Witness to the Storm: 'Every Year I Remember Those Who Are No Longer Here'
Nenad Šarić Giga, a 71-year-old veteran from the Šuplja glava position, recalls the death of Brigadier Ivan Čanić Baja and the importance of humanity in war.
Nenad Šarić Giga, a 71-year-old veteran from the Šuplja glava position, recalls the death of Brigadier Ivan Čanić Baja and the importance of humanity in war.
On the eve of another anniversary of the military-police operation Storm, Nenad Šarić Giga, a 71-year-old volunteer in the Homeland War, teacher, athlete, and musician, shared his harrowing testimony with Novi list. Through the story of losing comrades and the bitterness of displacement, his message remains focused on what matters most, people.
Šarić Giga, whom they call "the last troubadour and romantic of Lički Osik," recalled a childhood and youth interrupted by war. He and his elderly father Ante, an honest Dalmatian partisan who continued working at the "Marko Orešković" factory after World War II, were expelled overnight from their hometown, renamed Teslingrad, by former friends.
Although he could have gone to his brothers in Germany, he chose to stay in Lika. "I couldn't allow myself to abandon Lika and Croatia. I was happy to be able to watch the town of my youth from the Šuplja glava position, less than a kilometer away," he recalled. There, as a sergeant in the 118th Brigade, later the 118th Home Guard Regiment, he spent nearly the entire war, repelling hundreds of enemy attacks.
The key moment of his memory is tied to August 3, 1995. That evening, his unit was visited by the commander, Brigadier Ivan Čanić Baja. "Anyone who knew him will confirm he was a superb officer, commander, and man. He surprised us a bit when he said, all happy: 'Just let us finish Storm and end this damned and imposed war!'", Giga recounted. That was the first time he heard the name of the final operation. The unit was deployed along an eight-kilometer stretch, all the way to the Pogledalo position.
Sadly, that was the last dawn for Brigadier Baja. He was killed in a direct attack near Široka Kula on Vujatovo brdo on August 4, 1995, just four days before his 40th birthday. Before Storm, he had fought at Tulove grede and in the Medak Pocket. He was the highest-ranking officer of the Croatian Army killed in the Homeland War and was posthumously promoted to the rank of general.
Throughout the war, Giga was accompanied by Lieutenant Zoran Trtica from Gospić, an artillery officer whom he says is a "true miracle" for not being wounded or killed. While many comrades faltered after the war, Trtica found peace in art.
"I often joke that my friend Zoran was a whiz at artillery during the war, then after the war with a tractor and chainsaw, and now he's pleasantly surprised us all by swapping all that for a paintbrush and easel," Giga said. His fellow townspeople recently saw 52 of his paintings in Gospić, and he presented his first exhibition in Otočac. Before the war, Martić's paramilitary forces had detained him several times because he seemed suspicious, he was quiet, didn't meddle in politics, and just did his job.
Giga has now returned to Lički Osik, where he lives with his son Ante, and he's especially pleased that his address is on General Ivan Čanić Baja Street. Still, he doesn't hide his bitterness. "One of the injustices I can't stand today is that it sometimes seems to me that we Croatian veterans have become a nuisance to someone, that we're just a number. We mostly live very modestly and ask for nothing," he emphasized.
His life philosophy, shaped by war and the works of his favorite writer Remarque, boils down to a simple thought: "Ranks don't matter, people do! I lost two soldiers during the war, and that's something you don't forget. Every Storm, I remember all those dear people who are no longer here."
