Fourth lnstalment

Over the next few weeks before my birthday we continued training and mining, Ernie also decided that we needed a second base, so we had to look for that as well although I didn't see the need as we were in a good position where we were but he was the commander not me. Every few days I would take a different section down the street teaching them how to patrol both in friendly and enemy territory, they were learning very quickly and after the lesson I would explain to them why they had to do whatever I was teaching them in that particular way and they always appreciated that. It was decided we should use proper radio call signs so I gave everyone a name except for Alan the Spaniard but after thinking about it and remembering that he had suffered from malaria, so that was his call sign malaria. Every few days I would ring home to see how everyone was which made them a lot happier, only when I was on the phone did I get homesick as I always rang when I had some time to myself and for that short time I always spent time reflecting on what was going on in my life and I never once thought I had made the wrong decision in coming to Croatia. We now had a new task and that was to do a reconasance mission towards the enemy position about one and a half km from our base, these had to be done as the command needed information as to what the enemy was doing, I did not like the idea of sending our men on these missions as I didn't think that they were ready but the job had to be done so we did it.

We had all been celebrating the fact that more and more countries around the world were recognizing Croatia as a legitimate country, everyone that I knew had been waiting for this day with high expectations, why I wasn't sure but I wasn't Croatian. What they were expecting was perhaps the UN to come and act as peace keepers or perhaps large quantities of munitions, I wasn't sure that this would happen but no one knew for sure, all that it actually meant was Croatia was now an ex-communist country somewhere in the Balkans which still had a war going on within it's borders and people were still dying, I knew that the fact that we were a separate country from old Yugoslavia was not going to make the slightest difference to Milosovic who was the Serbian president in charge of his Serbian terrorists and his chetnik murders. They would still continue to bomb and attack wherever they wanted, Serbians still wanted Croatia to be part of their idea of a greater Serbia, the citizens of Croatia and that included our PIV would never let that happen no matter how many of us had to die before the end of the war and I included myself in that number. There was still half a bottle of scotch left so we drank that and some wine that we had, we also gave the men that were inside not on duty as there was no reason why they shouldn't celebrate as well. It was as good a reason and the men deserved it, they were doing reconasance, training and guard duties, they were working without complaining while the men of other unit's around the front line were having free time ours were not.