Seventh installment

When the meeting actually started Ernie started by telling us of the latest developments in our mission and then what followed struck a sour note with me. The unit was to be split into two platoons and the commanders were James and Kevin, I was no longer second in command as Kevin had taken over that role. The two platoons would consist of three sections, James's section consisted of a Canadian who was new and was to be in charge of the sniper group, one of the girls in charge of logistics and Mark in charge of demolition. The second platoon had Kevin as not only platoon commander but commander of one infantry section and the other infantry section commanded by one of the Croatians, then came the bomb shell my rank had now been reduced to a new position of commander of the guard. When all the good men had been allotted a position those men left were given to me, in other words all the new recruits, I was gutted and to make matters worse my friend Alan who had also been with Ernie from the beginning was given no position at all. From that moment on I knew I was out of favour and that Kevin was the new light in Ernies eyes for what reason I didn't know but I couldn't do anything just accept the situation,from the way that the girls were looking in my direction I could see that they knew how I felt but they couldn't do anything either. The following day I devised the guard system in a matter of minutes and presented it to Ernie for his approval, he had no choice as it was both simple and effective and there was no way that he could find fault in it, that was my assignment taken care of and all I had to do now was sit around doing nothing, the days passed with the constant reminder on the tv of the UN's arrival but that didn't dampen the Serbians as they were continuing to bomb the front line and Osijek as usual, there was only one bright light during those dark days for me and that was speaking to Paula, I had just received the language books from her and was trying to learn but found it hard, every time I opened the books I thought about her and somehow those thoughts spurred me on. It seemed to me that I was abandoned with nothing but my thoughts for company, there were moments when I was happy but those times only included the Croatians and not the foreigners. There were a couple of times that stuck in my mind like the time when I didn't make one of the girls a cup of coffee, she wasn't happy and therefore decided that she would steal my Nescafe as she knew I treasured it because it was very hard to get, I ended up chasing her around the school a couple of times before I eventually caught up with her but only because she was laughing so much she couldn't run anymore, we were just like two children but at least it broke the monotony. The other time was when I completely lost my cool, I had been handing out punishments if anyone had done something wrong and my favorite was to clean the toilets and showers but the offenders always got out of it so I decided to show them how it was done, I put my rifle with the bayonet attached in the frame of the door and proceeded to clean the toilets like any British soldier who had been punished would do, while I was in there no one came anywhere near me, if they came within ten meters of me I would pick up my rifle and threaten them and everyone knew that it was better if they left me alone. When I had finished the President would have been proud to use them as they were spotless and I was proud of a job well done, next I sat down and wrote a couple of sentences, got someone to translate it and pinned it on the notice board,

"I was not punished for anything but I cleaned the toilets to prove that if an officer who was not Croatian could do it so could everyone else. In future if anyone gets punished then they should follow my example without question" I wrote,

To my surprise it did work as jobs were done without arguments, maybe I was not useless, after all I could always get a job as a lavatory cleaner after the war and they didn't have to speak to anyone, who was I kidding, there was nothing I could do without being able to speak the language and that was going to take a long time.