Muzzling the dogs of war may be a mistake: peaceful Slovenia is dramatic contrast

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 1, 1993 by Tim McCarthy

They were on their way to Tomislagrad in southern Bosnia (a town that bore the Muslim name of Duvno until it was "ethnically cleansed") to join another Croatian army unit. Morgan had served in the British army and both were ex-French Foreign Legionnaires.

Morgan, a burly 36-year-old in a sleeveless undershirt, scars stitching his arms and shoulders, said he had never seen such a brutal conflict. "We saw one bloke crucified to a tree," he said. "I have photographs."

Too many of those doing the fighting have no military training or discipline, he said. But the war came home to him hardest after he got "whacked" and was in a Croatian hospital recuperating. Mutilated kids were enduring surgery under primitive conditions. "The toilet door was hitting the surgeon in the ass while he was operating," Morgan said.

What about the wooden cross he was wearing? Was he religious? No, I'm an atheist," he growled. "I wear it because a woman gave it to me. That's what counts. Music, a good woman and a book."

But why were they fighting for the Croats if there was no money in it?

Lawson, an older, softer-spoken man with tattooed arms and a slight middle-European accent, said he was taking a BA in computer science when friends told him he should come to Yugoslavia for a look. "You come," he said, "you see your friends get whacked and then you can't go back. All my friends from when I came in 1991 are either badly wounded or dead."

Both men compared themselves to volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. Many would say they are not fighting on the Republican side, if that is the case.

Here they were, set to kill Muslims, so broke they had to sell a flak jacket to a photographer to make bus fare (the jacket was so filthy and sweaty that it stunk up my hotel room when the photographer shared the room with me that night). Where was the sense in it?

"To play chess, read poetry, and wander the world at will." Lawson almost sang the words. It seemed that, for him, that was sense enough.

"Dogs of war," such men are sometimes called.

For other combatants, there was even less sense. Beneath some pines near the Split soccer stadium one night, we talked with three Croat soldiers there to keep an eye on us, one of whom, a law graduate, spoke English. He said he didn't know whose war it was, but he was trying to preserve some sense of friendship.

The oldest soldier said he had accepted that Muslims and Serbs were enemies, but he was not sure where that idea came from.

Two soldiers said they were atheists. The youngest said he was Catholic. An American Pacifist asked him how he could call himself a Catholic and still carry a gun. The young soldier looked perplexed, as if he had not understood the question. Finally he said, "Because it is my destiny."

His response was typical. There is little (or no) room for pacifism in Croatian Catholicism.

But Catholicism, pacifist or otherwise is seldom foremost on the minds of most Croats. A Croat barman on the ferry from Ancona, Italy, to Split said it was irrelevant. In 1991, sailing from Italy to Dubrovnik, he had come under heavy fire and said he would never go to Sarajevo because it was too dangerous.