PETER STREET, WAR POET • FEATURE

Y O U R A U T I S M M A G A Z I N E 29

there, alone, in the middle of two or three hundred people, me and my body felt strange. Deeper than an ordinary tingle, turning into a shudder with a tankful of fright thrown in for good measure. After some army rations were fi nished and fags killed, we were back on the road.

IN CROATIA Our base camp was in the huge, grassy grounds of an international hotel just outside Zagreb. For the fi rst couple of days, we rested there with a pot full of sun cream. My tent felt uncomfortable. It was in a perfect line alongside the other tents.

The following day, I saw refugees – mothers, thinner than thin – carrying plastic bags full of pigswill, their dresses like shrouds. No breast to feed their babies. Women were dying on their feet. I gave my water and

War-damaged silos in Vukovar, Eastern Croatia

Something was itching my eyes to stareover at the machines.

Only I seemed to hear the bleepingyet my whole family was standing thereand everyone who had ever lived,

the whole universe even, all screamingnot to look. Yet the bleeping seemed

to bounce off every childhood pictureand get-well cardin the Zagreb hospital:like a ball to my feet.

Then I made my mistakeand looked at a face,a kind of no-face with holes for eyesnose, mouth,

legs missing from the knees downstill stuck to all those bits of shrapnelsomewhere, which banged her life apart.A little girl, bandaged

in mummy, almost pretty.Some nurse had taken an agegetting each lap perfectso proud that when we look

we might still see a person,someone whole.

BOMB DAMAGE