Fifth installment

That night we slept very well, probably because of the drink but also because of the sleeping bags that protected us from the bugs. We woke up and went to have some breakfast and after I had finished I went to see Kirk to find out what was happening. There he was sitting in his chair drinking coffee as this was his favorite hobby,

"is there anything for us to do today" I asked,

"no not really but if you want you can accompany me to the new front line as I want to check on my men and also to stop them setting fires" he replied,

"great I will be five minutes" I said as I walked out the door,

it wasn't long before I returned fully dressed and as I entered the room Kirk handed me a AK-4,

"this is my personal weapon and you can borrow it until I can get you all new weapons of your own, don't lose it" he said jokingly,

after getting some magazines I followed him to the car and we headed off to the front. As we drew closer we could see several fires burning and we could also hear several shots being fired, we parked the car as we could not take it any closer to the village as the road into Brvnik had been minded and Kirk's men were busy defusing them, it was only a short distance and as we entered the village we passed a graveyard, as we walked past I turned my head away as I was never one to tempt fate. We went straight to the front bunker to see what was happening and for Kirk to speak to the men, after ten minutes we started off back towards our old lines checking as we were going that all his men were ok, it seemed that they were all in high spirits and many of them were roasting chickens that they had caught, eventually we reached the end of the village and started back, as we walked Kirk showed me where they had started their attack and the first bunker that they had taken. As we approached there was a funny smell in the air and when we arrived at the bunker I saw what looked like a burnt body and Kirk confirmed it as being the body of a chetnik that had been set on fire so that they didn't have to bury it. Over the last year since arriving in Croatia I had seen many sights like this but most of them that I saw were Croatian civilians that had been shot at point blank range and then burnt, many of the women that I had seen had been raped first then shot, this was a fitting end to one of the murderous aggressors and I showed no remorse at this sight. We continued back to the bunker that we had visited first and sat down as there were a number of his recce groups there doing nothing Kirk suddenly had at the time a bright idea,

"do you fancy coming for another walk" he asked me,

"where" I said,

"oh about seven hundred and fifty meters that way" pointing to the position of the enemy,

I looked at him and I could see that he was not joking so I nodded. 

There were six of us, Kirk first, me second and the rest of the men following, slowly and cautiously we proceeded as we were not sure what to expect. We passed several houses before coming to the first bunker which was constructed of sandbags, we could see from a fair way off that it was empty, we also saw that there was another one built into the side of the embankment that led up to the road but we were not sure that it was empty. We continued after waiting to check for movements or sounds from the direction of the bunker, there was nothing so we carried on until we reached it. There was nothing inside but to the right was blood on the floor as though someone had been dragged away, slowly we looked around with me and Kirk checking everything and then we saw another bunker but this time it was built of blocks and had a telephone cable into and from it. We decided to take a look, so Kirk and myself crawled forward and into the bunker, it was empty but from the items that we found it seemed that the previous occupants had left in a hurry. We were now about one km from our front line and had not incurred any resistance so Kirk decided that we should push on over the main road and see what was on the other side. We all took up defensive positions just in case there was any trouble, Kirk was the first across and got there safely so I thought it was ok, so I stood up and made a dash across the road and as I was halfway across the bullets started to fly from all directions. There was Kirk and myself, on our own, with what seemed like a 40mm anti-aircraft gun covering the road and machine guns firing on us from who knows where, we were pinned down, I turned to Kirk and smiled,

"what now" I said as I pointed my rifle up the road towards the anti-aircraft gun, there was no words in reply just a shrug of the shoulders. We lay for what seemed like an eternity when Kirk suddenly spoke to me,

"when there was a lapse in their firing you make a run for it, ok"

I nodded and waited. The bullets stopped whizzing over our heads and liked a flash of lightning I made a run for it and jumped into the ditch on the other side of the road. Immediately I got into a position where I could help the others cover Kirk, we fired with everything that we had to cover Kirk and over the top came Kirk with a grin on his face, 

"your a lunatic" I said to him,

There was no reply, we all turned around and keeping our heads down we made our way back to our lines. The only time we stopped was when we had to cross a road and only then long enough for everybody to get over safely. Within ten minutes we were safe, we all sat down behind the bunker and took a breather while reloading our magazines and me looking over to where Kirk was sitting, 

"your a lunatic, your a bloody lunatic" I kept repeating to Kirk,

all he could do was laugh. There we all were sitting comfortably when the mortars started winging their way towards our position, the enemy must have thought that we were attacking and had decided to retaliate, we could also hear the sound of tank tracks not to far away so Kirk ordered one of our tanks to come to our position and within a couple of minutes it was parked right next to us. As there were quite a few mortars falling I decided to have a lie down under the tank as that seemed the safest place to be. The enemy eventually stopped bombing us and we breathed a sigh of relief, Kirk came up to me, 

"come on crazy Welshman let's go home" he said, off we walked down the road occasionally bending down as a stray bullet whistled overhead. Back at the base we all sat down and had some coffee, everybody was laughing because I kept calling Kirk a lunatic and he kept calling me a crazy Welshman, considering that he and I had almost been shot to pieces we were taking it rather lightly and only on that night as I slept did I really think about the days events but after all I had been through the same sort of things in Croatia, this wasn't very different. The two army's, Croatian and Bosnian were both amateurs but what they lacked in brains they made up with heart, there was no way that people like these should never lose war's.