A war veteran and former member of the special unit Grom recounted an incredible story of his post-war struggle with a pension system that couldn't process the fact that someone had voluntarily gone to war twice.
The military-police operation 'Storm', which began on August 4, 1995, and ended three days later, is considered the crowning achievement of the Homeland War. Around 200,000 defenders took part in it, each carrying their own personal story. One of them, the confession of a Zagreb war veteran and Croatian war invalid, stands out in particular because it reveals the absurdities defenders faced after returning to civilian life.
This former soldier went to war in 1991 as a nineteen-year-old, as a member of a special unit within the 2A Brigade Grom. He was wounded early in the war, and at the end of 1993, he decided to leave professional military service. "The real war took place in the first two years, and I was wounded right at the beginning. Those were two bloody years... The rest of the period until 1995 was more about individual operations, so at the end of 1993, I decided to leave the guard I had been professionally tied to until then," he told Dnevno.hr.
He soon found a job at a reputable Croatian company and tried to continue a normal life. However, when in 1995, while doing his civilian job, he learned that 'Storm' had begun, an indescribable urge awakened in him. "It's hard for me to describe that urge... Finally! After watching Topusko burn, after seeing the killed in Banovina, burned Croatian houses, and demolished churches, it was logical that I wouldn't hesitate for a second. I came home, took off my work uniform, called the company to give me annual leave, and took out my camouflage uniform from a cardboard box," he recalled.
After the operation and the euphoria of victory, the veteran returned to his job. Years later, however, the first signs of illness began to appear. After numerous tests and a suspicion by his general practitioner of post-war consequences, testing, along with the wound he had suffered, showed a 100% PTSD disability. The employer concluded that with such a diagnosis, he was unfit to work with people, and soon a proposal for his retirement followed.
But the real drama only began when he arrived at the Pension Insurance Institute in Trpimirova Street. "Armed with all the papers, I came to get the final decision on my pension, but from the look of the lady at the counter, I immediately realized something was wrong," he recounts. The clerk noticed something in his documentation that, for her, was an unsolvable contradiction.
"Look, sir, in your papers, we find some contradictions. I don't know how it's possible, but according to what I'm looking at, you were simultaneously an employee of a company and a member of a military unit?!"
After he explained the whole story and how he voluntarily went to 'Storm', the clerk's reaction became even more heated. "That's impossible. Twice a volunteer? How? That's not even regulated or foreseen by law!" she said, visibly nervous. Soon followed a proposal that completely threw the veteran off balance: to go to the HR department of his company and ask them to write him a termination for the period he was at war.
"It was clear to me that I was entering the toughest battle called bureaucracy. I simply don't have the nerves for such things; my company is about a hundred kilometers away, I know complications would arise there, and I decided on a simpler and faster solution. I went crazy, and when I calmed down, I asked: 'Can you just cross out Storm for me? If you can, cross it out!'" said the former Grom member.
Although the whole situation was absurd to him, this double volunteer feels no bitterness. When asked if he would do it all again, he readily answers: "Look, it sounds stupid, but yes, I would. I'm not a bitter type, but the lady from the pension fund and many others should ask themselves if they would be sitting in an office poking through the law books if Operation Storm had gone wrong."
Stories like this, as well as the memories of Domovinski pokret MP and Storm participant Kukavica, who told Direktno: "We had a rosary and we knew we were on the right side," testify to the pride, but also the challenges that Croatian defenders still face.
