Eleventh installment

The next day Alan seemed upset and I decided to ask Ernie what was the matter, he told me that Alan had to go on holiday to the coast for three weeks as a wounded soldier and the army was paying, I thought it was great but Alan didn't want to go, perhaps it was because of his new girlfriend but somehow I thought that the real reason was he wanted action and a chance to die a soldier. We knew that if he went on his own he would probably get off the train before he arrived so I suggested to Ernie that someone should accompany him and as we had one of our men from the coast he should be the one, Alan and myself had known him for four months so he wouldn't be a stranger, he agreed and we arranged it all. Now all that was left to do was speak to Alan and even though Ernie could speak Portuguese he said that I should talk to him, Ernie just didn't care anymore as long as the problem went away and by the problem he meant Alan, to me he was a friend and I said I would try. When I found him he was lying on his bed, I chatted to him for about fifteen minutes before he agreed to go on holiday without any fuss, I had my good deed for that day and if his lord and master Ernie wanted anything else done then he would have to do it himself. During that day it was suggested that Brian was not doing a very good job in the armory as he didn't know much about weapons and Ernie asked us all if we knew of someone to replace him, the only really qualified person was Kevin, alan(he was going on holiday), John(he was still in hospital) and myself, so after ten minutes of tossing names about I volunteered as I could do it while I had nothing to do, everyone agreed as it was the best solution. In a way it was a good idea for two reasons, the first being that it would keep me occupied and the second was it would keep me out of Ernies way and give me the chance to show yet again that I was valuable as a soldier and a member of our unit. The best way was to tackle the job from scratch and as the men were not doing much I got them to help. The small armory was the first on the list and I decided that we should keep only what command thought that we had in this room and everything else moved to the gym, we arranged everything tidy and wrote all the weapons we had into a book from now on if someone wanted a weapon then they would have to sign for it, I was going to run it like any British armory would be run. The next job was the main armory so everything was moved out of the room, it was counted and stacked in different piles by the time we had finished both rooms were immaculate, I showed Ernie and he was suitably impressed as I knew he would be. That night I went to see Paula but didn't stay long as I was shattered and wanted to sleep but before I left she told me that she had translated the article and taken it to the newspaper office, they had read it and said that it was very good and would appear on the first of April (I hoped that it was not going to be an April fools joke) and they would publish another article every Wednesday after that, it had been a very good day and as I left I kissed her and said thank you for what she had done for me, I was definitely beginning to fall for this beautiful Croatian woman even if I had always said I was not going to get involved again, in the past I had been wrong many times and I hoped that this was not going to be one of those times. The next day was Ernies real birthday and he had arranged a bar-b-q but this time with a few more people and more of the men, the day after he was going to have another birthday which Paula and myself had arranged so after I went back to the base I checked that everyone was coming and gave them a time to be at the hotel, once I had done that I went to bed not even bothering to wait and see if Ernie wanted anything, I needed a good night's rest and I was going to have it.