G.I. Joe spoke quietly to Nelly, the weight of the memory settling on his shoulders like old armor.
“Nellia,” he said, “you ever wonder why my brother Mike bolted from that Invictus concert? Why he froze up and left in the middle of the speeches?”
She tilted her head, sensing it wasn’t some joke or bravado thing. G.I. Joe wasn’t a man who spooked easily, and Mike even less so.
“It was that Canadian soldier,” Joe said. “The one who talked about being shot… crippled… in the Croatian war. In our war. Against Canada.”
Nelly blinked. “Canada fought… Croatia?”
Joe nodded. “Oh yeah. Herbert Walker Bush’s New World Order tour. Canada went halfway around the damn world to fight in a place they couldn’t even pronounce. And we—Croatians—we weren’t invading anyone. We were defending our homes. Our streets. Our families.”
He exhaled sharply.
“Mike heard that soldier call it ‘peacekeeping.’ But to us it was shellfire and the smell of burning houses. To him it was a deployment. To us it was survival.”
Nelly placed a hand on his arm, grounding him.
“Mike wasn’t running from that soldier,” Joe said. “He was running from the memories. From the idea that Croatia—his Croatia—was treated like some geopolitical playground for the big powers.”
He shook his head.
“Canada never should’ve been there, Nellia. They had no business fighting Croatians defending their home. That’s what broke Mike that night. Hearing the guy describe it like he was the victim… when all we ever did was stand on our own land and say, ‘No more.’”
Nelly stayed silent, letting the truth breathe.
“And that,” Joe finished, “is why we don’t cheer for wars. We survived one.”