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First installment

The next day I awoke to find Ernie awake which was very unusual for him, he asked me to clean out the instructors room and put all their belongings in boxes, I said that I would try as my leg wasn't completely healed and I may not be able to although I knew from his expression that he wasn't interested in excuses even if I was telling the truth. Their room was just as they had left it so I put everything on the beds before I packed them away, I had to check that there was nothing that belonged to the unit as only their personal belongings were to be packed, once I had put everything away I got some of the men to move the boxes as this room was to be used by James, Mark and myself as a bedroom, I rearranged the room so that we could get an extra bed in for Alan when he returned from hospital. Once I had finished everybody moved their belongings in and then I went back to the office to find Ernie sitting at the table looking at a map spread out in front of him,
"what's the map for" I asked,
"Command has ordered us to form a plan for an attack on the velika pumpa (a place close to the zoo in Osijek) where the Serbians have a base which is too close to Osijek and we have to construct a plan of attack, maybe you could do that if you are still fit"he said,
for once I had to agree with him as at least he thought that I was capable of that. As he was in such a talkative mood I decided to try and find out what about the British, 
"why were the British put in jail" I asked,
"I was informed by Zagreb that they had been sent by someone in one of the ministries in government to destroy our unit" he replied,
if this was true then my suspicions were to be proved right but I had no way of confirming what Ernie had told me. It seemed logical as the country's president had always said that there were no foreign fighters fighting in Croatia and perhaps this was the result, to be perfectly honest I did not know what to believe. Were we that important to send a special group from Zagreb just to destroy us, perhaps so as the Serbians were always portraying us as mercenaries, if we were out of the way then they would have nothing to say as all the army was Croatian but the truth was that we were here and we took the same risks as our Croatian counterpart. Why didn't the government acknowledge the fact, after all I and the other foreigners considered this our war and were determined to see it through to the end. A couple of days later we were told that the British were to be released from prison and that they were coming to the base before being sent back to Zagreb. We were told that they were to pick up their belongings and go straight to the railway station, Ernie checked with me that I packed everything away safely, he was not going to get blamed for anything that maybe was missing. They arrived accompanied by the chief of the Military Police and went straight to their old room to find nothing there and they asked where all their belongings were, I showed them and they started to check for anything that might be missing. After about ten minutes they claimed that a lot of items were missing and that they would not leave until all the items had been returned, I told them that I packed everything into these boxes and if there was anything missing then it had to be removed prior to me cleaning the room. From what I told them they decided that Kevin must have taken them, we radioded Kevin and told him to bring anything that he had that belonged to the British as he was already coming to the base. We all sat down and waited, I listened to the conversation intently as I wanted to know as much about what happened as I could so that I could arrive at my own conclusions, the only other person in the room was our Australian public relations officer who had arrived the same time as the British. Sitting there listening i couldn't help but think that they had all been in it together, the only difference was that she and Kevin had not been found out. These two would remain at the base for the foreseeable future and they were not suspected by anyone apart from myself that is. If what I was thinking was true then they too would dissappear over the next few weeks either the same way as the British or of their own free will. After a short while Kevin walked in with some of the missing items and with a big grin on his face he returned them saying that he had only borrowed them and was going to give them back, I didn't think that they believed him but at least they could leave now. Another funny thing happened and that was that Kevin offered to accompany them to the station, I wondered was there an ulterior motive to the fact that he had decided to go to the station? That was one headache out of the way and now remained the biggest headache of all Ernie. 

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