He met his wife in Belgrade when they were both students. He was from Dečani and studying law. She was from Drvar and studying on a scholarship from the Borovo factory. As soon as she graduated from university, she got a job at the factory. In 1984, they moved to Vukovar. They got a comfortable flat in the factory’s modern housing complex. Nikola retrained and found a job as one of the 110 professional firemen at the factory. In that same year, the couple had their first son. They found friends quickly and easily among work colleagues and neighbours. The factory housing complex had an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, a cinema, playground, and a restaurant with a beautiful terrace with live music in the Workers’ Hall. The terrace would get so packed in the evenings that one of them had to leave work an hour early to get a table. They sung the popular hits of that time, celebrated the holidays, bathed and fished in the Danube, and spent the summer holidays at the Borovo factory holiday resorts. “We were completely intermixed and we had no idea what anyone’s nationality was,” said Nikola.
When 1991 came, the fantastic times were over. New values became pronounced, Nikola said. The values connected to national and party affiliations trumped those of unity. One group threatened another, and then another group would threaten someone else. Soon enough, no one trusted anyone. Tension only grew. Shady characters started driving around at night in cars with no registration plates. Gunshots were heard quickly followed by the screeching of car tyres. Bombs were placed in bars, people were arrested (and some disappeared), barricades emerged in the surrounding villages, and one morning people with weapons were standing outside the Borovo factory. Nikola felt the fear growing inside him. He felt helpless. His sleep has never been the same since. He’s still startled by the slightest noise. He left with his family in May 1991 for Montenegro.
When he returned at the end of 1991, what he found resembled Hiroshima. Not a single building (or even lamp post) had remained whole. Only a single lane had been cleared for traffic. There was no electricity or water. Their flat had been damaged by the shelling. He tried to patch things up, but there were always leaks. He ate at the public kitchen. He got water from the cistern and put it into his canisters. He used a wood stove to keep warm.
It was not a good place for adults or children, but the Stamatović family still had a place to live and a way to survive. Nikola gathered his firemen colleagues. They got the remaining fire engines and equipment and registered as the Fire Unit of the Vukovar Municipality. They did this because the Borovo factory didn’t need the equipment, and there was a great need for firemen in the town. Many houses were on fire. They cleared the roads, removed ruined chimneys, and even rescued farm animals. Nikola was the commander. His wage would cover a mere week, but his wife was working at the factory and they managed to survive. Those years were like purgatory. Nikola was waiting for an end to the lawlessness, the smuggling, the poverty, and the lack of any hope for the future. He was waiting for life to start over again.
At first the talks of reintegration were just rumours. Nikola says that they had no information. They didn’t know what would come, if people would be killed, or whether they should stay or leave. There was a lot of speculation, uncertainty and fear. Some were publicly saying that they should all leave, and the loudest voices were from those who had money and a place to go.
His fire unit joined the Transitional Police Force in 1996, and a colleague who was a returnee was telling Nikola to leave. He told him that he wasn’t needed there anymore. However, his superiors, particularly the sergeant from Vinkovci, were reasonable and kind. The whole unit of 46 firemen remained in Vukovar, and signed a contract with the municipal police in 1997. Their first salaries were in Kuna. They were about twenty times higher than those in dinars, and they were paid out in cash. Some of the locals didn’t want to accept the currency, but when the third salary came, they took their money and asked if they could also have the first two paid back to them. They hired some twenty young Croat firemen from Vukovar that year. Some of their fathers had been killed in the war, or they were missing. Nikola would meet them on their first morning, talk to them, then introduce them to the rest of the unit. The whole group knew that no misbehaviour would be tolerated. If they were planning to give each other dirty looks and provoke each other, they would need to leave immediately. It’s that kind of service – their lives depend on one another. One cannot enter a fire without trusting that their colleague would look out for them as if they were brothers.
Even though it had been decided in Vukovar that the head positions of public services would be filled by Croats, and their replacements would be Serbs, UNTAES had advocated for Nikola based on his hard and responsible work. On the day the peaceful reintegration process had been completed, the 15th of July 1998, Nikola signed a contract with the municipal police as the commander of the Public Fire Unit of Vukovar. “We’ve never had any problems, not in the transitional period, or ever,” says Nikola. This wasn’t the case only during working hours. Colleagues partied together, and celebrated birthdays, name days and religious holidays. They played pool together, barbecued, joked at everyone’s expense and most importantly – talked about everything.
