Fifth installment

The day of moving came and the whole unit got into the cars and lorry and headed out of town, we were following another unit who were also moving to the same place. It was not far from Osijek so therefore we arrived in a short space of time but only going all around the village before reaching our final destination. We parked outside some houses which were meant to be our new bases. The new base was not the front line but only about two kilometers from it, we were close enough so that if an attack came we had ample time to prepare and repel the enemy. Our unit now had a purpose, to defend a possible attack on Osijek from our direction and to mine the areas in front of our trenches. The house was fairly new and large enough to accommodate all of PIV it was ideal for all our purposes. It had two stories, a large driveway and quite a few out buildings which had been used as a joinery making windows and doors. It belonged to a man who had a fair bit to do with the locals, he had another house in Osijek so it would not have mattered if he objected to us being there, the house was now ours as long as we stayed in Briest. We started to move everything that we had acquired overall the last few weeks from the basement of the Court, ammunition, weapons and bunk beds, then the men and their belongings. We had left the women and the youngsters as guards, if had any paperwork to be done then we could take it there, the front line was no place for women and young boys. We would use the three biggest rooms for sleeping quarters and one of the upstairs rooms for an office, the kitchen would be used for cooking(as we now had a chef) and as a dining room there was a large enough toilet downstairs that could be locked so that would be used as an armory and for medical supplies,by early evening we had moved everything in, we now had a hq for PIV and we knew what our job was, the unit was now building up and everything was going to plan.

Over the next few days two main jobs, one was to inform the local village command that we were in the village and where, our second task was patrolling the village which included house to house checks as there were a lot of serbians living there so we had to be very careful of security. If we found a Serbian house then we would check it and confiscate weapons, ammunition and anything else that was suspicious. The men doing the checks would bring back the confiscated items and details of the owners so that we could inform the local military police. There was a small shop not far from us that had been owned by a Serbian who after we had arrived had disappeared so we thought that he wasn't coming back so we relieved him of anything that he had left, it was very nice of him to supply us with food and cigarettes as the men didn't have much money so those items would help a great deal. It wasn't long until we started getting plagued by press of all nationalities some we were friendly with and others who were sent by command in Osijek we had to be nice to. At the front of the house we had put up flags of all the nationalities in PIV and on the corner hanging high the Croatian flag in a position of importance, it looked like the outside of the UN in America, flags everywhere. The house opposite ours was occupied by Peter who had been one of the commanders in Laslovo and who we knew very well, he was Hungarian and also a target for the press, his second in command was Ron who I had met my first day in Osijek and whom we were all friendly with, they were responsible for small artillery such as howitzers, mortars and anything else that could be fired at the enemy, they had the job of backup to the men in the trenches and his men were also digging in for any attack that may or may not come, Briest was now as safe as anywhere else in Osijek.