European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

The partisans attacked us and we reacted.

The fascists and the snipers came

and emptied out the village, they killed more than 400 people, shot dead like dogs.

That's the truth, and we were around the hills checking if the others were coming.

After this desaster the fascists went away.

They had carried away women and children, they brought them to Fiume,

and then they committed this big massacre.

It was up to us bury the bodies, and so we did.

We threw them all in a hole, covered them with sawdust from the nearby sawmill

and then we burned down the village. That was a terribly sad thing we did.

Years later I have travelled through Yugoslavia three or four times as a tourist,

I knew a little Croatian, I could speak quite well.

I was talking to a bartender, he asked me why I knew the language

and I said “I have been here”.

He told me not to speak because the locals had no friendly attitude towards us after what we'd done.

That's the truth. And don't come tell me that if you go to war you go to help.

Who goes to war goes to do their own business, to do whatever they want, to be the master.

And don't come tell me that the soldier does good … the soldier sucks:

he fights the war, burns houses, rapes women, just like all of us have done.

That's the sad truth, that's why I don't want to see war.