Skip to main content

Seventh installment

The next day I went to Visnjivac where IDS were based to see if I could transfer to their unit after speaking to the commander they agreed with my request and said in two days they were going to Bosnia for fifteen days and that I should report back with enough clothes to last me until I returned to Osijek, before leaving to go home I asked if Alan was there and they told me that he was in the house just around the corner so I decided to go and see him. The house had three floors and went in the back entrance and found quite a lot of people sitting around the table eating breakfast, I asked where Alan was and one of the girls told me in english that he was upstairs in bed so I decided to go and wake him. As I was climbing the stairs I thought how good it would be to be to be with others who had been in the same unit as myself after such a long time, I reached the room and went to find Alan asleep, Fred one of the other men from my old unit was just dressing and immediately shook my hand. Once I started speaking Alan woke up and got out of bed, he was delighted to see me and his first question was,
"what are you doing here so early in the morning"
"I'm going to Bosnia with you" I told him,
"it will be like old times again and I'm glad that you are here" Alan replied,
"Zaggy is on holiday but is due back tomorrow and then there will be three of us. This is Patrick, he is an ex-British soldier who has also spent five years in the Legion, there is another English man called Docy and he's out getting drunk somewhere"Alan said introducing me to Patrick.
The rest of the morning was spent talking to them and getting to know both Patrick and Docy but eventually I had to go and meet Paula. There was no way I was going to walk to Osijek so I decided to catch a tram, that was one of the perks of being a soldier in Osijek you never had to pay for public transport. When I arrived at the school I found Paula waiting so she put on her coat and we left, we reached the flat to find a parcel from my brother, it was a tape of the BBC documentary that had been shown on British tv. We didn't have a video but the neighbors downstairs did and we decided after dinner we would go downstairs and ask if we could use their video. The flat we went to was on the ground floor and through out the war whenever there was an air raid everyone went to their flat for the duration of the attack as it was safer than staying upstairs, the husband and I always got on well even though we didn't speak the same language. There was always an easy answer to the sound of falling shells was to have a drink and whenever Paula and I went to their flat the husband would offer us a drink, he was always hillairyios after he had had a few to drink and it was a great way to take your mind off what was happening outside. While Paula in their home I always felt the feeling of unity and hope, sitting there drinking and hoping that we would not see the bombardment through. The only time that everyone would go quiet was when one of us heard of an incoming morter, you sensed it was coming close and I was hoping that we were not the target. It's ironic that this horrible event that we have labeled war is the only thing that unites in such a way that they bond to each other in the hope that they will survive no matter how close the mortars came. The wife had no objections to us using the video and her daughter was studying english would translate for her mother, we sat down and watched. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Luck

Luck, do you believe in it, like finding a four leaf clover, a bird shiting on you, is that going to bring you luck or do you just make your own luck? Some people have so called luck by winning the lottery, winning on online gambling or winning on the stock market, are these all attributed to luck, good question but if you think about it everything that you bet on is controlled by a computer or little balls spinning around in a plastic globe, you win, is that really luck? How do you define what luck really is, I'm not sure but I think you make your own luck. For instance I made my own luck by going to a cafe and meeting my wife who worked there, I made my own luck during the war in Croatia by doing what I had been taught and stayed alive, my wife and I were lucky enough to have three children when there are other married people who can't have children, are those examples of luck or destiny? In a way you could say that it was my destiny to get married not just luck, which is it ...
Post a Comment
Read more

T+L

Well at long last it seems that there may be a break in our heatwave, last night after the temperature hitting a huge 40 degrees it started to thunder and lightning but did the heavens open for rain to fall, no only a few spots, I could probably drink more water than fell from the sky, at least it's a little cooler 19 and set to rise to a reasonable 35 degrees which is a bit more bearable. It's Sunday the end of the weekend and again it seems that my wife and I will be on our own, my youngest daughter and her fiance are going here and there to visit his family and I'm not sure if my eldest daughter will be here so it's going to be a weird Sunday but peaceful. It's going well for Ukraine from looking at all the media as Ukraine is still taking over more of russia and blowing up bridges so the idiot can't resupply his troops and he is also bombing his own country with missiles, what a shame the ordinary people who so called voted for the puppet master are having t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Terrible

Isn't it just terrible to see once again ordinary people being targeted by bombs and mortars and being once again driven from their homes. The orders obviously coming from the top which of course means non other than the war monger himself, Putin and the Ukrainians can't do a thing to stop it except helping with the evacuation of the elderly and sick from the border towns with Russia. It is a familiar site for me after witnessing it myself here in Croatia in 1991, so I know how those people feel being driven from their homes and normal lives not knowing wheater they will return or not by a superior force intent on carrying out their orders by a lunatic dictator. Here in Croatia after so many years people are back in their homes, rebuilt and the villages, towns and cities are back to normal, Croatia has come back from the brink of destruction to become a stronger and better country, all because of the heart and will of the people. There is a huge question mark over wheater the U...
Post a Comment
Read more