What was your lowest point while serving in the military?

That was when my unit had to retreat from our base after twenty four days of combat.

This happened a few days before NATO started their bombing campaign over Kosovo. The Serbs had undertaken a major offensive against the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the northern part of the country with the objective to remove everyone, guerrilla fighters and civilians.

We tried our best to defend our positions, sometimes with mobile hit and run tactics and other times with more conventional delay operations.

My squad a few weeks before the end of the war.

We were up against a mechanized brigade with tanks and heavy artillery while we often had less than thirty fighters in our ranks.

After three weeks and three days, we saw that it was over. The enemy was everywhere and we were less than ten soldiers. In the morning, we brought our backpacks to a safe place in the mountains and descended to our base for the last time.

Two enemy tanks showed up and a shell almost hit one of my comrades. He wasn’t hurt but he couldn’t hear anymore and we had to bring him to a safe place. A messenger told us that the enemy had started moving around us. I went up a hill from where I could see a Serbian armored personnel carrier driving up a road behind us.

We had to leave. When we went to the place where we had left our backpacks, we came under heavy artillery fire. We lay flat on the ground for maybe fifteen minutes and then got up to walk to a nearby village.

I felt utterly depressed. Our base was gone and we had no idea where to go. The enemy was already in our back. I remember that while I walked, my chin literally hung down on my chest. I hadn’t slept for days.

Usually, I was always involved in what was going on around me but not this time. I felt hopeless. To make matters worse, it was early spring and still very cold and we also had no food with us.

Although I thought that I wouldn’t be able to fight anymore, when we arrived at the next village, we started preparing new defensive positions. We fought there for another three days before we had to retreat again. Then we went to another village and after that to another one. Fight and retreat.

The fighting would last another three months before the war was over.