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Eighth installment

It wasn't long before I arrived at the house to find only Alan there, he was sitting down as he couldn't find the key to our room which he had given to Ivana to look after, he had spent the night in the other room and he asked me to go and find it as I got on with everyone. After searching for it I found that one of the men had it and gave it to me, I went back to the house and opened the door so that we could get unpacked. The others didn't arrive that night and neither did Docy although we found out that he was spending a lot of time at the hospital which was probably because of his girlfriend. We saw Kirk that evening and his delight at seeing us was evident, he told us that there was a party that night at one of the other bases as they had just moved house and that we were all invited so as we were the only ones there he took us himself. We found everyone in one room, some watching a movie and some playing cards, we went in and gave them the crate of beer that we had brought with us and they gave us an opened bottle in return. We sat down drinking and talking,
"I've been in Croatia for almost a year next week and it's also my birthday" Alan told me.
"I know what we will do, we'll have a party to celebrate your birthday and the fact that we have both been in this war for a year" I replied,
I had arrived in Laslovo one week after he had so we both knew when to celebrate. We decided to ask Kirk if it was alright and then arrange everything for the following week, we both thought it was a great idea and settled back to the serious business of drinking,some of the others were outside spit roasting a pig and shortly they came in to tell us that the food was ready, Alan and I went out as we were always hungry,standing around outside and listening to the distant detonations was like being back in Laslovo again, two simple things like spit roasting a pig and detonations set my memory banks off that was how much Laslovo had left within me and I knew that I would never forget it. While I was there one of the men came and told me that there was a phone call on our internal phone for me, so I went inside and picked up the phone and for a moment I didn't recognize who was on the phone and then it clicked, it was Ivan from the Yellow Submarine in Osijek,
"what the hell are you doing here, I hope that your not going to start another radio station here as I had enough of the one in Osijek" I said,
"no I'm just visiting Kirk and Peter and I will be leaving tomorrow, what are you doing"
"we're having a party"
"don't go anywhere I will be right over" he said and hung up,
It was getting more and more like Croatia with all the officers from HV coming to Bosnia, it would be good to see Ivan again I thought to myself, I told Alan and he seemed happy. We stayed there until about ten and there was no sign of Ivan so we asked one of the men to drive us home. The good thing about driving in a war zone is that there are no police and you can drive anyway you want to. We arrived back to find out that Ivan had gone and that Kirk was at command, I sat down and watched telly while Alan went back to the house to go to bed, after I had watched the news I decided to join Alan as I was a bit drunk and the best thing was to sleep it off. 

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