Once Friendly Neighbors, They Are Now Enemies in Slovenian Garrison Town : Yugoslavia: Locals barricade the barracks in Vrhnika, which troops had considered home.

A carpet of broken glass covers the roads and sidewalks of Vrhnika, a fitting allegory for the shattered lives of its soldiers and civilians who once lived here together in harmony but will never do so again.

Yugoslavia’s crisis has pitted the army against the people, and garrison towns like Vrhnika have become the emotional and physical front-lines of the spiraling conflict.

“We lived together in this town for 30 years. We always got along fine,” Simon Zalar, a local trucker, said of the 1,000 soldiers quartered in barracks above the hillside village. “But now relations with the army are very bad. They won’t be able to live here anymore.”

Virtually all of Vrhnika’s 4,000 residents are working together to defeat the army.

Slovenes, angered by deadly army attacks last week, barricaded the local garrison to prevent more hardware from rolling out and being used against them.

The blockade, in which buses and trucks encircle the city and seal off major streets as well, prompted the Yugoslav air force to attack the town in an effort to free the surrounded soldiers.

When 10 of the 60 tanks quartered at Vrhnika attempted to break out Tuesday evening, gun battles erupted between the tank crews and local Slovenes.

Two Soviet-built MIG warplanes screeched over the town, blasting the barricades until the vehicles’ windows were blown out and several gas tanks erupted in fire. Four people--one Slovenian militiaman and three women civilians--were wounded in the attack.

“The MIGs shot at anything. There were civilians everywhere,” said Franz Oblak, a telephone technician manning a barricade for the Slovenian reserve force.

Despite the bombardment and widespread damage, the federal troops and their equipment remained bottled up Wednesday. Soldiers retreated to garrison property and took up defensive positions until help could arrive.

Slovenes consider the army solely to blame for the bloody clashes that have turned their scenic homeland into a battle zone. Stunned that the federation would use force to prevent a political breakup, Slovenes have turned their rage on the inhabitants of military outposts throughout the republic.

“Townspeople have been provoking the families of soldiers. That’s why there are women and children in here,” said Deni Porej, a 20-year-old recruit from Belgrade, who is of mixed Slovenian and Serbian descent. “It’s a terrible feeling to be hated.”

Some of the professional soldiers posted at Vrhnika have spent years in Slovenia and consider it their home.

“Life will be very different after this war,” Maj. Radomir Kostic said with regret. A Serb who has been married to a local Slovene, he knows his family will be reviled after the conflict no matter which side wins or where they settle.

“We can all see that the damage has already been great,” Kostic said in the barracks’ reception shack, adorned with a portrait of Yugoslavia’s late Communist strongman, Josip Broz Tito.

It is Marshal Tito’s dying legacy of a united Yugoslavia that the army claims to be defending in its assault.

For local Slovenes, the attack shattered all illusions that a negotiated withdrawal from the federation could eventually be achieved.

They point to the destruction left by the first skirmish as evidence that the federal forces cannot be trusted.

Between the air attack and the ensuing gun battles, Vrhnika has been laid to waste. Pale yellow villas flanking narrow cobblestone roadways are now pockmarked from the fight. Charred hulks of buses and trucks hit by MIG fire are scattered through the town like discarded toys. The odors of soot and gasoline mingle in the stifling midday heat. Most cafes and businesses are closed.

As the federal army massed its firepower and headed Wednesday for Slovenia, the local reservists geared up for another clash. They buried mines at the town’s outer roadblocks and reinforced the bridge defenses with gasoline bombs.

Village children helped in the effort, ferrying tools and lunches by bicycle to the toiling reservists. Shopkeepers and cafe owners, idled by the economic paralysis, joined the defense forces standing guard in the widespread debris.

Bullet-riddled army transport trucks--seized by the Slovenes when soldiers at the base garage deserted en masse--were parked side by side and bumper to bumper to fill bridges over the Ljubljanica River separating the garrison from all roads out.

The soldiers holed up in their hilltop garrison nervously watch from their gun mounts and hope for a miraculous reprieve.

“I’m not an occupier--I’m a soldier,” Capt. Adman Selmanovic said, almost in tears. “I have good friends here, but I will leave Slovenia.”