Amanda Brook Celar’s Of a not so civil war

We spent Sunday 31st March, the Catholic Easter day, with our friends Peter and Mitzi. This was the last time the four of us were ever together because a little over two weeks later, Ilija and I, had left Osijek forever. And they soon returned to America to live. The following week, on 7th April 1991, it was the Orthodox Easter Sunday and we were on our way to Ilija’s mother’s house in the village of Jagodnjak. We passed a wasteland of tree stumps that had once been an ancient forest of Slavonian oak where the deer who raided the farmer’s fields opposite had hidden before making their sorties on the crops. The forest had suddenly been cut down despite vociferous opposition from many of the local people. Slavonian Oak forests were usually almost never cut down en masse. Forest husbandry was a point of pride, and only carefully selected trees removed. It was sad to pass this barren waste, for the trees had been taken as a cash crop no doubt to pay for munitions. However, the sun was shining, and it was going to be another lovely day! Who could have guessed, on that bright, warm spring morning of 1991, that such acts as neighbours killing neighbours, hundreds of farms abandoned or the shelling of their villages were to being visited upon these people before another Easter Day?Or that such ethnic hatred preached by those with their own, particular agenda would bring the terrors that lay in store for us all? As we turned into Vida’s street, we saw all the tables and chairs set out on the road for an enormous street party. The sweet cherry trees in the gardens and lining the street were in full blossom and the neighbours were gathering to enjoy this celebration. The old and young all chattering, laughing and toasting each other with glasses of wine, juices, beers, and plum brandy. There were gaggles of geese, roaming freely over the grass verges and terrorizing anyone who dared get to get too close to them. A cacophony of squealing piglets, snuffling sows, lowing cattle and the insistent crowing of the roosters as they responded to other’s challenges as though vying for some champion’s title. There were so many smiling faces, and that is an enduring memory for me of that time. I had no idea or cared even less, which of Ilija’s friends and family that I was meeting were Croats, Serbs, Roma Gypsies, Hungarians, Czechs, and Poles. Any more than I would have made mental notes about ethnicity when meeting Scots, Irish or Welsh much less, Gaul, Celtic, Viking, Goth, Vandal or Anglo-Saxon peoples in the UK. I had always thought claims of a particular ethnicity in the UK very strange indeed, for who knows from where our ancestors came? We enjoyed the feasting, singing and dancing until long after dusk as gradually the tables and chairs were reclaimed by their owners until finally, there was just a small group of us remaining. I expected us to leave for home but instead Vida took my arm and leading me towards her house said, ‘leave the men to their affairs daughter, they need to talk.’ Ilija’s mother was a brave little person. She had survived the horrors of German occupation and Ustasa attacks on her village in her native Bosnia during World War Two. She also had a vivid imagination and had recently called the local defence force to report that a Croatian neighbour, with whom she had had a long -running boundary dispute, had a machine gun. Luka, of the local defence force, asked her how she knew that he was armed, and she told him that she could hear him repeatedly cocking and reloading the gun. Invited to describe the sound she said that it was similar to someone playing the accordion. Very wisely, Luka called Ilija who realised that his mother was afraid that all Croatians were now armed and the deep distrust of their proximity, a relic of her wartime sufferings, had again surfaced. Even in these troubled times, no one dreamt that they would have to leave Baranja. It had become a place of sanctuary and safety for Croatian Serbs. Ilija took me to see a parcel of land of around 2 acres that he had bought from the widowed sister of some friends in Jagodnjak. There we could build our home and future. One of our new neighbours was to be the Janus family. Milan Janus and Ilija were particularly close. His widowed mother was a most remarkable lady. She fed many of the Serbian refugees passing by her farm. These refugee families often came by any means available, and many only had the possessions that they had been able to carry. The celebration was to be another last time. The last time these neighbours would celebrate Easter Day together sitting beneath the trees. The last time some of them would celebrate Easter Day here because, some had fled to Serbia or, a distant country,