Fourth lnstalment

One day I came back from guard duty to find another English man had joined us, he had got fed up with not doing anything and came to us, his name was Eric Whittaker and we immediately got on great because basically he had the same attitude as myself, we were both here to fight and help the Croatians any way we could, he was from somewhere in England and was AWOL from the British Army, he had not wanted to stay and wait for promotion all he wanted was to see action and this fight was one that he did not want to miss. Every day he would write in his diary therefore keeping a record of everything that he had done and seen since he arrived. When he and I were together everyone enjoyed themselves because we would make jokes about each other and everyone in the unit with no exceptions, I found out that he and Alan had already been close to the enemy lines to see what was happening and where they were positioned, they had seen T-84's, Russian tanks also where the machine gun nests were and most of all they had seen loads of Chetniks. At least they were doing what they were trained for, be soldiers while everyone else just wanted to defend and wait for the enemy to attack, it was as if they were waiting and willing to die in defense of their village. Then Ernie decided that we should repay the Chetniks for all the nice mortars and artillery they were sending to us, so Ernie, George, Alan, Nigel, Eric and I were going to attack a section of their front line. The only problem was that we had no briefing from Ernie about what we were going to do. We left as soon as it got dark, everybody armed with rifles, full magazines, grenades and a shoulder held rocket launcher which Ernie carried as he and Alan were the only ones to have actually fired it before. We went up to the railway station and waited listening and watching all the time for any noise or movement. We then proceeded up to the embankment checking all the time for mines or trip wires. All of a sudden we stopped, we must have been around one kilometer from our hq and this was where we were going to attack from, Ernie crawled up and peered over the top, there were mines there so he came back and George went up to disarm the mine that was in our way, we saw the enemy position with what looked like five or six chetniks in the room that was partially lit up, that was the target it was only about one hundred meters away so there was little chance of us missing, they were an easy target, while Ernie and Alan moved into position the rest of us moved slightly back just incase and we would give covering fire if needed, Ernie decided to fire, they loaded it and whispered they were ready to fire, we got into position safety catches off when we were ready Alan nodded to Ernie, they aimed and fired one loud bang was enough as it hit the target, direct hit, we all saw the damage and anyone who was in there was either dead or injured, a job well done, now to return the way we came slowly but surely. Suppriseinly there was no return fire perhaps what we had hit was a mortar position and probably that was why we weren't receiving any retaliation. We decided to go home and safely arrived and went downstairs and Ernie gave us all a glass of moonshine or what they called rakija,

"here's to us" said Ernie,

"whatever we hit we blew it sky high, one small victory for us" I said.

After we finished feeling pleased with ourselves with a job well done we all went to bed. For the first time since I arrived in Croatia I felt like I had actually done something that I had been trained to do.