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Chapter 1 Osijek base-destroyers arrive

The following day after we arrived back from Zagreb interviewing new recruits and that included four British, they told us only the details that they wanted us to know, Kevin an ex-paratrooper who had served three years in the French Foreign Legion and with various other armies around the world, he for one had experience, the next Robert, ex-british also experienced, two down two to go, the third Keith he told us that he was an expert in explosives and was very suspicious because of the fact that he told us hardly anything about himself, the last was Thomas another ex-british soldier who after leaving the army he had started a security firm, because of his experience in security he was asked to join Ernie and myself while we interviewed the men. Out of all we interviewed we took about two-thirds into our unit. It was decided that these would remain at our base in Osijek, Ernie thought it was a good idea at the time but within the space of a few weeks he would be proved wrong. It was decided that Ernie, the woman and I would remain at this base while the rest of the unit stayed at Briest, after they had been trained they would replace the men in Briest and those that they replaced would come to Osijek to undergo more training or that was what Ernie had planned. The instructors after being told about the security threat seemed to be taking it lightly and I wondered why?, Peter would be in charge of a section of men used for security and they would be trained by Thomas who seemed to know a lot about this subject, Peter was again content with the situation as he had again sorted things out with his girlfriend and was for the present behaving normally.
The next few weeks were spent with the unit split between the two bases and looked like for the present was working but was it really or was it just tearing the unit apart. We had also decided that it was time to change our name from the original PIV to something else and after thinking about it I came up with a suggestion, we could call ourselves 3FC(Freedom Fighters For Croatia) it had a nice ring to it and Ernie liked it, he said he would design a shoulder badge around the name and a friend of his would get them made in a local factory. We now had a new name and the British were doing most of the training after Ernie had agreed to it instantly, whatever the instructors were saying Ernie was agreeing with, they were now his favorites. The new recruits that we had acquired were a mixed bunch from many different countries, a Canadian was designated as a sort of room commander, he was not a soldier and everything he knew he had read in a book, no experience but most of the new recruits were in the same position, in fact the only people that had real war experience were the Croatians and in the beginning were mostly civilians. While Thomas was training Peter and his section, I was stuck in the base with nothing to do so I used to sit in on the training and one in particular interested me, it was on explosives and the instructor was Keith, I sat in one corner and listened, from the way he was giving the lesson I thought that he knew quite a bit about the subject, not only about mines but also bobby traps as well, I concluded that he was not a soldier but certainly a mercenary but for the moment that did not matter. The section that Keith was training looked like they were happy at what they were being taught but they were beginning to think that they were something special, only one an ex-British soldier called Donald was behaving normally. This section was not special to me at all and if Peter and his section didn't change their attitude they could become a problem, I mentioned this to Ernie but he said I was being paranoid so I just forgot about it. While this training was going on the men in Briest were being forgotten about and the quicker we were a complete unit the better, they would not have time to think about what was going on while they were being trained especially by these new instructors. One day Peter had some business to attend to in Zagreb he, Ernie, six others and myself would go to Zagreb for two days but first we had to get the necessary documents to travel, Ernie sorted that out and we would leave the next day. 

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