Sixth installment

While we were talking that night we decided that we should bring all the men under one roof so that meant vacating the houses, we re-arranged the school and brought extra beds in, the houses were emptied and cleaned so that they were just the same as when we moved into them, we now had everyone under the same roof and at last we were one complete unit again. That night I rang Paula and she told me that she would be returning to Osijek within a week and that she would tell me exactly when she knew, she also said she was missing me and couldn't wait to get back home and to be truthful neither could I. Although people say that it's a man's world there's no substitute for a woman's company, it would be great to know that she would only be a few kilometers down the road if I got fed up with the men at the base. The only thing that I had to do now was wait and I knew it wouldn't be forever. The next day one of the girls brought the citizenship papers to the base, I was overjoyed because if we had waited for Ernie to get them then we would still be waiting. The paper's were important for two reasons, the first was as a Croatian citizen the government couldn't demobolise me and therefore expel me from the country once my usefulness as a soldier had been outlived when the UN arrived, the second was that I really did want to become a citizen of the country that I helped free from the chains of communism and somehow in the future continue to help. If I was successful in my application then it would be just the thanks I wanted for helping, I didn't want any financial reward just that important piece of paper. The others had ulterior motives, one being that they would have an extra passport just in case they got into trouble in another country. The questions were in Croatian so one of girls helped me and write down the answers in Croatian, she was a great help to those of us that didn't speak the language and I think that deep down she knew how much the application meant to me but like all good secateries she said nothing. When they had all been filled out she took them back to hq where they were to be given to the police and then forwarded to Zagreb or that's what we hoped. Around this time when we were filling out our applications we had a visit from a man from the Ministery of Defense who spoke to most of the foreigners and told us that after the war we would be looked after finding accommodation and a job for as long as we stayed in the Croatian army. What he said pleased me very much as I had now a chance to start a new life in a new country and that was great as the new country was Croatia. Over the next few days I kept asking Ernie if the forms had been sent off but he wasn't interested, whatever I had asked of him lately he was just ignoring me as though I didn't exist or like I was one of the Croatians who he treated the same, his attitude was turning me against him even though I still classed him as a friend, I was being treated like a fool and it was starting to get to me, I was now very short tempered and not being allowed to do anything was just aggravating the situation. The recces were still being carried out but instead of using me who had some experience Ernie was sending the new recruits and risking their lives in the process but that did not worry Ernie as he was the commander and still in charge. Some of the others could understand how I was feeling especially Alan and Mark, they were soldiers and not to be used as such was absolutely stupid, they kept telling me that it was probably because Ernie didn't want me to get hurt but I didn't believe that for one minute, there had to be a better reason but for the moment I just couldn't work it out.

That afternoon we split the men into sections and who was going to command them, there were papers in front of Ernie as we all sat down, he and someone else had already decided on the new sections and I was not that other person?