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A cult of bravery and militarism exerts a grip so strong that military leaders might not be able to overcome it even if they wanted to. The young soldiers strut down the streets; they are treated as heroes. They are not willing to return to their old peasant lives. This is a victorious army that has not tasted decisive defeat.
The fighters live in what can only be called "Serbian reality," the world as defined by the propaganda, lies, myth and aggrieved sense of history that have been swallowed whole by the population. They are certain that the fascists and the Islamic fundamentalists are at their throats. They are sure that the Muslims and Croats who once lived next door are nothing short of monsters. An army medical officer explained that Croat children are taught that Serbs' most popular sport is killing children. A major insists all the pictures of atrocity victims are really of Serbs, but the world press lies and calls them Muslims.
/ Colonel Lika -- a nom de guerre -- who commands one end of the Serb salient, is absolutely convinced that the Germans are really behind the war. "We are completing a war against German expansion and the creation of a new world order," he says. "The Croats and the Muslims are the tools of a new German expansion and they can be sacrificed." He is not alone in this conviction. "This is a war against Germany and the Pope," insists another fighter. "Germany wants a warmwater Adriatic port." Never mind that this makes no logical sense. Though many who express this view are not old enough to remember World War II, the recounted horrors of Croat and German atrocities against Serbs have been kept as alive as yesterday. However implausible, many Serbs believe without doubt they are finally getting their chance to defeat the Germans and avenge one of the most tragic chapters of Serb history. The wounds, anger and even the dread remain fresh after 50 years. Pleads an impassioned major: "Why can't you understand the Serbs' fear?"
Up on the bicycle path, Nenad Gustimirovic, 35, carves cigarette holders when he is not taunting the Muslims just opposite his firing position. He used to be foreman in a marble quarry that now lies in Muslim territory. He is quick-witted, hearty, good with his hands, and loves to laugh. He has rigged a church bell to an old electrical tower behind the ruined chalet the Serbs have transformed into a machine-gun bunker. "I ring it because it annoys the Muslims," he says. "They open fire when they hear it. We just laugh at them."
At night he often exchanges insults with the enemy, only a few hundred yards away. "They ask what we are going to do when they come to Doboj," Gustimirovic says. "How are you coming to Doboj, I ask them. They shout back that America will act soon." We just laugh, he says.
Occasionally, farther up the line, where the Serbs are fighting Croats, there are meetings in no man's land. Many of the fighters know one another by name and occasionally they meet and talk -- careful always to keep their guns at their hips. But that does not happen in his sector, Gustimirovic says, because the other side is Muslim and cannot be trusted.