After an emotional reunion with my grandmother I wanted to show my friend Ken — who accompanied me back to my homeland of Slovenia — some of the countryside that I remembered from my childhood. My intent was to visit the small forested hill behind our village, where we as children would sled down the snow-covered slopes. On one occasion I was hauled home bleeding after I collided with an oak tree.
The other thing that drew me there was a small mound at the edge of the forest where small crosses had been planted. It was the grave of four German soldiers, who had been caught by the partisans as they were returning home after the war ended. After a night of torture they were shot at the bottom of the hill and a nearby farmer was ordered at gunpoint to bury them and forget what happened. That sad history appealed to us, and we looked after the grave.
It was still there as Ken and I walked by with our Nikon cameras. I would take photographs on the way back, but was eager to get to the top of the hill to take a picture of my grandmother’s house from that vantage point. As we made our way through the forest I savoured the stately oak and beech trees, which further brought back my past. I remembered shaking their branches to collect chafer beetles that we fed to our chickens.
Suddenly we came to a barbed wire fence, which I did not remember. We followed it further uphill until a window opened up in the vegetation and I got my picture. Still intrigued by the fence, we followed it further. Suddenly I realized we were in trouble. Buildings materialized in the woods, and soldiers with machine guns. They were inside the fence and we were on the other side with our hands up. A thunderstorm was threatening above.
Their commander appeared and asked us what we were doing in a restricted area. It was lucky he was Slovene, as it was normal practice for the Yugoslav Army to ship their conscripts as far away from their native soil as possible. When I explained to him that I had just arrived for a visit to my native country from Canada, he turned friendlier and explained to me that in 1981 terrorists from Kosovo were out to sabotage various military establishments, and the one we had stumbled on was an ammunition depot that the locals could not approach within 500 meters. Those warnings were posted along the service road, but we had not followed that.
I am sure he believed us, but I had no proof as our passports were with my grandmother. As the first drops of rain spattered the forest canopy above, he told me he would need to phone Army Command in Belgrade for instructions. Visions of being forcefully drafted for my mandatory military service spun in front of me.
At that critical moment we were saved by a miracle. An old lady carrying pails was admitted by the soldiers through the gate. Seeing her, the commander asked her to approach us.
“Do you know these people, Mrs. Pintar?”
Her eyes looked us over and rested on me for a moment, and then she shook her head.
“But you must know my grandmother, Pavla Zupancic, who lives in the village below,” I offered, clutching at straws.
And then came the magic words. “You are Walter? I only remember you as a small boy, who used to play in the forest.”
The commander looked greatly relieved as now he could tell Belgrade my story had been confirmed. He was instructed to turn us over to the municipal police, who arrived with a van. On the way to the police station we picked up our passports. After a half-hour interrogation the examining officer looked at me sternly, and told me he had been directed to confiscate our films, a generous move, as the law allowed him to claim the cameras as well. But it was my lucky day. He smiled and offered that if I told him, on my honour, that I had no pictures of the army compound, he would believe me and let us keep our films. And that I could do without breaking my word.
My grandmother was greatly relieved when we were returned. Awful memories of soldier and police actions in the past still haunted her. She also told me about Mrs. Pintar, who was a widow now. She was struggling to keep the farm going after the death of her husband, and was able to collect kitchen waste for her pigs. It was her husband who had been forced to bury the unlucky soldiers.
The past reached out and drew me deeper into its embrace.
The story continues on Sept. 27, and in the weekly Retrospectives.
