Skip to main content

Fifth installment

That night I told Paula what Alan had talked about,
"well all I have to say is that is his choice" she said,
after thinking about it I had to agree with her as everybody had to make up their own mind and no one person had the right to decide what what another was supposed to do, 
"I will be home sometime tomorrow afternoon, it just depends on whether the bus is on time or not" after saying goodnight I hung up,
without this phone there would be no contact with Paula for six days and that was to long. The next day we cleaned up as usual and waited for the bus to arrive, it was late as usual so one of the men decided to hitch home rather than wait and if the bus didn't come soon then I would do the same because we were wasting one of our free days and I wasn't happy about that. Eventually at two in the afternoon it arrived, three hours late and nobody gave us a hint as to why they took so long to arrive, I was fuming as I got on the bus and this was another reason why I was unhappy with RRF and was thinking about a change. 
Once I arrived home Paula was waiting as usual with open arms and a welcome smile, she was nearly always happy to see me but this time she had a good reason, she had just found out that the director of the school was leaving and from tomorrow she would be the new director, I was glad that she had had this promotion as it was what she deserved. It was great to see her getting on with her job, the only bad thing was that I was still in the army and not a civilian where I thought I wanted to be. We went out for a pizza that night as a way of celebrating and as a change we went to one of Paula's favorite restaurants which had been closed throughout the war, it was called 'Bonus' and inside it was very plush compared to the other restaurants in Osijek, we sat down and the manager took Paula's coat as he was an old friend of hers from before the war when she used to eat there regularly and instead of the usual pizza we ordered a meal. When we had finished we paid and left for home after what was a great meal, it wasn't long before we both fell fast asleep. The next morning I received a letter from my wife's soliciter that the divorce case would be heard in a weeks time and asking if I had any objections to the divorce, I read the letter again as I found it hard to believe. There was no way that I could have misread the contents, I was about to be divorced again, when would I find a wife that would stay with me, perhaps never but for the time being I had Paula, I signed the forms and put them in an envelope to post that afternoon as I wanted it to arrive before the date of the case, if this was what my wife really wanted then I was mnot going to stand in her way. The way that Paula was talking I knew that she was happy about the whole affair, she at least would be going out with a divorced and not a married man although that had not really made any difference in the past, I wasn't sure whether I was happy or sad but that was the way that it had to be and I had to get used to it. My break was almost over and I was not looking forward to going back firstly because it was boring and secondly because Robin was on holiday there was nobody to tell me what was going on. Things in Croatia were getting harder not only for me but for everyone, we all had to grin and bear it if we were to survive these post war hard times. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ninth installment

The remains of the unit that were in this position left and we followed them, we went around the outskirts of the village and back into the center. The rest of PIV or what was left of it were already there, we found out that Colin just after he had reached the main hq in the center of the village. We had to go back to the end of the street to see what was happening but as soon as we arrived we came under heavy fire as the enemy had pinpointed this house as our new front line, there was no way that we could reach Eric without getting everyone who attempted a rescue killed and because of the amount of enemy fire we had to fall back, on the way Alan started going berserk saying that he had to go back to fight, he was shooting everywhere so George calmed him down and asked him to take care of the elderly and that seemed to work. By now the village command had decided it was time to leave but first we had to wait for the mortar unit to reach safety. We could not get anywhere near under cons...
Post a Comment
Read more

Third installment

Day in, day out, it was the same routine, sleep, guard, fire off a few rounds in the general direction of the enemy, there was not much else to do, the main thing was to stay alive by keeping inside every time mortars or artillery came flying in to the village. The only time that there was a lot of activitie was when we were buzzed by planes, everybody would rush outside, Ernie would jump on the transporter and fire the machine gun, I used to run to the machine gun that was mounted on a tripod at the end of the street and also fire at the plane, everybody else would be outside firing their ak47s, there was not much chance of hitting it or bringing it down but it took only one lucky shot and that would give everyone hope. After the plane had gone out of sight that the transporter was Ernies because he had shot at the enemy leaving the damaged transporter with a sniper rifle, so Geordi the commander in charge of the defense of Osijek had given it to Ernie, I also found out that he worked...
Post a Comment
Read more

Seventh installment, sorry it's a bit late but its hard to write what I wrote and remember.

The next day it was awfully quiet, the calm before the storm perhaps, nothing much for breakfast so we decided to try and lay the land line. So off we went house to house laying the wire behind us and then the mortars started again so we hit the ground, lying down was the safest if caught outside, there were pieces of shrapnel hitting the wall near to us and it was not a very safe place to be so we decided to make a run for it, that was the quickest I had ran in a long time, it is amazing how fast your legs move when you're life is at risk, "that was a nice little bit of exercise" Eric said laughing, "yes but it would have been better if we weren't dodging pieces of metal" I replied also laughing.  Everyone was there apart from those on guard duty and during the night it had changed from two to three, so I sat down on the bar stool and Eric went behind the counter looking for something to eat and all of a sudden bang and I fell off the stool, they all came t...
Post a Comment
Read more