Regimentation of the Public

In question is preliminary research "for further wider examination of the opinions of all those in all parts of the armed forces" i.e. officers, soldiers, reservists, territorial defence, civilians employed in JNA, "including members of the families of AMP (Active Military Personnel) and civilians called back from the territories abandoned by JNA".

Having in mind the aims of this research, one could suppose that a representative and statistical valid sample was interviewed. However, those examined in the middle of December last year, were members of the guard of mechanized units of the Novi Sad corps, the one that "liberated" Vukovar.

Among the 311 combatants interviewed, 230 were soldiers and 81 officers. Most of the average guardsmen of the former Yugoslavia come from Bosnia and Herzegovina (40 percent) and Serbia proper (32.6). We do not know where the other 27.4 percent of the "representatives" came from, except on the basis of national structure (Serbs 67.4; Moslems 12.2; Montenegrins and Croats 4.3 each and - there is no data on the other 11.8 percent). 60.4 percent declared themselves as Orthodox; 9.1 as Moslems and 4.3 as Catholic, which means that every fourth guardsman has no religious affiliation or considers it unimportant. Apart from these questions is the fact that JNA guardsmen are secondary school leavers (45.2 percent with four, and 41.7 with three years of secondary school education), or with completed and uncompleted primary schooling.

"The Peoples' Army" did not print charts with the results of the research: VREME offers a picture of what the authors of the texts in question considered interesting to the reading public.

Without disputing the criteria for the choice of published results, it can be seen that most of the guardsmen did not react at all at the news of the imminent fighting, that they felt relieved on moving into the first battlefields because, in their own estimation, they were prepared for war, they were satisfied with the quality of training given them, and their war tasks and aims were clear to them. They were not only satisfied with their relationship with the officers and the latter's behavior on the battlefield, but with the moral support and example offered to them. They qualify their own behavior in battle as courageous (38.7) or very courageous (9.6) and this was influenced by the high (46.1) or very high (20) level of morale in the units.

At the news of the battle ahead, 22.1 of the soldiers felt depressed and very afraid (there are no data as to what the other 6.8 percent felt; this is all in all a third of the JNA elite interviewed). "Uncertainty" was the dominant feeling before battle (and this retroactively, on having survived, i.e. in a statistical acceptable volume they could be lying in their own favor), as given by 14.5 of the interviewees (with a quarter of those whose answers were not published this is a total of 39.5 percent of the combatants). Every twelfth guardsman considers that he was sent into battle without enough training (also, we do not know neither what 10 percent said, nor what the 17.7 percent of those unsatisfied with the quality of the half-year to a year's training when doing their military service, think). As against those satisfied by the care of the officers stand a fifth (21.8) dissatisfied and 9.9 percent whose opinions we don't know, except indirectly, in comparison with the fact that every sixth soldier of those whose answers "The Peoples' Army" gives, was dissatisfied with the behavior of the officers in battle; the thoughts of 19.6 percent are "missing". At the same time, the officers' behavior in battle - apart from positive - was judged as confused, indecisive, terrified, cowardly and treacherous

A quarter of the guardsmen interviewed hold that the moral support of the officers was small and a whole third (29.5 percent) is missing in the published answers. One (on a personal level "sensitive") question indirectly confirms the objectivity of the ordinary soldier: two-fifths cannot (or do not wish to) grade their own bravery in the Vukovar war. With the other 11.4 percent whose thoughts are not published, they make up the larger part of the polled soldiers. The same (?) two-fifths appear, if we calculated those who qualified the morale in their unit as low or otherwise (but their opinion is not published).

"The Peoples' Army", to give it credit, did not hide the fact that the "primary elements" of support to the Novi Sad guardsmen in battle was the camaraderie between the soldiers and their individual desire to survive. These two factors definitely take precedence over the ideological fog (from the answers offered), which is called "bravery" and "hatred for the enemy".

To a sensible army (not a contradiction in terms), nothing more than this little poll is necessary. To a stupid one, nothing is enough.