The author offers an extended and wide-ranging account of interpreting in contemporary war zones, using data derived from the war in Croatia in the early 1990s. This study is based on interviews conducted during the war with interpreters working for the European Community Monitor Mission (ECMM), and on the author’s own personal experience as someone who worked as a volunteer interpreter in the same context. The author considers the discursive violence to which interpreters are exposed in an armed conflict. The two conditions that characterize much interpreting in war zones, namely the desire to bear witness (volunteerism) and the obligation to mediate between the main interlocutors (professionalism) come into conflict with each other, since the positions of the witness and of the interpreter are mutually exclusive. The author distinguishes between conscious manipulation of source material during interpreting, and other types of intervention that are possible on the frontlines.