Killing the Soul

"I carried my chopped off left hand in my right hand. There was no medical help available except for a guy who finished his military service a few days before and had come to our unit in the capacity of an aidman. He shook like a leaf and couldn't do a thing. The trucks had no ambulance signs. We were driven by the reservists, who were mostly drunk: our driver collided with the Army tank, the truck doors fell off and were held by the injured until we reached the hospital in Banja Luka. I am afraid. Not even after two operations does the arm show any signs of life. After everything that has happened, the worst thing is what I have witnessed in Croatia. What was I doing there? My conscience would be cleaner had I defended my home town of Bosanska Gradiska." Another story: "The mine blew my leg away in Struga. I didn't know whether I was dying, I just watched the blood gushing from my boot. When the doctor is not around, we provide first aid for ourselves. My friend was crying as he was trying to bandage the bone hanging out from what used to be my leg", says the reservist from Banja Luka. "They transferred us to the hospital in trucks, but 'our men' were stopping and harassing us along the way, on the so-called liberated territory, so much so that my friend had to fire a rifle in the air for them to let us through. The truck had no ambulance stickers, and the ones who were stopping us didn't let us drive through." A reservist from Raska (in Serbia) who was wounded near Vukovar tells his story: "I don't know why the Army doesn't publish the data of the following kind: 'My unit had around 114 soldiers in the clashes around Vukovar. There are but fifty of them who are still there. That means that sixty four of us are dead and wounded." The volunteer (23), whose leg was blown away by the grenade at the Vukovar front: "The ones who happened to be there didn't dare come near me. I received first aid in Negoslavci (6km from Vukovar) and my leg was amputated in Sremska Mitrovica (the Vojvodina region)." All of the interviewed injured reservists are full of praise for the staff of the Military Hospital (MH) in Belgrade. The official information service of this hospital has announced that since November 14 they have admitted and treated around a thousand injured and that the incidence of death is less than two percent. To the man on the street this figure means 20 deaths at the most. Officially, every unit in the "front" has a medical unit in the rear security detachment. The public has been informed that the medical unit in Negoslavci is "treating" the injured whose evacuation from the trouble spot lasts an hour at most, and a lot of the time not more than ten minutes. An official from the MH is, however, sensibly explaining that "first of all, the wounded can not immediately be reached; as a rule, the clashes are in progress and the professional help can't be given in the space of ten minutes." The mistrust of the official information from this hospital was established two months ago when the doctors (and colonels) Stanislav Nikic and Aleksandar Ivanovic went on hunger strike because of the prevailing situation in the country, and especially because of the approach of hushing up the information on the horrid consequences of this war. The strike ended after the public protest a few days after, but the public has come to know that the number of casualties is much greater than the official figures suggest. The Military Hospital staff talk about the "wandering" excursions of the relatives through the mortuary, the mental distress they are experiencing when encountering their dead relatives, friends, husbands and children. "Every time we hear that 'three' soldiers were killed and that 'seven' were wounded, we feel like strangling someone: the number of the injured who pass through our hands is many times greater than the official figures". There are at least three sources to support this claim. Firstly, the citizens of New Belgrade are seeing up to twenty "death helicopters" flying over from Batajnica (the Belgrade military runaway) to the Military Hospital. Then, there is the number of death certificates in the daily papers. Finally, there are the sparse anonymous testimonies of the doctors. For example, in the hospital in Novi Sad nobody was willing to talk to the VREME reporters: the staff are under constant stress, they have no time to rest, some of them have not been home for days and, finally, "whatever I say leads me directly to the front." Towards the end of October, the unofficial estimate of the ones who are considered to be "missing in action" has risen to 4000 people. "The real figure is seven, eight or even nine times bigger then the official figure", says doctor Gojko Miskovic. "I personally believe that the number of casualties in this war exceeds ten thousand. Even this figure may prove to be underrated. The evidence is underrated. It is partly due to the overall situation, 'successful' of 'organization' and 'mobilization' being a case in point here. But much more significant is the withdrawal of the data from the public." And now we come to the issue of drugs. It is clear enough that the anesthetics are in short supply, as well as bandages, the disinfectants, the bottles of blood, the blood derivatives, the serums for gas gangrene, the wound sewing material, the sedatives, powders and sprays, antidepressants etc. Apart from this, the reports from the front talk about the most banal and the most horrible flaws: the ones in the front lines are not only totally unprepared for battle, there are also the ones who have not had a medical check-up and were not vaccinated and the ones who are directly endangering the lives of others. The Serbian Medical Association has added to the confusion by issuing a manual called "The Real-Life Examples Of the Psychologically Traumatized Cases": a soldier who has learnt that his home town where his parents live has been bombed should be treated as follows: his Army superiors should exhibit an authoritarian attitude, they should give him all the moral support he needs, the extent of the tragedy should be played down and "his superior should place him with two steady men, who ignore his behaviour (shivering, throwing himself on the floor, escape attempts, banging his gun against the ground) and who are telling him that in case he continues with such behaviour he will be deprived of his arms and that he will be put in the immediate presence of the enemy". All the "recipes" take into account the appeals to the patriotic consciousness of the injured, which in severe cases means electrotherapy treatment for the psychogenic paralysis. Of the eight above mentioned cases, six were sent back to their units within 48 hours. The previous two world wars enriched world literature with the theme of "the lost generations". We will have enough invalids of our own. And they will be literate. It is not the question of whether they will have any readers, but more whether they would want to say anything. It is more likely, however, that the "historians", the "memoarists" and the "participants" or, even better, the "academicians" will be explaining to us what was is that sealed our fate. And how we should be glad for it.