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Sixth installment

When he had finished speaking he came over to me and started to speak in near perfect english,
"I am the commander of an international unit based at a village called Laslovo, about twenty kilometers from here, my name is Ernie and his is George (pointing at his friend), we will accept you as all the help we can get but I have to sort out a few things first"he continued,
and off he went in the direction of some offices. He came back telling me I had to wait for them to make me an i.d he introduced me to George, Ernie told me that he was from Spain and George was from Hungary, he explained a few things to me, nothing important just chitchat. Very soon he went back to the offices and brought me my ID, I was now C.S.Hollaway and my army number was 000738, could that mean there were only 783 defending Osijek there must be more or at least that was what I hoped. We started to walk out Ernie shaking hands on the way, instead of going by car we jumped into an open backed lorry I got in the back with another Hungarian called Nigel who spoke no english at all, I sat near the tailgate as I wanted to see where we were going and what was around, George sat opposite me and started to speak in broken english, 
"I am glad that there is someone else in the unit who speaks english, I can now practice" he said,
"where are you from, how long have you been in the army and what's in these boxes" wanting to know as much as possible,
"I lived in Laslovo until the village came under attack so became it was my home I joined the army, as for the boxes they are full with ammunition and explosives" was his reply,
We were sitting on and travelling in a lorry loaded with explosives, what a great taxi I thought,he told me that we were going to the hospital first to see Nigel's brother who was in a serious condition after taking shrapnel in his neck.
"wasn't he wearing a helmet" I asked,
"no" came the reply,
"why not for God's sake?"
"I don't know" said George,
I thought to myself that I had come all this way to join an amateur army, lookalike Rambos, these were not my idea of soldiers, it seemed I had much to learn about the Croatian army. We stopped outside the hospital and I was shocked at the amount of damage, the enemy even targeted hospitals what an eye opener. 

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