Sixth installment

Over the next few days we planned a demo for the Gardist, it included patrolling and a few explosions, we would use a local shooting range which we used regularly and it was the base for the military police and we had quite a few friends there. When the day came we loaded the trucks up, explosives, weapons and the men. We arrived and they asked us to put flags up outside the building as it had been used as a competition range before the war for international meetings. We marched around a bit and then they asked for one person from each country to stand under his countries flag, the only flag they had for me was the Union Jack, I then found out how the Croatians felt when they had to have the Yugoslavian flag raised everywhere, my countries flag had the Welsh dragon on it and I would have been proud to stand under it but as there wasn't one anything for show business. There was only one there that day that probably spoilt the whole shot and that was Clive the Swiss who insisted that he kept his face covered which made him look like a bandit, why didn't he want to be seen, perhaps he had friends that wouldn't be happy if they found out he was serving in an international unit in Croatia, he was acting like an idiot and sometimes I really did think he was an idiot,we carried not wanting to look like amateurs. After the demo and photo call came the interviews after that we packed everything back in the trucks and headed for home.

The days went by with us doing the jobs that we had to and also carry on the training. One day Ernie came back from Osijek and told us that we had to do a night recce towards the enemy position to see what was going, it was a risky thing to do and the people who went had to know what they were up against, after talking about it and being briefed the people who would go were Peter,George, Joseph because we all knew the area and lastly Clive because we needed one other and he had volunteered. We planned which way we were going to go and how long we would stay out, a guard was to be left on our front line to stop any of the Croatians shooting at us on our return, we were going to take two radio's one on our frequency and the other on commands frequency, we would all carry enough ammunition and grenades to get out of any situation that might occur. We all started to get ready after nightfall and once prepared we went outside to get our eyes accostomed to the dark, everyone was quiet except for me,

"stay within a safe distance of the man in front of you, no talking, rely on hand signals and let's hope we all get back safe" I said to them,

"where should I be" said Clive,

"George first, then Joseph, me, you and lastly Peter" I replied,

"any other questions before we go" I asked,

there was nothing so we set off taking the guard with us. When we got to our front line we left the guard and told him to stay put and not wonder about while we carried on. We encountered no difficulties on the way out and reached the canal not far from the enemy village, we stayed there watching and listening for how long I can't remember, eventually we started back after not seeing or hearing anything. On the way back Clive seemed to be lagging behind, we got to the canal about one hundred meters in front of our lines and started to climb up the bank opposite, once we were on top and waited until everyone was back, George, Joseph, Peter, myself, everyone apart from Clive,

"where is he" I whispered,

there was no reply, we waited and listened, all of a sudden we heard noises from behind us and by the time we got down the banking and had looked around we found Clive lying in the mud, we thought that he was just lying there as we were on top of the banking but we couldn't be more wrong. We tried to speak to him but there was no reply, we shook him but it looked like he was dead. We tried to revive him with mouth to mouth and heart massage while George went for help, it did not seem to be much good but we continued until the medics arrived with a stretcher, we put Clive on it and took him as quickly as possible back to our lines where the ambulance was waiting. We put the stretcher in and the ambulance drove off, Ernie had now arrived and we told him what had happened, 

"make your way back to base and wait for me there" he said,

so off we walked, not one word passed between us as I think it was a bit of a shock to us all, 

"why had he been so far behind us after I had told everyone to stay together, what happened to him, would he be alright or was he dead" I said.

We all arrived back minus Clive, unloaded our weapons and took off our coats. One of the men brought us a hot drink which was very welcome, we sat down and drank it in silence,soon after Ernie arrived back and told us to get some sleep, we could write our reports in the morning. When I awoke the following morning I felt terrible, I hadn't slept much the night before as I was constantly thinking about what had happened even though I came up with no conclusions. We were all called into the office where we wrote our reports out, nobody seemed happy that morning. After receiving a telephone call Ernie told us that Clive had died from strangulation and head wounds, we now had another reason to continue this war. The death of Clive hung over the unit for a couple of days but as we had discovered in Laslovo life must go on,no sooner had Clives been taken but another, not from our unit but still a good friend of mine, the victims name was Peter Jefferson who was supposedly shot by a sniper from the village where we went when Clive was killed, one shot and the sniper had deprived Peter of living his normal life span yet another journalist dies for the sake of a story or photograph that may one day bring them fame, I had only been speaking to him a few weeks ago in Zagreb where he had given me the photograph he took of me painting the Mazda, at least I had that memory of him. How many more lives would be taken needlessly before this war would reach it's conclusion, I hoped that it would not be too many.