She saved people from the horrors of war: ‘We were connected by an invisible thread, my comrades were like a second family’

Snjeñana Grguriça; In 1991, at the age of 50, she graduated from the Medical Faculty in Rijeka and found a job in a hospital in Rijeka, when she was only 17 years old. It was then that the war broke out in her region, and she felt a strong urge to report to the Defense Office. She did not do so because of the pressure from her parents, who did not want their daughter to face the risk of being killed and actively join the ranks of the defense of the motherland. But Snjeścaron;ana was unstoppable. In the year before coming of age, she gained experience in the operating room, after which she applied to the Defense Office and arrived in Gospica on July 12, 1993. Dressed in uniform and carrying a medical bag, she was ready to rescue the wounded on the front line.

– I knew that Otojak and Gospiak defended my hometown of Rijeka, and I wanted to contribute to its defense. I was assigned to the 305th logistics base, serving as a medical support for the 9th Guards Brigade. Arriving in Gospiak it was a shock – from peaceful Rijeka, which had suffered only a few air raids, to a ruined city where fighting was going on day after day. Wounded, bloody bodies were not unfamiliar to me, because during my time working in the operating room, all the seriously wounded came to Rijeka. When I arrived, the Virgin was attacked. I flew to the balcony with a hairbrush in my hand, and today I don’t know why I needed a hairbrush. Everyone on that street hid in the basements of the houses, and my colleagues and I put on our uniforms, took our weapons and first aid kits, went down to the basement and said we had to go to the barracks. They tried to stop us, told us not to go anywhere, not to shoot, but we had to go to the barracks to make ourselves available. All the time I had that bag in my hands, I know it sounds funny, but at that moment it was a feeling of security for me. ‘We were not attacked, thankfully, and there was no one around except the two of us who were walking towards the barracks,’ Sniena recalled.

She went to Oluzh as a member of the logistics company of the 9th Guards Brigade after the head of the health department assigned health personnel to the units. He said he would never forget that night. On April 8, when they set out from Peru Cosa to their position. And that’s when she almost lost her life.

– I was in a light armored vehicle with three other comrades. Our vehicle was located on Jurkova down, as our direction of movement was towards the repeater. Between 2-3 pm, we received a report that there was a wounded person at the repeater. We went towards the repeater, but as the word … about the minefield, we could only follow the tracks of the tank. We had reached the end of the tank and train tracks … Stopped, two scouts came out to check how far we could go. They said we could go a little further. My colleague and I had just prepared an infusion and everything we needed. We had not even gone half a meter, and the right front wheel stepped on a tank mine, which blew us up. When two of us were sitting in the back, the force of the explosion lifted me up, and my head hit the roof. Everything was filled with smoke and gunpowder, I heard my colleague coughing, she was feeling herself for injuries – recalled Sneyana.

She heard the injured train driver crying and both young women rushed out.

– My colleague went towards him first, and we pulled him out, but that’s when I noticed in the bushes a Type VI anti-tank mine with an antenna. I recognized it, because I had received mine engineering training before the storm and knew that it could be activated by hand. But I didn’t know if there was a light… Whatever it was, I stood next to that mine and asked my colleague to pull the driver behind me out so that the mine would not be activated. We managed to repair his head injury and asked for help. They came to pick us up because our vehicle had a defect. They sent us back to the Montenegrin base, and the head of the medical department asked us to go to the hospital for a check-up, but we refused. We were fine, we were needed, because the boys were suffering and dying, and we kept moving forward – Snjezcaron, the eyewitness, added that if they had moved one more meter forward, none of them would have survived.

Her route ended at Udbina, which they entered on August 7, where she remained for four days.

– The highest number of wounded were on the first day. These were mostly minefield injuries, wounds in the limbs and abdomen. I didn’t even know some comrades, like the boy whose leg was torn off, until he called my name. In those moments you don’t think at all, as in madness, you just go, caring neither about family, life, nor safety. You just want to save one person’s life, that’s what drives you – Snježana explains.

He said he would never forget the moment they learned through Motorola that Knin had been released.

– It was such a wonderful feeling, it gave us so much energy and strength that we could hold out for another month. There was a lot of happiness and joy when Lovenak and Sveti Rock were liberated. I had just delivered medicines to a comrade with a fever, together with a colleague from the Artillery Rocket Division, and then, as part of the release, they loaded 40 rockets on the VBR. I stopped carefully to see how it was fired, not knowing that with each rocket launch, a part the size of an ashtray flew out. Fortunately, my comrade held me and did not hit my head – he recalled.

She added that the moment of Croatia’s liberation was indescribable and she had never felt anything like it.

– I am very proud of my contribution in the Homeland War. Your heart is full, so we are connected by invisible stories and threads. They are always in touch, they are my second family, especially people from my health department, with whom I work very well. Many people passed through the 9th Guards Brigade, and the greatest recognition and reward is when someone recognizes you and thanks you for saving their life. These are my comrades and the people I saved – Snjeścaron;ana says proudly.

She worked in the system until she fell ill and retired from the army in 2011. She lives in Gospi with her husband and son and is happy because she is finally a housewife.