WAR

Song: '..the valleys thunder and mountain moans, the guns resound,  battle is fought. The enemy's hand burns and destroys, the fire engulfs village and town...'   

In the beginning of April 1941 Yugoslavia was in the state of national emergency. I was trained in 'chemical cleanup', a member of Chemical Equip which consisted of students in their last year of high school. We were billeted to the hall of the main post office, where we stayed all day and night, sleeping on mattresses on the floor of the main hall. There was also the First Aid Equip, with stretchers and things needed to treat wounded. 

On April 6, 1941 we woke up with the sound of sirens. German plains were already attacking the city of Novi Sad. They primarily terrorized by strafing with machine guns anything that moved.   My group, 'chemical cleaning ', had no call to go out, however, our friends medicals went to a location close to an Orthodox cemetery where German fighter planes machine gunned a funeral, our medicals picked up whatever they could and eventually returned with blood soaked stretchers. The kids were pale, a half of them were girls. That was our first encounter with the war. We could see an occasional German fighter, flying low above the roofs looking for a potential new target.  I suppose they ran out of funerals. 

It was the week of reappraisal of who we are. I don't think we ever thought that we can really fight Germany's might, yet we were disappointed in dismal showing of our armies. Defeat was total, the country fell apart in few short days. In all this catastrophe I recall never loosing the belief in the final Allied victory over the  Axis.  That first week of 'war' we awaited with fear who will occupy the city of Novi Sad. Eventually it became clear that The whole of Vojvodina was given to Hungary for their cooperation with  Germany. Their army was slow in coming, most likely afraid of Serbs.  My brothers Ota and Ferdo  were mobilized and somewhere on the borders.