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Chapter X Problems? Problems? Problems?

Over the next few days life got back to normal or what could be called normal, the men in the unit were now spending most of their day sitting around doing nothing, the same as everybody else in Osijek. The entire population of this city didn't have any idea what was now going to happen in this war, the enemy were still bombing the city but the orders from the government were now very explicit saying that on no account should the forces of the Croatian army retaliate to the provocation, what did the government expect us to do lie down and die, I didn't know and neither did anyone else.We had been given a new name IDS(basically recce company) what we were supposed to recce I was not sure about, I suppose someone in command must know. During the following days we had various alerts to try and keep the men relatively busy, a couple of times we even went to the front line but on arriving there came straight back. We were also having press clippings from the world's press most of them branding us as mercenaries as usual, there was one that upset me a great deal. We had been given a copy of a Spanish magazine with a story about us and also a picture, a picture of a body lying on the ground with three chetniks standing around as though they were going to dig a grave, when I looked closely at the dead man lying on the ground I recognized him immediately, it was Eric, the AWOL british soldier who had been shot by a sniper on the last day of Laslovo, my worst fears had come true. There was always a slim hope that the chetniks had taken Eric to a hospital but there I was looking at reality in that one picture. The body they had pictured was a foreigner, not Croatian or Bosnian, these people were not given the same rights as everyone else, we were here as mercenaries or Ustasha, paid as such and branded killers, the Geneva Convention didn't apply to us, all I could do was to imagine how Eric died, had he been left to bleed to death or as the chetniks as they had done on so many occasions shot him at point blank range, the only way that I or anyone else for that matter would find out was to find his body and do an autopsy, only then would I and his family really know how Eric died. The rest of the day passed slowly for me as all I could think about was the picture, was I not only looking at a picture of my dead friends body but perhaps a future picture of me, I could also one day be in the same situation, I decided to get drunk as this was always the only way that I could forget the atrocities of this war, no wonder there were so many drug drug and alcohol addicted soldiers in America. They had Vietnam, the Croatians had Croatia, the Americans had the vietcong, the Croatians had the chetniks, one war was in the jungle, the other was an urban war but in both wars there had been horrendous and merciless killings, people have seen things in these war's that their minds can't cope with and therefore had turned to drugs or alcohol as a deterant to remembering, this was now happening to me, I hoped that I could control it?
The following day was the first of April, three days before we were to go on holiday and the day that the first of my articles would appear in the newspaper,, I decided to borrow one of the cars and go to see Paula who was bound to have bought a copy of the paper, I found her in the press center as usual on the computer, she gave me a kiss and showed me the paper, there it was my article in black and white for all to see, I smiled to myself and asked her if she would like to go for a pizza as a way of celebrating, she said yes so off we went to 'Nessie' our favorite pizzeria. The owner was there and also another friend, we shook hands and sat down, Paula told him why we were there and he read the article and congratulated me, we ordered drinks, pizzas and listened to the radio. While we were listening Paula told me to be quiet and after a couple of minutes she spoke, 
"that was a woman who rang up the local radio station and told them how much she agreed with what you had written about" she said,
I was amazed, perhaps people were really going to read my articles after all, this was something to celebrate. When we finished our meals I took Paula back to the press center and told her that I would see her later on as I had to get back to the base, I took the paper and as I headed home I wondered if anyone at the base had read the article, I knew the girls would have read it as they were always interested in what I wrote. 

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