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Seventh installment

One day one of the men brought back a small caliber rifle with a telescope sight from one of the houses that they had searched, the owner didn't have a license so we confiscated it, that evening we had an unfortunate accident, one that Alan would remember. The men were looking at the rifle when George took it and supposedly unloaded it, he then started to look through the sights and playing with it, he was stupidly pointing it at everyone, bang, he had pulled the trigger and a bullet left the barrel, Alan fell backwards onto the floor, the bullet had hit him and we immediately ran to see what we could do. There was blood streaming from his forehead, I wiped away the blood to see where the bullet had hit, someone else in the meantime had gone for the doctor who I wished would hurry up and arrive. Since Eric and Laslovo, I had become friendly with Alan, Nigel and George and had got to know them fairly well, I was very concerned, I had already lost one friend and I hoped I would not lose another, I kept talking to him to keep him conscious until the doctor arrived,eventually he came, cleanded the wound and said Alan had to go to hospital. As we were following the ambulance I felt myself shaking, I was upset because of a stupid accident and I prayed that everything would be okay. We arrived at the hospital to find out that Alan was halaaaaving an x-ray done, the nurse brought his clothes out and told us to wait,we all hoped that it was not as serious as it had looked, shortly the doctor came out,
"Alan will be alright but he will have to remain in hospital for sometime, the bullet hit the corner of his right eye and there are problems with his sight, but he will be alright" the doctor explained,
"can we go and see him" asked Ernie,
"yes, but not for long" came the doctors reply. 
As Ernie was the commander he went inside and we just waited,
 when he came out we left,
"we will be able to see him in a couple of days when he was transferred to the eye hospital" he told us.
On the way back nobody spoke, as we drove up to our base we noticed a number of men on the road waving torches, we stopped,Ernie got out and talked to them. We carried on back to our base not knowing what was going on, when we got inside we found out that George and Nigel had been really upset and had drunk a third of a bottle of brandy, they were subsequently tipsy, they had also taken two shoulder launched rockets and gone off into the night. They had fired them and Ron and his men had gone to look for them and bring them back,they had fired them into a house that was empty. We informed the local military police as to what had happened, George had accidentally shot his friend and everyone was upset. The next day we rung the hospital and found out that Alan would be transferred to Zagreb, Ernie made sure that all the arrangements had been taken care of,I told him that I would see him when they took me to Zagreb on my way back home to Wales, we now knew that he would probably lose the sight of one eye but really we would have to wait to see what the doctors said. 

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