detail from: KRK Art dizajn

FIRST FLIGHT ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

SIMO JELAČA, Ph.D.

After we had just returned from Mljet and Dr Hlynka sent a piece of Yugoslav tricolor to Canada, as a sign of recognition, for a meeting at the airport in Winnipeg, someone knocked loudly on our door after midnight. I got up and opened it, the military patrol started mobilizing reserve officers. Soviet troops entered Czechoslovakia on August 26, 1968, and concentrated their armies on the Yugoslav borders with Hungary and Bulgaria. We were threatened by the danger of occupation, so the Yugoslav People's Army carried out a total mobilization of the reserve force and stood in full readiness. I had an arranged trip to Canada, to do doctoral studies and I already had avo-tickets for my wife Bosa and me. We had started packing the things we planned to carry, but I had to respond to a military order.

In front of the building of the Municipality of Novi Sad, between 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning, while the street lamps were breaking the darkness, we were put in trucks and taken to Srem. We arrived in the village of Manđelos, when it was already completely dawn. As a reserve lieutenant of the technical service, I was appointed commander of the technical company, with over seventy trucks full of weapons. Senior active officers were making deployments, while we had just arrived, orienting ourselves. We all seemed quite confused. And so a full three days and nights will pass. We didn't move anywhere, we slept under the truck, and we ate in the village orchards. Fortunately, the peasants did not forbid us to pick their fruit.

I was worried about my studies, I thought everything would fail me. First, I asked the commander of the Regiment, Major Ostojic, to let me go, but he did not want to hear. Then I tried to get on the map, to try to get out of a previous injury in a car accident, but Dr Kapamadzija, I think his name was, also did not give me consent. Then I decided to try the report with the general (I don't remember his name), who was the division commander. I left hiding from Commander Ostojic, and fortunately the general received me, was extremely kind and pleasant, listened to me and allowed me to leave. This was reported to Ostojic, with an order to replace me, as a company commander, and he was formally pissed with torment, but he had nothing against the decision of the division commander, the general. He ordered me to change my clothes and get rid of my weapons, and as soon as I did that, I formally escaped through the corn towards Sremska Mitrovica and waited for the first train to Novi Sad there. When I arrived home at night, Bosa and I visited the next day with a close relative with whom we said goodbye and fled to Belgrade, to my uncle's brother, spent the night with them and flew to Canada the next day.

We managed to catch a plane for whose flight we had bought tickets, flew to London, and from London, after a few hours of waiting, continued to Glasgow. We also had a certain delay in Glasgow, until we left across the Atlantic. And it was only after we boarded the plane and flew over Ireland that I felt I had escaped military service and could no longer find me. I tried to fall asleep, but I couldn't, I just squinted and listened to the steady sound of the airplane engine.

It probably took an hour or two, after I watched the blue of the Atlantic and the white foamy waves below us for a long time, when the island of Iceland appeared to our right. I knew then where we were, according to the globe, and that we would have to fly over the water for a long time. I started thinking about Dr Hlynka, who should be waiting for us at the airport, and about the studies that were ahead of me. It lasted for hours, it seemed like a mass that I managed to fall asleep a little, and during my sleep I felt every passage of the flight attendant next to our seats. When the plane approached Greenland, the pilot landed very low, giving us information that we were in charge of Greenland, and he wanted to approach us. The passengers thanked him with applause. First, small ice islands were clearly visible, then Greenland, where traces of sledges and some houses of local Indians or Eskimos could even be seen. We enjoyed watching that landscape, which, I knew, could only be seen once in a lifetime. The size of Greenland was endless, and all completely white, the ice itself. I thought, accustomed to our fertile fields: "God, what does the world here live on?" I knew that they had a lot of fish, and that they got other food from other parts of the world.

We flew over the Atlantic for a long time, approaching the continent of North America. And when we flew over the first parts of the territory of Canada, a lot of stunted foresters from countless lakes took turns below us. It was seen only a few times, and Indian houses began to appear, only a few in groups. Looking at those landscapes, it seemed to me that the terrain was equally under forests and lakes, so it is unclear whether the lakes are more on land or more land in water, like islands. Those landscapes alternated for hundreds of kilometers, and our plane, with the uniform sound of the engine, slid slightly to the west. Winnipeg is located right in the middle of the continent, in the plains of the Prairie, which is the granary of Canada. And only in the evening we landed at the international airport, where Dr. Isidore Hliynka was waiting for us. After we picked up our luggage, I spotted it and recognized him on the balcony, where the hosts were waiting for the guests, and I waved to him. He waved at us and immediately headed towards us. When he picked us up, he sat us both in the front seat of his car, next to him, so we could talk along the way. At home, his wife was waiting for us with a warm dinner. We brought them a bottle of Manastirka, which Canadians drink after meals. And when Hlynka noticed that my eyes were closing, he drove us to the hotel, which he booked for us. The next day he sent his two technicians, Fred and Bob, to pick us up from the hotel and find us an apartment. Even while I worked at the Grain Research Laboratory, for a long time, I still dreamed every night that I am in army, couldn’t rid out of it.

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