Protection with a Firearm

We always carried our 7.62 rifles. We always carried them, always carried them. There was always that threat, there was always that threat. Within the village or within the town of Srebenica or the surrounding areas and we used to go on foot patrols carrying our weapons. Go on vehicle patrols with a 50 calibre ready to fire in the event of that we are fired on. Now we never took anything we, because a soldier and what was going on in town, we never put our guard down. We had to be always on that professional side because you never knew what was going to happen, never knew. Things got pretty heated with myself, my platoon commander at that time, two Serb officers, things got pretty heated. They were going to call in a tank and then one guy stood back and I could hear him caulk his weapon and I went - oh here we go you know. So we had to do likewise, like take the weapon off our shoulder. We always slung our weapon cause that’s the peaceful thing to do, but we took it off and had our arms at ready and it was, they backed down. I think it was, they were intimidating us and if that’s what they were trying to do it worked. But we took our weapon of our shoulder too and said okay then, I’m not going to show you that you’re intimidating. I’m going to intimidate you and it did work. They backed down and let us through the checkpoint, and sometimes they would do that just to see how you would react as a foreign soldier.