Dutchbat

Dutchbat is presented through Steef’s experience as a Dutchbat soldier in Srebrenica: a deployment marked by survival under fire and by trauma that resurfaces years later. The novel offers no institutional history of the contingent; instead, it traces the long reach of this service through one man’s memories, fears, and later crisis.

Steef’s Service in Srebrenica

Steef recalls being in the line of fire as bullets passed overhead and a high-explosive shell detonated close beside him without injuring him. At the time, he did not even recognize the sound of machine-gun fire. The danger seemed unreal, almost like a game; only much later did he understand how fortunate he was to have survived while thousands of Muslim men did not. That delayed recognition gives his account its particular weight. Survival is not represented as a clean escape from danger: it becomes an ongoing awareness that he was spared while others were not. Steef urges Peter and the narrator to fight death and make the most of life, but the force of that exhortation comes from an experience he says he has never managed to leave behind.

The Return of Wartime Trauma

Years after his service, Steef continues to experience flashbacks to the frightening situations he encountered as a Dutchbat soldier in Srebrenica. When he once visited Rebecca’s mother, he became overwhelmed by fear: he could not sleep, watched his surroundings like a hunted animal, and believed people were talking about him behind his back. The episode made travel outside the Netherlands difficult for the couple. Rebecca calls it his problem and says she cannot leave him alone in case he has a PTSD attack; although she would like to take a holiday in the Caribbean or Ibiza, she fears what might happen if she were absent. The fear also surfaces in a different setting when Steef insists that former Yugoslav pursuers are nearby and still after him. Peter checks the visible exit and reassures him that nobody has come out. The scene shows how a remembered threat can feel immediate even when the available evidence does not support it; the account does not establish that the people Steef fears are actually present.

Later Violence and Attempts to Cope

Steef recounts that, the previous year, in Utrecht, he shot a man he mistook for an armed drug dealer. He thought the man was drawing a weapon, but it was a mobile phone. Steef says that afterward he broke down and that everything came out; he was unable to work for months. The novel places this crisis alongside his account of his wartime service and its unresolved effects, though it does not reduce the shooting to a single cause. When he speaks about what happened in Srebrenica, Rebecca strokes his back. He later pulls Peter and the narrator toward the music and calls U2 his salvation, saying it works better for him than therapy. This is presented as Steef’s own way of coping, not as a resolution of the trauma. Dutchbat’s significance in the novel rests on that continuing afterlife: a service remembered through the danger endured there and through the fear that persists long after the deployment ends.