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Fifth installment

The next day was spent sorting out the armory and taking stock of what we had, we decided to make two lists one real for us and one make believe for hq. We turned the room at one end of the gym into a makeshift bunker and put everything in order. It took us the best part of the day but eventually it was finished, I went back to the office to find Ernie talking on the phone in Spanish after he had finished he told me that the two journalists that had visited us in Brejest had been saying bad things as usual about us both on TV and in the papers, yet again we were having trouble with the press,Ernie decided that he would invite a film crew from Spain to join us to counteract the bad publicity that we were getting in Spain, the press was having a field day with us, no real fighting on the front line so we were the target again but as long as there was a war in Croatia we would be good press for foreign journalists, it was funny but the only reason I was getting a bad name was because I was associated with Ernie. These Spanish journalists had said all kinds of things about us, they had portrayed us as ruthless mercenaries that would stop at nothing to get our orders obeyed. It was all rubbish but we were unable to answer the accusations as we were in Croatia and serving the government loyaly. The only way was to use tv as Ernie was trying to arrange, to be honest I thought that it would only agitate the situation but we had to try something. A couple of days later things got even worse when we were told that a female German journalist(who was a friend of Clive the Swiss who had been killed by chetniks) had printed a story saying that he had been killed by us and not the enemy. We were ruthless commander's as the Spanish press had said but now also accused of being killers of our own men, I for one had enough of being falsely accused of everything,here I was fighting in Croatia and all the press could do was to print lies in order to sell their newspapers when would they learn that a war makes good press and perhaps then the world would understand what a war is really about and why I for one will continue to fight until the end. At least the press wasn't affecting the men and in the school it was relatively stable, we were continuing with the training and patrols to Baranja. We had also decided to build an assault course at the back of the school as there was plenty of ground and the men needed something to build their strength up as they all needed to be in the best shape for what was to come. From now on assigned specific jobs to certain people so as to give the Croatias more responsibility, we had a driver called Collin, the armorer who was now Shakespeare, our secretaries and a new woman in the kitchen. We were allocating the time off to go into Osijek and everything was ok until one of the men came back drunk. The problem was that he was so drunk that he wanted to commit suicide by blowing himself up with a grenade, he had first fired his rifle everywhere but luckily he was so drunk that he could not hit anything so he decided to use a grenade. There were only a few who were trying to talk to him, they were Alex the Latvian and one of the Hungarians but every time they got close he would threaten to pull the pin, I was on the road opposite the school with my rifle ready just in case, Kevin was on the roof with the sniper fifle but nobody knew what was the best, we continued to try and talk some sence into him but he was not interested and then he went for a walk carrying the grenade, Kevin was yelling that he could take him out using the sniper rifle but there were so many people around i told Kevin to wait until there was no risk to anyone else. Then from my point of view the worst thing that could happen happened as he started to walk towards me saying that I should shoot him but because of the people around him I just ignored him, he then headed straight for me and as I looked around I saw two young girls behind me out in the open so I grabbed hold of them and put them behind a car hoping that he didn't think that now was the right time to pull the pin and thank God he passed me and the girls by, the girls were crying hysterically and as soon as I thought he was far enough away I sent them home as that was one word I knew in Croatian that they understood. When he came back to the front of the school the military police had arrived and after a short while they had calmed him down enough to get him in the car and take him away. Everyone breathed a sign of relief as the car drove away, nobody had been hurt but we did learn a lesson from it and that was we had to keep the men under stricter control so that this would not happen again. 

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Ninth installment

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