Skip to main content

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. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ninth installment

The remains of the unit that were in this position left and we followed them, we went around the outskirts of the village and back into the center. The rest of PIV or what was left of it were already there, we found out that Colin just after he had reached the main hq in the center of the village. We had to go back to the end of the street to see what was happening but as soon as we arrived we came under heavy fire as the enemy had pinpointed this house as our new front line, there was no way that we could reach Eric without getting everyone who attempted a rescue killed and because of the amount of enemy fire we had to fall back, on the way Alan started going berserk saying that he had to go back to fight, he was shooting everywhere so George calmed him down and asked him to take care of the elderly and that seemed to work. By now the village command had decided it was time to leave but first we had to wait for the mortar unit to reach safety. We could not get anywhere near under cons...
Post a Comment
Read more

Third installment

Day in, day out, it was the same routine, sleep, guard, fire off a few rounds in the general direction of the enemy, there was not much else to do, the main thing was to stay alive by keeping inside every time mortars or artillery came flying in to the village. The only time that there was a lot of activitie was when we were buzzed by planes, everybody would rush outside, Ernie would jump on the transporter and fire the machine gun, I used to run to the machine gun that was mounted on a tripod at the end of the street and also fire at the plane, everybody else would be outside firing their ak47s, there was not much chance of hitting it or bringing it down but it took only one lucky shot and that would give everyone hope. After the plane had gone out of sight that the transporter was Ernies because he had shot at the enemy leaving the damaged transporter with a sniper rifle, so Geordi the commander in charge of the defense of Osijek had given it to Ernie, I also found out that he worked...
Post a Comment
Read more

Second installment

The word money has a way of working it's way into every aspect of life and my little crusade was not exempt, how much did I need to get to Croatia, how much did I need to survive on the way, it all had to be taken into account and most where and how I was going to get the money from that I needed. By inquiring at travel agents I found out that I could fly but only as far as Austria, Italy or Hungary but the price was much too expensive for me. Taking the train to any of these countries was also far too expensive, the cheapest way was by bus but the only problem was that it took so long to reach your destination. The bus that I wanted to take went from London and it's destination was Athens in Greece, it normally went through Yugoslavia but because of the war it was not going through Budapest then down into Belgrade before going onto Greece. This was the cheapest way to go and after further inquiries I found out the times and price of the bus, now all I had to do was get the mon...
Post a Comment
Read more