I am riding along on a minor road on the approach to Vukovar and when suddenly I notice the houses on either side of the road are all pock-marked by shrapnel and small arms fire. Some have been patched up, some have only been re-glazed. I remember the monstrous TV images of that war and I feel numb as I slowly ride on, imagining what the house-to house fighting must have been like.....already 20 years or so ago now. Vukovar was the scene of a devastating 3 month siege followed by one of the
worst massacres of the war when it was finally over-run by Serb forces in 1991.
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| This water tower is now kept at as a war memorial. A much better photo here |
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| Just visited the war graves on the outskirts of Vukovar.....and feeling washed out |
I just can't get my head around how neighbours, all fellow countrymen in the former Yugoslavia, could inflict this on one another. No holding the middle ground on the road from communism to nationalism.
To an outsider everything appears 'normalised' now, although the experience must be raw to so many.
I'm suddenly an EU convert, only because I optimistically believe that jointly it's members have enough political and economic clout to curb any warmongering ideas of an individual member state...........hopefully.
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| A pyrrhic victory for Serbia |
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