First installment

As I walked towards one of the men whose hair was as short as mine he looked like any British soldier who wore the same uniform as I had in my bergan,

"anyone here speak English" I asked,

"sure mate, what do you want?" was the reply,

I almost had a heart attack, the first person I spoke to was from Liverpool, this was an unexpected coincidence and perhaps now I was getting somewhere. 

"where are you from and what do you want" he asked,

"Wales and I want to join the Croatian army" I replied

he turned around to someone, I didn't catch his name but then he turned back to me, 

"the person who is in charge is not here but will be back at about one in the afternoon" he told me,

"thanks, I'll come back" and walked off,

What was I going to do now I didn't know so I left and headed left not going anywhere special just walking and looking around, behaving as any tourist would there were loads of palm trees so it must be a warm country, I wondered what was happening in this country, why were there no damaged buildings it was just like walking through any other capital city in the world, beautiful old buildings, fine hotels, lots of people rushing around with somewhere to go and something to do and traffic the torment of any city. The only signs that this country was at war were the sandbags around the base of the buildings and brown tape criss crossing the windows and quite a few soldiers, all fully armed, funny sort of war zone I thought to myself and carried on walking. There was a bar up ahead so I went in and sat down, I ordered coffee or what the Croatians called coffee, it reminded me of cough medicine, it was awful. It gave me a chance to sit, think and watch the world go by, it was as if the war had passed Zagreb by and had gone somewhere else. After finishing my so-called coffee and paying for it, I left back the way that I had come admiring the buildings as I passed, eventually I reached the building where I had met the person from Liverpool.

After showing my passport I went passed the guard found a chair sat on it, the person that I had spoken to earlier came up to me asking me various questions, he wanted to know whether I was a professional, where had I been, what armies and what war zones, I told him as much as I thought he should know,he told me that there were two armies fighting against Yugoslavia in Croatia, HOS and ZNG (Croatian National Guard) and that there was fighting all over the border with Serbia as he explained that there was no Yugoslavia just Slovenia and Croatia but it had not reached Zagreb yet and neither was it likely to. He told me that he was a member of a unit consisting of British Marines, French Foreign Legionairs, Croatian's and a few mercercenries on a cabby(not for the money but because they had nothing better to do), he continued by telling me that I had to see one man who would say yes or no to me joining the unit, so I sat back and waited. The entrance hall was enormous, at one end was the entrance and at the other was what looked like an anti-aircraft gun, there were quite a few people waiting, some asleep, some just talking. As I was sitting there people were coming in all the time bringing boxes of ammunition, weapons and explosives, if these were all amateurs then I was sitting in a very dangerous and wrong place, so I stood up and gestured to the guard that I was going to get something to eat and pointed at my bergan and asked him to watch it as if he understood

Across the road there was an enormous hotel so I decided to go in, I was starving and I had to eat something, the cheapest was a sandwich which I ordered and ate, I paid for it and left. Now that I had filled my stomach I decided to go back to HOS, I went back inside and found my bergan, there were a lot of people waiting probably for the same reason as me, I heard two people speaking in English, so I walked over and introduced myself to them, they explained that one was an ex-Marine and the other was ex-legionair, they had got bored because where they had been nothing had happened so they had decided to try and join HOS to get to the front line, they had four full bags with them containing ammunition and explosives, they also had their own weapons and one was a Steyer sniper rifle so I assumed that they were not amateurs, there was enough in their bags to start a war themselves without joining HOS. They told me that HOS was the second most popular political party in Croatia and would probably take over parlament. The leader was a man called something beginning with P but I couldn't understand or spell it, who was known to think that he wanted to become the next president of Croatia wow perhaps I was going to meet a future president but as usual I just had to wait.