Fifth installment

When I awoke I found that Ernie and James had gone to hq to report what we had done and probably to celebrate their achievements that day, of course it was not only their achievement but the men who were also there. While I was sitting in the office Mark walked in and sat behind the desk, he had to make a phone call to Spain for some reason and when he had finished he told me that Ernie had decided that everyone deserved the following day off so I immediately phoned Paula and told her that I might see her later on or definitely tomorrow. Over the phone she sounded relieved to hear from me but not half as much as I was able to telephone her, I was alive and so was everyone else who had been on the attack, I told her that I had written an article and I would show it to her when I saw her. As soon as I had finished and put the telephone down Ernie and James walked in, they said that hq was very happy with what we had done and had said to give the men their congratulations, Ernie told me to work out a system for the guards for tomorrow so that all of the men could get a certain amount of time off to go into Osijek or visit relatives. When he had finished giving orders he went and turned the tv on so that he could see the news, halfway through there was a report from Osijek stating that the chetniks had set fire to the fields across the river and it showed pictures of smoke coming from Baranja, we all looked at each other knowingly, that was our doing, the napom mortars had done their job as there was a fire raging at the Pumpa. We now had evidence that the mission was a complete success all we needed now was to have the casualty count from our friend we knew it would be high but we had to wait. There was also a report straight after stating that Osijek had been attacked and that only four people had been admitted to hospital, they were not civilians as we knew that they were our men, Ernie telephoned the hospital and found out that they were all alright except for one who was having an operation that afternoon on his jaw and eye, we would know tomorrow how bad it was when we visited them in hospital. Once I had finished the guard rota I put it on the notice board and went to see how the men were, the one room was in darkness as everyone was asleep, in the other they were all talking, I asked was everyone ok and told them that they had done a fantastic job and I for one was very proud of them, they all nodded as if in reply and I left. This time yesterday they were just a bunch of raw recruits who had only a little training behind them and no actual experience but that all changed yesterday, I thought to myself that they were all soldiers just because of this one action but they still had a lot to learn before they could call themselves soldiers, I wondered how many would stay in the army after the war had finished and continue to learn the art of warfare, how many would go back to their civilian jobs or back to college as a lot of them were still young? The war had made a lot of them grow up too quickly and they missed out on a lot of things that teenagers experience during their school days, at least their parents should be proud of them for fighting for their country even though they knew that there was a chance that they would lose their sons or daughters, this was a fact of life in war torn Croatia, one that they had to accept.