Surviving an air strike

I was only 11 years old when NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999. The bombing lasted for 2.5 months and during that time every family in my neighborhood turned into a survival expert xD. We dealt with long and frequent power outages, there was no food in supermarkets and men had to share, smuggle or even steal gasoline from cars abandoned in the streets. Why steal gasoline? Because many had to drive out of town and visit the villages for food (God bless those farmers!). Some people went to the forests to find some wild berries, mushrooms and nuts. There are so many things I could share about that period of my life, but this time I will focus on the most vivid memory: surviving an air strike.

Now, when people think of war they usually picture non-stop stress and anguish. That is true to an extent, but people also find ways to adapt and relieve themselves off stress. In this case, we stopped hidding in basements and shelters after 2 weeks of bombing and continued a relatively 'normal' every day existence (normal in a sense that we would only hide underground when our military explicitly warned us via sirens). So, us kids continued to play all day long as if there was no war. In early May, while we were making tin rockets with phosphor fuel in order to shoot down the infamous F-117 (alas, the rockets flew only 50m upward lol), a bomb hit an underground military warehouse up in the hills. Folks said that it was a cruise missile, but I am really not sure about that info. Thing is, our house was only 200-300m of flight distance away from there and the explosion seemed like it happened right in our neighborhood. It didn't, but my friends and me felt the physical shock on our bodies. My lungs felt like they were being squeezed with a fist and I couldn't breathe in for at least 10 seconds. Once I did take enough air in, I could hardly get up and run, but the others yelled at me and sobered me up a bit. We all went into our underground shelter and stayed there until the planes flew away.

'War is hell' - wrote one Vietnam soldier - and I can relate to that, even though I was merely a kid during that time. The black smoke and red fire that suddenly rose up after the bomb hit really looked like something demonic, something out of hell.

Did anyone else here survive a war? Share your experiences if they are not too painful to remember.

 

Experience is not necessarily the best teacher. I have viewed wars on TV and I can say without mincing words that if negotiations to avert war fail, people should agree to disagree. I know how war situations look like complete with the gore, anguish and catastrophe. We humans have to be saved from ourselves especially in this era of sophisticated weaponry and WMDs.