“Memories” is a true story about an Iraqi fighter pilot who was captured by ISIS. I got in touch with this man through a good friend from the US who studied to be a pilot with him. We arranged a facetime meeting and talked for around two hours. He moved me deeply. Not only his story but also him as a person. A beautiful and calm soul that had gone through brutal things in life, but was now in a very good place. He wants to stay anonymous. He told me the story of how he was captured, tortured and then thrown into a dungeon with other prisoners. They were told when they would be killed and how. They were just sitting there waiting for the day to come. Every day jailers came down to the dungeon to pick up one soldier to kill. And every day they would come back to show the dead body to the other prisoners so that they could see what was waiting for them. I asked the difficult question, “if and how did you manage to use humor in such a dark place?” And he answered, “the human mind works like this - when you know you are going to die, you want to tell someone your story. And mostly, the happy sides of your story”. Because of his calming, trustworthy and listening nature, he became the person in the group of prisoners that everybody used as a sort of therapist and they told him their story. And they laughed. This painting tries to reflect him sitting there with his mind and thoughts, his head hidden under a bag that jailers had placed on him. He is listening to his friend who is laughing while telling his life story and holding his own skull in his hand, knowing he will die. His neck is already half-cut and bleeding, but still good memories make him laughing. Fun emerges even in the darkest places. 

This painting is inspired by the brutalities that occurred in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In the painting, a couple of US soldiers take a picture of themselves, a selfie, in an intimate pose. Behind them, the tortured and exhausted bodies of their prisoners lay on top of each other in a sort of human pile that makes it impossible to distinguish them and see their faces, a representation of the dehumanization they suffered.

During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the US Army and the CIA committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, and the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi.

The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs. The incidents caused shock and outrage, receiving widespread condemnation internationally.

Soldiers deployed for war train and prepare for all kinds of danger and even death – but sometimes they find love.

This painting is inspired by the story of an American soldier who unexpectedly found love while serving on a small outpost in the remote mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Here she became friend with an Afghan interpreter who was always kind and helpful to all those around him. She admired this about him.  

After her tour ended, the two remained friends and stayed in close contact. Overtime, the friendship grew into something more and two years later, the once US soldier returned to the tiny outpost in Afghanistan, but this time as a civilian to get married. The two married in a simple wedding and honeymooned in the capital Kabul. 

This story touched me as it shows that love can be found even in the toughest and darkest of places. It shows that amidst the chaos, carnage and horror of war, we as humans still have the desire for friendship and love. In my painting, you see this couple on their wedding day with the groom in traditional clothes, but the bride in her military uniform, a reminder of how war brought them together. 

On the evening of September 8, 1943, an Italian soldier in the guardhouse of the concentration camp Rab (northern Adriatic) shouted: “The war is over, let’s go home!” Some soldiers have left the camp, and after a rally in the so-called Hunger Square, the inmates disarmed and captured the remaining guards.

About 1,750 of the approximately 5,000 former camp inmates organized themselves into a Rab Brigade that contained five battalions and a headquarters. After being transported to the mainland, part of the brigade members went to Banija (central Croatia), and part to southern Slovenia (while the partisans forces of Croatia deployed most of the others in the partisan-held territories).

When the members of the Rab Brigade arrived at the hamlet of Mašun in Slovenia, they took an oath of allegiance before a military priest of the XIV division. The ceremony was accompanied by the program performed by the cultural group led by the poet Karel Destovnik - Kajuh.

For a couple of weeks, since the very end of August, contemporary dancer Marta Paulin - Brina  was part of Kajuh’s cultural group. She greeted the fighters of the Rab Brigade with a “battle dance”, and they accompanied her dance with clapping and singing.

The circumstances of war changed quickly.

Most members of the Rab Brigade were too weak to fight. The former detainees were soon after deployed in smaller numbers to other units. And Brina’s partisan dance performances ended with the march of the XIV division to Styria in January and February 1944. Due to inappropriate footwear and very cold winter weather, she got frostbite on her legs. Although she avoided amputation, she could no longer dance.

Recalling her short partisan dance career, Brina primarily remembered that unique combination of hope, conviction, joy and togetherness that were a part of her partisan experience:

... it was a dance expression rooted in the soil of the home, in a person’s participation in the historical events of their people. In the participation in the liberation struggle of a people who do not know despair, who are aware of their power and their mission. Dance calls for battle, wins in battle; it evolves into joy: because of the struggle, because of the endured efforts, because of the power, because of the historical act itself. In this dance circle, we gave each other our hands. Our circle was firmly closed: with effort and suffering, amid gasps and smiles. As a dancer, standing alone among a crowd of fighters with the awareness that I would be able to express with my dance talent and weak body what united us, that I would be able to master the immense space of nature, I felt strength in my legs as I stomped hard earth. The hands felt the extent of the woods and climbed over the treetops.

Jože Javoršek (partisan, but not a member of the Rab Brigade) testified that Brina’s dance was indeed a unique sight:

I will never forget Brina how she danced to the sounds of the wind and the rustling of branches, to the chirping of birds and to the rhythm produced by the quiet breathing of the earth.

Author of the photograph: Jože Petek, Slovenian partisan and war photo reporter (1912 - 1945)

Owner of the photograph: Muzej novejše zgodovine Slovenije (Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia), Ljubljana, Slovenia

Selected reading:

Komelj, Miklavž. Kako misliti partizansko umetnost? (How To Think Partisan Art?) Ljubljana: Založba /*cf, 2009.

Milohnić, Aldo. Gledališče upora (Theather of Resistance). Ljubljana: Akademija za gledališče, radio, film in televizijo Univerze v Ljubljani, 2021.

Paulin-Brina, Marta. “Plesna umetnost v partizanih” (“Dance Art in the Partisans”). In Partizanska umetnost (Partisan Art), edited by Filip Kalan et al., 20-27. Ljubljana: Zveza kulturno-prosvetnih organizacij Slovenije / Delavska enotnost, 1975).

When World War II broke out, ballerina Mira Sanjina was part of the Croatian National Theater (Hrvatsko narodno kazalište) ensemble in Zagreb. After the establishment of the Ustasha-led Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska), Sanjina (who was of Jewish descent) and her husband Ljubiša Jovanović (who was a Serb) fled from Zagreb to Split and then to Ljubljana. Finally, in 1943, they joined the partisans and the Theater of the People’s Liberation (Kazalište narodnog oslobođenja, KNO) in the liberated territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Recalling her first performance as a member of the KNO, the ballet choreography she performed to Dvořák’s Sixth Slavonic Dance played by pianist Andrija Preger, Sanjina described the intense feeling of pleasure: “I danced cheerfully, enjoyed the dance, surrendered to it; I danced in a very beautiful, white, fluttering costume made of parachute silk.” Her dance and her costume, however, caused embarrassment for the audience. That is, the differences in the understanding of appropriate female appearance and behavior made it impossible for Mira Sanjina to share the pleasure of ballet dancing with the Bosnian audience. For many attending the event, Sanjina was probably the first ballerina they had ever seen:

I was not aware of the extent to which it was a shock for an unaccustomed audience, the partisan fighters who lived under very harsh conditions, the Muslim women who had never seen a ballet. The appearance of a ballerina was something quite unexpected for them. […] The Muslim women felt shame while I was enjoying the dance. While I was getting carried away and dancing it up, they were ashamed. It seemed to me that they were exiting the hall bit by bit.

For her later wartime performances, Sanjina adjusted both her dance and her appearance. For instance, for the anniversary of the October Revolution observed later in 1943, she chose to play the “more suitable” Joan of Arc. In addition, the military superiors controlled her costume. On that occasion, Sanjina wore a dark gray woolen leotard. Moreover, until the end of the war, she for the most part danced in classical ballet performances, which usually contained folklore elements.

Informed by traditions and religion, local beliefs about appropriate femininity limited Mira Sanjina’s ability to perform expressively. However, although her classical ballet performances were customized with elements of folklore and although her revealing ballet dresses were replaced with more modest costumes, the wartime spectators, she maintains, responded to the adjustments with immense enthusiasm:

Even today I think that it was perhaps my most beautiful audience […] standing for a long, long time, breathless, […] watching and immersing itself [in the performances] with such curiosity and such attention. I think that I never have had such a nice experience and such wonderful contacts [with audiences] during and after my performances, certainly not in such a way. In the way of a wonderful, chaste audience that was so infinitely grateful, so curious, [the audience] that watched me dance with such pleasure.

Author of the illustration: Dario Jelušić

Sources:

Milohnić, Aldo. Gledališče upora (Theater of Resistance). Ljubljana: Akademija za gledališče, radio, film in televizijo Univerze v Ljubljani, 2021.

Tako je rođena nova Jugoslavija. Kazivanje učesnika II. zasjedanja AVNOJ-a. Mira Sanjina. (That Is How the New Yugoslavia Was Born. Statements of the Participants of the 2nd Session of AVNOJ. Mira Sanjina.) Režija Žika Spasić, produkcija Muzej zasjedanja AVNOJ-a u Jajcu, 1971. https://www.muzejavnoj.ba/video-arhiv.

In the summer of 1943, Irena Kolesar joined the Yugoslav partisans. Having caught the eye of Šime Šimatović and Joža Gregorin, members of the theater group that was visiting her unit, she was invited to an audition. She spent the rest of the war acting in several major theater groups (and continued her successful acting career after the war ended).

In a 1972 interview for the Yugoslav magazine Start published in Zagreb, Kolesar testified to a common aspect of partisan life: “When things were most difficult for us, we sang. No one believes us today (…).” But many memoirs bear witness to singing in the most unexpected, oftentimes grim and difficult moments.

Irena Kolesar’s recorded memories also reveal an unsurprising but barely mentioned aspect of officially organized entertainment of the partisan war – that artists were usually bored by their assignments, and were also unwelcome and even slighted by their comrades in arms. Kolesar was not particularly straightforward about this. The reason, it seems, was her good-natured personality. Neither the theater colleague who “forgot” to return her trousers, nor the anonymous person who stole her shoes while she was sleeping (shoes were a valuable asset among the partisans, as many soldiers spent long periods of time in soft peasant footwear or barefoot), or even the fact that military units as a rule considered that actors were a burden and treated them accordingly, failed to affect her kind disposition toward everyone she mentioned in her texts and interviews.

Yet there are one or two interesting, negative observations in her small written legacy. These concern the partisan cultural evenings that usually consisted of theatrical performances organized for the civilian populations followed by informal socializing accompanied by music, singing, and dancing. These were well-attended events at which young village girls wore their best dresses. There were, however, always fewer men (usually only the members of the visiting theatrical group) than girls, and so there was a scramble for suitable dance partners. Because of this, Kolesar writes, female members of theater groups had to approach the guests and ask them to dance. She adds: “As uninteresting as that was to me, I know it was the same for those girls!” It comes as no surprise then, that if a partisan took a liking to a comrade – as was the case with Irena Kolesar and Šime Šimatović who eyed each other until he proposed to her in the summer of 1944 – he or she might find such arrangements tiresome. Moreover, the mention of the small numbers of the opposite sex at some of the partisan cultural evenings is an obvious allusion to girls’ desire to indulge in heterosexual socializing. In other words, the partisan cultural evenings, alongside the official emphasis on political and cultural education, were used by young people as opportunities to meet, mingle, and have fun, as in peacetime. 

Illustration:

Vladimir Balašćak (ed.), Osmeh porculanske figurine (The Smile of a Porcelain Figurine) (Sremska Mitrovica: Društvo Rusina i Novinarska asocijacija Rusina, 2020), 14.

Literature:

Irena Kolesar, “Moji doživljaji, moja sjećanja” (“My Experiences, My Memories”), Dani Hvarskoga kazališta: Građa i rasprave o hrvatskoj književnosti i kazalištu 10, no. 1 (1983): 269-286.

Đuro Zagorac, “Još uvijek je zovu Slavica” (“They Still Call Her Slavica”), Start 80 (February 9, 1972): 26-28.

Remembering the moment when perhaps the most famous photograph of the People’s Liberation Struggle, “Kozarčanka” (Girl from the Kozara Mountain), was taken, one-time partisan nurse Milja Marin said:

“Even today, I don’t know how that smile in Skrigin’s photograph appeared on my face. I gave in to my emotions, although I did not feel like laughing, but I believed that my personal suffering at that time and the suffering of my family must come to an end.”

Indeed, the everyday challenges faced by nurses in the Yugoslav partisan army were numerous and draining because, as Ina Jun Broda, another wartime nurse, explained, to both doctors and the wounded soldiers the nurses “represented something between the ‘mother of God’, the self-sacrificing comrade and the ‘hospital bedpan’.” As a well-educated woman particularly inclined to poetry, Jun Broda expressed her weariness, her grief and compassion, but also the irony and mockery she sometimes felt in writing. The poem “Samokritika” (“Selfcriticism”) captures this combination of emotions well:

I confess, comrades, it is my fault.
It is my fault that I survived every assault
While the comrades died on the mountain peaks,
I still have all my limbs.

I confess, comrades, it is my fault:
I still don't know when was the third assault[1]
Because, during the political course,
I escaped to the park through the hospital doors.

I h a d to for a while be alone!
I enjoyed the evening's dark tone…
A petit-bourgeois song rising from my chest was so nice and fine
Yet it certainly was not along Party line...

Comrades, I confess that it is my fault
I sinned against the collective.
It is horrible: I would like to have my own home, my own dreams,
My own toothbrush,
my own shoelaces,
my own shoes –
my thoughts…
my comrade and his embrace
and my child…
I know, it is not right
because of my kid
to forget our orphans and their afflict
But I know that I would love that son of mine
even more than the Red Army and Stalin at the same time!

Sitting under Tito’s photo until late last night
I spoke to our hateful ally.
Joe is good and humble, honest and kind
And o u r s. But wounded – he was wounded only two times!
Three years of fighting and still head on his shoulder!
I don’t know, maybe he is not such a devoted soldier?
And so, comrade Commissar, I would like to be informed
Did I sin against our norms...

That’s all. Now let the comrades decide
So be it as they derive.
If I’m guilty, liquidate me.
Put a bullet through my head simply.
Perhaps it was meant to be –
The real consciousness, the new, has not yet been awakened in me
I’m confused and I have no one else to blame but me:
I still don’t know, comrades, how to live.
Should I follow fervor or head – a new blind allegiance
or the old compliance?
Cold discipline or my own ardor,
My heart or instead – the revolver???!

It is too hard, comrades, that’s why I said:
Bullet in the head. – But when they put me in front of a wall
once again I will boldly exclaim:
Death to fascism!!! – and freedom, freedom, freedom
                         for woman!

Translation: my own.

Poem: Samokritika is a part of Ina Jun Broda's wartime diary. It’s retyped contents, entitled Iz moje Crne bilježnice (From my Black Notebook), are kept in her archival collection at the archives of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. 

Illustration no. 1: Žorž Skrigin, Rat i pozornica (War and Stage) (Belgrade: Turistička štampa, 1968), 248.
Illustrations no. 2 and 3: Davor Konjikušić, Red Glow: Yugoslav Partisan Photography, 1941-1945 (Berlin and Boston: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2021), 214, 319.

Literature:
Kovačević, Dinka. “Mlada partizanka iz čitanke” (“Young Partizanka from a Textbook”). Nezavisne novine, June 8, 2007. http://www.nezavisne.com/novosti/bih/Mlada-partizanka-izcitanke/10554.
Bakšić, Lucija, Grubački, Isidora, and Jelušić, Iva. “Ina Jun Broda.” In Texts and Contexts from the History of Feminism and Women’s Rights in East Central Europe, edited by Zsófia Lóránd, Adela Hȋncu, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc, and Katarzyna Stańczak-Wiślicz (forthcoming in 2023). 

[1] The poet refers to the Third Enemy Offensive, one of seven major Axis military operations undertaken against the Yugoslav partisans during World War II, happening in the spring and early summer of 1942 in eastern Bosnia and in Montenegro.

Miroslav Krleža is widely considered the greatest Croatian writer of the 20th century. However, immediately following the establishment of the Nazi puppet Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH), his works were banned and, after spending a few days in Ustasha prison, the author went into isolation. Sick, anxious, and inclined to the usage of barbiturates, in those years he devotedly nursed his own ego in the pages of his diary. The left-wing writer did not change his position throughout the war, although the Ustasha leadership gradually eased pressure on him. The author even got the opportunity to say no to Ante Pavelić, the head of the NDH, who in the fall of 1943 wanted to hire him as director of the Croatian State Theater in Zagreb.

Miroslav Krleža wallowed in his misfortunes thanks to influential colleagues and friends and his wife, Bela Krleža, who performed in the very theater where he refused to work. Her professional compromise – which, given that she was a Serbian, could have been fatal for her – provided them with insurance against political persecution as well as existential security (for the second time during their marriage).

In his diary, Miroslav mocked the pretentiousness of the life of the Zagreb bourgeoisie as well as their seeming obliviousness to grim wartime reality. And Bela was not spared a little of his pity because, he writes, during the war she became “an actress in the bureaucratical sense, de facto acting in some horrible things.”  Namely, the plays in which his wife performed were by and large lighthearted, escapist comedies with romantic overtones – for instance, she  acted in the adaptation of A Friend of Women (L’Ami des femmes, 1864) and The Lady of the Camellias (La Dame aux Camélias, 1848) written by Alexandre Dumas fils and in the pastoral Plakir (1556) written by one of the most celebrated Croatian Renaissance authors, Marin Držić – intended to amuse and please those people that her husband mocked as well as the members of the leadership of the state, which both had reason to fear.

Since she was one of the most active actresses during the war years, Bela Krleža was exposed to enormous publicity. Moreover, she was loved by both audiences and critics. And when, in the fall of 1945, her colleagues faced the so-called court of honor, she was most probably saved from political persecution by her husband’s war silence and his postwar reconciliation with the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party.

Photograph: Scene from the pastoral Plakir, May 1943; Bela Krleža is third from the right

Owner of the photograph: Croatian State Archive (Hrvatski državni arhiv, HDA), Collection of theater photography of Mladen Grčević (HR-HDA-1424)

Bibliography:

Banović, Snježana. “Bela i Miroslav Krleža u NDH - Vedri repertoar kao cijena za život” (“Bela and Miroslav Krleža in the NDH - Bright Repertoire as the Price of Life”). In Intelektualci i rat 1939.-1947.: Zbornik radova s Desničinih susreta 2011. (Intellectuals and the War 1939–1947: Proceedings from the Meetings of the Desnica’s Gatherings in 2011), edited by Drago Roksandić and Ivana Cvijović Javorina, 9–24. Zagreb: Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, 2012.

Banović, Snježana. Država i njezino kazalište: Hrvatsko državno kazalište 1941. – 1945. (The State and Its Theatre: Croatian State Theatre 1941–1945). Zagreb: Profil, 2012.

Krleža, Miroslav. Dnevnik 3 (1933.-1942.) (The Diary, volume 3 (1933-1942)). Sarajevo: Oslobođenje, 1977.

Krležin gvozd. “Bela Krleža – televizijski prilog povodom obljetnice rođenja” (“Bela Krleža – Birth Anniversary Television Contribution”). Accessed September 21, 2022.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kU8rKN25DQ.

Puljizević, Jozo. “Jedna biografija - sto života: Bela Krleža o sebi i Miroslavu Krleži” (“One Biography – A Hundred Lives: Bela Krleža about Herself and Miroslav Krleža”). Vjesnik u srijedu (July 4, 1973): 24-26.

Hey Kozara, hey Kozara, my thick woodland
You are hiding, you are hiding many a partisan.

How many, hey, how many are there on Kozara tree branches
There are even more, hey, even more young partisans.

How much, hey, how much is there on Kozara leaves
There are even more, hey, there are even more young communists.

These are some of the most famous verses sung by the Yugoslav partisan soldiers and their supporters during World War II. Their foundation is a short rhyming couplet appropriated from the popular folklore form known as bećarac. Every rhyming couplet is one unit, one independent poem. If the couplets had a similar theme, singers would sometimes put them together in order to create a new, longer poem, and sometimes singers omitted the couplets that, for instance, they could not remember.

The couplets acted as poetic comments on all life experiences, in both peace and war. The brevity of the couplets and familiarity of their form made it possible for everyone to understand the gist and participate in their further dissemination.

Partisan commentators thus established that:

Our struggle demands
That one sings when one dies.

Women partisans often sung:

Who could've known last year, comrades,
That girls would become partisans.

or

I’m your only daughter, oh, mother of mine
I am leaving you to carry a carabine.

Of course, daily news – such as the standoff of the Nazi army before Stalingrad or the capitulation of Italy – were regularly commented on:

Hey Hitler, what the hell,
Why does your army stall?
Either you can’t, or winter has met you,
Or the Russian offensive beats you.

and

Rejoice, brothers partisans
Italians by themselves gave up their guns.

Partisans sang these kinds of songs in their free time, on the march, and in the military hospitals, either in the darkness of their hospital rooms lying on their improvised, often straw beds, or in groups while enjoying fresh air – maybe even some sun – in front of the hospitals. However, they were most often sung while soldiers as well as civilians held hands and moved to the rhythm of singing.

The movement was, of course, a circle dance, probably the oldest dance formation common to many cultures. It was most often performed in a semicircle or a curved line to musical accompaniment while the person at the head sang the verses that the rest of the group then repeated. One participant of the war told the Slavist and folklorist Maja Bošković-Stulli that “When I was in a circle, I would invent and sing, I would sing both my own and other people’s [verses]. I was a part of the people. We were all one then, we fought and sang.”
The couplet and the circle dance – particularly the variation that became known as the circle dance of the Kozara mountain – became a means of communication during the war that strengthened the fighting community and encouraged their togetherness and perseverance. Their symbolic role has also become part of the cultural memory of the war.

Translation of the couplets: my own. 

Photographs 1–3: Muzej grada Zagreba (Zagreb City Museum), Collection Militaria

Photograph 4: Spomenik database, https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/kozara

Bibliography

Bošković-Stulli, Maja. Petokraka, zašto si crvena: narodne pjesme iz ustanka (Five-pointed Star, Why Are You Red: Folk Poems of the Uprising). Zagreb: Lykos, 1959.

Bošković-Stulli, Maja. “Narodna poezija naše oslobodilačke borbe kao problem savremenog folklornog stvaralaštva” (“Folk Poetry of Our Liberation Struggle as a Matter of Contemporary Folklore Creation”). Belgrade: Etnografski institut Srpske akademije nauka, 1960.

Rihtman-Auguštin, Dunja. “Folklor kao komunikacija u NOB” (“Folklore as Communication during the NOB”). In Kultura i umjetnost u NOB-u i socijalističkoj revoluciji u Hrvatskoj (Culture and Art in the NOB and Socialist Revolution in Croatia), edited by Ivan Jelić, Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin, Vice Zaninović, 151–166. Zagreb: Institut za historiju radničkog pokreta Hrvatske, 1975. 

Following the launch of both the airborne and ground assault on the city of Drvar (eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina) in May 1944, the VIII partisan corps retreated to Jadovnik mountain. At night, while the German units were resting to prepare for a new day of fighting, the partisans partly walked and partly rolled down a goat trail that led to the foot of the mountain. The next day, the German soldiers searched the territory where the VIII corps had previously stayed. They then searched possible routes of retreat, but not the path by which the partisans left. It is assumed that either they did not notice the sad excuse for a retreat passage or did not think that the partisans would actually dare to use it in the dead of the night.

German units left Jadovnik. The following morning, after an almost all-night hike, the partisans returned. The location that was teeming with enemy soldiers the day before was now completely safe. They were alive and, at least temporarily, out of harm’s way. So, as soon as they returned, Žorž Skrigin claims, they got into a circle and danced. He snapped a photo.

Source:

Žorž Skrigin, Rat i pozornica (War and Stage). Belgrade: Turistička štampa, 1968, 255–261, photographs on 256 and 257.

Image: From Bloch, A. (1906) Præsenter gevær! Militærhumoresker fra korsaren. Kristiania: Korsarens Forlag. Sourced from the Norwegian Armed Forces Museum, Oslo.

The woman: ‘Tell me, lieutenant, haven’t you also carved your lover’s name on a tree?’

The cavalry officer: ‘That would never happen in “naturhistorien” [the history of nature]. My lady, I cannot possibly walk around and carve out the entire alphabet.’

As soldiering is a male-dominated profession, it is no wonder that military satire tends to be deeply gendered. However, like other humor genres, satire can be both inclusive and exclusionary, reinforcing or undermining engrained stereotypes and inequalities. I took the picture above when reading a military humoresque book published in 1906 (Bloch 1906) that I found at the special library of the Norwegian Armed Forces Museum in Oslo. The librarian explained to me that cavalry soldiers were often subjects of mockery and ridicule. Their military specialization entailed many expenditures, and in the seventeenth century, many struggled economically. However, the cavalry soldiers were regularly depicted as self-absorbed, superficial, and stupid people who put themselves in debt to buy expensive uniforms and horses. They were also described as kvinnebedårere (womanizers) who cared more about themselves and their horses than their wives.

Fast forward to present-day Norway, and military satire still draws upon gendered stereotypes, yet in different and occasionally more subversive ways. A good example is Førstegangstjenesten (The Conscription Service), a popular sketch comedy TV show created by the comedian and Instagrammer Herman Flesvig that began airing in 2019. The show centres around four main characters, all played by Flesvig: a war enthusiast, a spoiled graduate, a white wannabe gangster rapper, and a ‘female male chauvinist’. That last character, Tanja Laila Gaup, is a brusque and vulgar young woman from Northern Norway who is far stronger and coarser than the male conscripts. Throughout the show, she caricatures and destabilizes gendered and military norms and stereotypes through, for instance, displaying force and violence, sexually harassing male soldiers, and trying to conceal her own emotions.

In the show’s second season, we also learn that Tanja Laila is the only character who passed the selection for the special forces. It is hard not to read this as an intervention into ongoing public debates concerning the role of women in the Norwegian Armed Forces. Despite official targets and ambitions, women still make up only a small, albeit growing, minority in the Norwegian war force (Stai et al 2021). However, besides the all-female special forces training programme Jegertroppen (Hunter Troops), no woman has ever been selected for the special forces. While some have objected to this and called for greater inclusion and gender quotas, others argue that introducing quotas is detrimental to the operational strength and capacity of the Norwegian war force, and the special operation forces in particular (see e.g., Høiback 2016). The debate has raised questions of not only military skills and biology, but also what it means to treat men and women (un)equally within the Armed Forces and whether or not the latter’s representation should be regulated by political ideals and ambitions of gender equality. Norwegian ethnographers studying all-male combat units have added to the debate by showing that female participation is not merely a question of physical capacity; women are also commonly described as potential threats to male asexual cohesion and solidarity (Danielsen 2018; Totland 2009). Finally, there have been multiple reports and accounts of sexual harassment in the Norwegian Armed Forces in recent years, with some suggesting a culture of impunity exists.

Førstegangstjenesten, and the character Tanja Laila in particular, address these debates by exposing and (at times) subverting gendered military norms and narratives. The show has succeeded in making many Norwegians laugh, but also invites the audience to question their preconceived ideas about masculinity, sexuality, and violence.

References

Bloch, A. 1906. Præsenter gevær! Militærhumoresker fra korsaren. Kristiania: Korsarens Forlag.

Danielsen, T. 2018. Making Warriors in a Global Era: An Ethnographic Study of the Norwegian Naval Special Operations Commando. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Høiback, H. 2016. Forsvaret: et kritisk blikk fra insiden. Oslo: Cappelen Damm.

Stai, N. K., Rødningen, I., Olsson, L., and Tollefsen, A. F. 2021. ‘Breaking Down Barriers for Norway’s Deployment of Military Women’. GPS Policy Brief, 1. Oslo: PRIO.

Totland, O. M. 2009. ‘Det operative felleskapet. En sosialantropologisk studie av kropp, kjønn og identitet blant norske soldater i Telemarksbataljon’. Masters thesis, Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Oslo.

When they discuss circle dances, historical sources of the Yugoslav partisan war most often mention the Kozara circle dance. Equally as often, they emphasize rhyming folk couplets on war and political topics as the music that accompanied the circle dances (as explained in part 1). It is important to mention, however, that there were many variations of the circle dance, and that the topics for the couplets that were popular in peacetime remained so during the wartime too, especially in more relaxed or unsupervised settings.

The best example is provided by Eva Grlić, who spent most of her partisan life in Slavonia (eastern Croatia). One evening, with the intention of cheering her up, a friend took her for a walk through the forest to a clearing where a group of young people were dancing, illuminated only by the moon. “There was something magical in that scene of dance in the moonlight. […] To me it seemed like a pure surrealism,” Grlić noted in her memoir. Young women and men danced the taraban circle dance and sang:

It is easy to dance taraban
Jump up, and on your own you will go down.

and

Girls, come to me
Before the women have caught me.

This short fragment from Eva Grlić’s memories of war hints at a relevant aspect of life in the partisan army: although the partisan military authorities prohibited romantic relationships among partisans, particularly what we today call hooking up, they never succeeded in eradicating it. If nothing else, many covertly whispered about love, sex, relationships, and marriage, talked and even sang about it. A series of rhyming couplets with which the mischievous participants expressed their thoughts on the restrictive partisan policy remained:

Leave love alone, my sweetheart
And go fight for people’s right.
When our country is free again
Return and make love then.

-----

When I remember your face, my dear
I forget about my commander.

-----

The girls are begging you, comrade Tito,
Let the boys go.
For two, three days or five, six hours at least
And then return them to the brigade forthwith.

Translation of the couplets: my own. 

Author of the illustration: Dario Jelušić.

Bibliography:

Bošković-Stulli, Maja. Petokraka, zašto si crvena: narodne pjesme iz ustanka (Five-pointed Star, Why Are You Red: Folk Poems of the Uprising). Zagreb: Lykos, 1959.

Grlić, Eva. Sjećanja (Memories). Durieux: Zagreb, 1997.

Rihtman-Auguštin, Dunja. “Folklor kao komunikacija u NOB” (“Folklore as Communication during the NOB”). In Kultura i umjetnost u NOB-u i socijalističkoj revoluciji u Hrvatskoj (Culture and Art in the NOB and Socialist Revolution in Croatia), edited by Ivan Jelić, Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin, Vice Zaninović, 151–166. Zagreb: Institut za historiju radničkog pokreta Hrvatske, 1975. 

Despite the efforts of the Yugoslav partisan leadership and cultural workers to inspire their supporters, both civilians and partisan soldiers, to sing about themes motivated by and closely related to the struggle (as presented in the first two posts of Partisan Circle Dances cycle), people never stopped creating songs about the things that moved them the most. Something on this topic was presented in the previous, third post of this cycle, and something will be presented in this one as well, but from the perspective of the Serbian comic artist Saša Rakezić, who is better known by his pen name Aleksandar Zograf.

Source: Priče iz drugog rata (Stories from the Second War) (Belgrade: Popbooks/Muzej Jugoslavije, 2022), reproduced with the author’s permission
More about Aleksandar Zograf and his work: https://www.aleksandarzograf.com/

Translation: Iva Jelusic

Arditi (The Daring Ones) was the name adopted by elite shock troops of the Royal Italian Army formed in the summer of 1917.

In the sixth episode of WARFUN podcast entitled “War as a Game: The Playful Aspects of the Daring Ones’ Military and Paramilitary Experiences, 1917-1922” Blasco Sciarrino talks how the activities of the Arditi were shaped by fun. In his presentation the notion of fun is understood as either the act of experiencing enjoyment or amusement, or the process of partaking in ludic and gymnastic activities.

Sciarrino’s inquiry is mainly based on the personal memoirs penned by members of the Arditi, and war veterans’ periodicals. In the presentation he particularly referred to the under-investigated publication authored by pro-Fascist assault troops, titled Fiamma Nera (Black Flame). And here enclosed illustrations were published in the smaller trench newspapers of certain units. They present the members of the Arditi as jovial men both willing and capable of turning any military activity into an opportunity for having fun.

More about the illustrations and about this topic in general can be listened to on the WARFUN podcast here.

Image 1: La Tradotta: Giornale Settimanale della Terza Armata, October 15, 1918 (Image courtesy of the Museo Civico del Risorgimento di Bologna; further reproduction is prohibited)

Image 2: Le Fiamme: Numero Unico per le Truppe d’Assalto, September 22, 1918 (Image courtesy of the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea (Roma); further reproduction is prohibited)

Image 3: Fiamma Nera: Voce dell’Arditismo: Settimanale della Federazione Nazionale fra gli Arditi d’Italia, May 8, 1921 (Image courtesy of the Ministero della Cultura. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze; further reproduction is prohibited)