australia, our aunt sent us an air plane ticket, that I should be clever and fly over there, as she got a place to accommodate me, that they´d take care of everything. And I said: ‚Well all my friends are joining the army and so will I. Others survived so I will do as well.‘ Serving in the army took place four hundred kilometres away from Nový Sad in the current Bosna and Hercegovina, in the town named Trebinje, I already figured something was happening as most of the higher ranked soldiers were from Monte Negro, the Serbs and they started dividing us according to a kind of political doctrine, by our names, colour of skin, they guessed who may be Muslim or Croat. One had to be careful, what to say to whom, who he was, where he comes from and whom he believes.”

“That was the beginning of all madness. And I was blessed in disguise to sign in. They knew my father was a cameraman. They told me: ‚You also look in the camera, you can shoot, so you will aim at aircrafts.‘ Off I went. Originally I wanted to join the marines, but then suddenly there was no sea, no marine forces were needed, but antiaircraft defence. So they sent me to a specialisation, to shoot from my shoulder, mobile missiles called missile 2M. And actually after that, when I came back, they sent to a small hill above Peljesac so that I could see the sea. On my left I could almost see Dubrovnik, and Neum on right. And I was supposed to wait until an aircraft flies over. And shoot it down in case it was not ours. But back then no aircraft were flying at all. So I was just sitting there up on a hill looking at the sea, sweating in my boots and uniform.”