Meet the neighbors!

After our first few sorties Goran decided that it was time to move into a new cellar the other one was seriously over crowded, so we went out in search of a new place. We found quite a few possibilities but they all had drawbacks of some description or another. We settled for the cellar of the house next door to our original house.
The cellar as most cellars are was full of rubbish. We spent about a day pulling all the stuff out and pilling it round the entrance as part of a barricade against shell splinters. Once we had cleared the cellar out and swept it, Goran and I could play house.
We went from house to house in the village looking for suitable bits of furniture. It felt strange to go into the houses, in the rubble you could see parts of other people’s lives. Maybe a jumper knitted by a grandmother for her granddaughter hanging out of a shattered dresser or a cherished toy crushed under masonry. The little things that made the house a home were strewn about the floor. I would have hated to be there when the occupants came back and saw what had happened to their belongings.
We were looking for two beds a couple of chairs and a table, you would think it would be easy to find these things but for some strange reason we got fussy and wanted nice undamaged things so the going was hard. We went around the village in our search and made some rather nasty discoveries.
Mostly we found the body’s of pets that had died in their owner’s houses. They had waited faithfully for their master’s return and died in the houses they were supposed to protect. To me a dog is part of the family to abandon it there, no matter what the hurry to leave was, to me is unthinkable. In one house I found a family of piglets curled together on a double bed. It all looked so strange and peaceful. Half the house was destroyed but this room was left intact. When I moved closer to take a better look at the piglets, they did not move. I knew something was wrong, I prodded them with my rifle barrel. Their bodies were hard and unyielding; they had frozen to death. Their mother had probably died in the constant shelling. They had climbed on the bed and huddled together to keep warm and frozen to death in the night.
In the end after much searching, we got all of the furniture we needed and installed it in the cellar. The most important thing that we needed was a stove, so we went out and found a double hobed oven. It was a hard slog carrying it back but it would pay for its own upkeep, we would be able to cook with it and use it as a source of heat.
The next thing we wanted was some electricity, the group next door had the T55 and the BVP parked up out side we needed one of them. Goran decided that Fare was the best choice of the two of them, so he invited Fare over as a privileged guest. Basically we didn’t want him to do anything but park the tank outside.
We got a bed in for him and fitted an antigrenade door at the bottom of the steps, then moved across from our old cellar.
As we sat down for our first meal, Goran looked round the room and said, “This will cause trouble” what he was talking about I didn’t know so I asked him to explain. Well when the villagers came back the owner of this house was going to have some difficulty explaining why he had everybody else’s furniture in his cellar!
I suppose he was right, but as the house above us was completely burnt out at least he had somewhere to live.
The garden of the house was pretty bare. A ditch with a small stream in it was as the end of the plot, and apart from a few derelict out buildings the only thing of interest there was a dead sheep or goat sticking out of the mud in the back garden. I didn’t really pay it much attention as it was half buried in the frozen mud and it didn’t smell that much, even when it defrosted the earth was still to frozen to bury it. So it was one of the things that you learnt to ignore.
The village was hit with rockets again that night. However the good side is that it cleared all the rubble out of the garden. It also emptied the pit at the end of the garden that we use to dump the dead animals.
Goran and I decided to go up to Marinci at night. It seemed the safest time to go, hopefully nobody would see us up on the road and we wouldn’t have any problems. One of the new guys insisted that I took his Zastavar klashnikov. They are fitted with flip down luminous sights, so in theory it would help me sight better. The other thing was it was capable of sustained fire, which I might need if we get into any trouble.
I took out some of the blacking that I had made up; I gave my face a good wipe over. Goran thought it was hilarious but there again I doubt that he knew much about night fighting.
We went up the road to the infantry positions, to tell them that we were going out. Goran stopped and spoke to the guard whilst I waited for the go ahead. The guard lent Goran the night sight, which was an added bonus.
I don’t particularly like them as they give a very poor two-dimensional image and ruin your natural night sight, but they do come in very useful at times.
Neither Goran nor I wanted to go traipsing through the scrub on the hill at that time of night. It was a dangerous place to be during the day so we didn’t want to try it at night. We elected to take the road, this would have been suicide in the day but as it was pitch black we were prepared to risk it.
All because its dark you don’t throw away your natural caution, I moved up the road slowly stopping every so often to familiarise myself with the surroundings. We passed the curve in the road without any problems and were now well in front of the O.P. Ahead of us was the bus shelter a place we would never have dreamed of getting to in daylight. We stopped and took a quick breather, as we went to move on I passed a small bush I went to cover in the ditch and turned to Goran. The bush between us was suddenly shredded as a Serb machine gunner put a long burst through it. One of the first things they teach you in the army is not to use obvious cover; this was one of the reasons.
Goran now had a change of heart. He didn’t want to continue on, it was possible that the Serbs had seen us and knew we were in the area or it had just been a bored gunner firing off a burst. We moved back to the bus stop and tried to look for the gunner through the night sight, we couldn’t see him, and Goran really wanted to go back. So we pulled back and started our long crawl back to our own positions.
After a while Goran told me another Englishman had arrived in Nustar, the new guy was in the centre of the village with another unit, and his handler was bringing him over.
I was sat on the exercise bike when the two of them came over, one had long hair and wore an old German jumper, while the other wore Croatian combats, had a broken nose and crew cut. He defiantly looked the part! Goran motioned to him and said “cliff the other Englez” I looked at him and in a thin nasal ready voice he said “hello my names Richard”. This was exactly the same voice as I used for making gay jokes. Goran went into overdrive asking Stepe various questions like is this guy gay? And what the hell is he doing here?
I was also in shock, here he was the sugar plum fairy in combats, and thank god they had met me before him talk about first impressions!
Well it was decided that the next day we would go out as a four man patrol to the burnt out factory in no mans land we said our goodbyes and they left us, I sat in stunned silence as Goran inundated me with questions like, His gay, isn’t he? Do Englezi normally talk like that? Shit! Why did he have to end up on my doorstep?
The next day was to be a series of embarrassments as we set of on our little patrol. We past the old restaurant on the hill and said our goodbyes to the men in the O.P in the hope they wouldn’t shoot at us on the way back in. Then we made our way towards the bunkers. Before we got there Stepe saw an anti tank grenade that someone had dropped on the ground.
Anything that can make a hole in a tanks armour in my opinion is not a safe thing to throw, because I have a very strong suspicion that due to the amount of explosives in it you will probably get caught in the blast radius your self. So you could score an own goal.
The general agreement was that it wasn’t safe to leave it there but nobody wanted it. Chances are it was booby trapped, so they were going to get rid of it. The next thing is how? Well there are certain approved methods but as we didn’t have the time or the materials to do it properly the Croats decided they were going to shoot it!
Well Stepe and Goran took up positions in an old shell scrape and took it in turns to take shots at the offending article. I sat as far back as possible from them securing the rear just in case they got lucky.
They took turns at firing of a few shots, all of them missing the cute little bundle of death.
When Richard chirped up “can I have a go?” now our Honour was at stake. I didn’t want to join in with this game for two very good reasons. Firstly it was bloody dangerous and secondly I wasn’t so sure that I could hit it.
So Richard cocked his weapon and crawled over to them, I sent up a silent prayer, if he missed repetitively we were going to get so much shit. The Croat’s moved aside to let fairy boy have a go; probably thinking that this was going to be fun. He lent against the parapet took aim and there was a massive explosion!
We didn’t even hear the weapon fire; he had hit dead centre and set it of with his first shot.
My opinion of Richard suddenly went up a notch or two. Of course the Croats shrugged this of as beginners luck, and we carried on to the old factory that we would use as a forward op .
We went down the valley and up the other side to where the old factory was, we gave it quick once over to make sure every thing was as it should be. Stepe said that he was going to see if there was a possible route that would take his APC, he had an idea to bring it up and fire the majutka wire guided missiles over the hill at some of the Serbian positions. So he scurried of to our left while we took up all round defensive positions.
Then strange things started to happen. Goran decided that he wanted to go to the toilet, no problem just roll over to your left or right and have piss. No he didn’t want to have a piss. He needed to have a shit! Why he had waited until we were 70 meters from the Serb’s and almost a kilometre from our own lines I don’t know. To add to it he wasn’t going to sneak behind a bush or something like that. No he was going to use a proper toilet like a civilised person.
There was an old toilet close by to where we were lying that had probably used by the factory workers before the war. The building was a two-cubicle construction shaped like the letter “E” with a wall to it front. The corridor was open at both ends and one end opened out towards the Serb positions.
It was definitely not one of the most ideal places in the world to have a shit. But needs must, off he trotted to do his business. After a few seconds Richard decided that he wanted a piss too the comedy of errors had really began.
I was left a short distance away lying between some trees attempting to do an all round defence on my own.
Just as Richard got into the toilet the Serbs started to shoot at the building. Bullets smacked into the wall and flew down the corridor as our two heroes attempted to complete their bodily functions. Goran was swearing in Croatian, as he attempted to pull his trousers up whilst Richard lay on the floor of the adjacent cubicle. As soon as the firing died down and they thought it was safe they both came tearing out back to me and lay down in their positions; neither of them was very happy about what had happened. I could not see where the fire had been coming from so it would have been pointless to return fire, I also thought that it served them both right for being so stupid.
Now we had the problem of not being able to move until Stepe returned.
When he did we asked him if he had heard what had been going on. He claimed to have not heard the shooting, which I find hard to believe. In fact I am inclined to believe that perhaps he had shot at us himself, just to see if he could frighten us.
We made our way back to the village. Once we were back on safe ground Stepe and Goran became cocky again, trying to shoot the ceramics off a telegraph pole. As to be expected they repeatedly missed, even at a close range. Then Richard asked to try, well after his last demonstration I was more than eager to find out if his last shot had been a fluke or he really could shoot. So I encouraged him to have a go, He took aim and with his first shot removed the whole ceramic! Stepe and Goran couldn’t believe it Goran was saying that he was missing because his was a Russian klashnikov, Stepe kept quiet as he had a Yugoslav Zastavar the same as Richard.
I was very impressed maybe the guy would have potential as a sniper. We continued into the village. Amongst the debris of battle and discarded equipment on the road. Richard found an old Yugoslav flack jacket without its outer cover.
As with most people Richard didn’t know the difference between a flack jacket and a bullet-proof vest, and he really wanted it. There was only one way to talk him out of this, I had explained to him that they were heavy and useless but he didn’t seem to want to believe me. So I took the jacket, put it on the opposite bank and put two bullets through it. Sometimes the practical demonstration is much better than word of mouth and I think that Richard learnt a couple of things that day. That is You don’t go to the toilet in no mans land, and perhaps most importantly that flack jackets don’t stop bullets.

I went into Vinkovci to try and get some ammunition for Goran. As a tank unit we had loads of 100mm tank shells and a few crates of 7.90mm ammunition for the coaxial, but we couldn’t get hold of any 7.62mm for our klashnikovs. As we were spending most of our time as infantry we needed to get some more ammunition fast. I had hoped to go and speak to Dragen about this, but he couldn’t help me the most he could do was give me a lift to the area headquarters and I would have to scrounge some myself. As we set of I saw Steve and a little croation girl walking up the road. I asked Dragen to stop the van so I could go and talk to Steve.
Steve was with Monika. Monika was the daughter of our senior commander’s girlfriend, although she was only sixteen she was probably our unit’s greatest asset. She had the direct and undivided attention of the area commander via her mother. So she could get requests through that we couldn’t. Steve was going to an area used as a firing range to sight his rifle. The differences between the Mala Bosna fronts and the Nustar fronts were incredible, at Nustar you didn’t have to go to special places to sight your weapon. You just found a live target and had a go at it. I decided to join Steve on the range, I didn’t need the practice I just wanted to make sure that my bullets were going where I thought they were. The range was a grassy strip with a back stop in some maze fields. We put up a few boards and took shots at them from different ranges. I was hitting true but Steve wanted to adjust his sights a little. We exchanged a little gossip as to what was going on our respected fronts, apparently Steve had got fed up with Martin and given him a good punch after a little disagreement about digging trenches. True nobody particularly likes digging trenches, but they are a necessary part of war. When Martin told Steve that he hadn’t come to dig trenches, I think that was the final straw. Steve punched him in the mouth and advised him to not think about trying anything else and that he might like to leave. Martin left instantly.
As a group we headed towards the main road. An artillery shell came buzzing over head, I grabbed Steve and jumped into the ditch. Life in Nustar depended upon knowing when to get out of the way and this was one of those times. The ditch may have been full of water, but it was a lot nicer than being riddled with shrapnel in the fields. The first shell had been a drop short, we could see a train coming out of the town heading off towards Zagreb, so that had obviously been the target.
The shelling was very brief as soon as the train was on its way they stopped and we were able to get out of the ditch and carry on our way. I noticed some odd track shapes in the mud, they had an American tread to them. When I looked closer into the maze field I could see the outline of a few Sherman tanks. Of course to use a Sherman as a combat tank in the ninety’s would be suicide. So they, like the T34 that I had seen on the Serbian lines at Marinci, had their turrets cut down and were being used as self propelled artillery. It was nice to know that things were not as bad as we thought and we did at least have some artillery support!
I said goodbye to Steve and Monika and went on down to headquarters where I didn’t get any ammunition but managed to get hold of some grenade pouches.
Goran and I stopped in Vinkovci and went into hotel Slavonia for a drink on the way back to Nustar. We went through the reception and left our weapons at the desk, as was the custom at that time.
We went down into the bar to have a last beer before we went back to work, and in the hope that we might bump into some of the lads from Mala Bosna. Nobody was there that we knew so we bought our drinks and sat in a booth. One of the HOS lads came over to chat with Goran, I looked him up and down he was unshaven and had the usual pile of pendants and lucky charms that the gypsy type warrior believes in. He took his beer and sat down with us. As far as I was concerned he was not my guest and I treated him with polite courtesy, but discouraged any attempts at meaningful conversation. He chatted away to Goran obviously telling him of his latest heroics, or some distant victory that nobody knew about, when he started to tell Goran that he was in the legion. Goran relayed the information to me, I looked at the man and asked him straight in French if he spoke French? I don’t speak much at all and the blank expression on his face said he spoke less than me. I turned to Goran and said “Goran tell him his full of shit from me will you”, “are you sure you want to do this?” Goran asked. I gave him a nod and turned to the other man to watch his reaction. Goran relayed my message, the man nodded, pulled back from the table. He put his hand into the side pocket of his trousers and brought out a sawn of 4/10 shotgun. The shotgun had been cut down to the extent that all that remained was a small pistol grip and a very short barrel. He opened the breach and put a cartridge in snapped the “pistol” shut and pointed it at me directly across the table. Now that’s an interesting situation, I have a man pointing a single shot pistol at my head in a crowded bar. It’s not the kind of situation I was used too and there was not that much I could do about it. I looked at the way he was holding the pistol, and the condition that it was in, the only comforting thoughts that I could get out of the situation were that if he fired the gun a number of things could happen. One possibility was that he would break his wrist. The second possibility was that the weapon would explode in his hand when he fired it, and lastly if he did shoot me there was a chance that some other person in the bar would shoot him, of course these things were guaranteed, but its nice to fool yourself sometimes.
We sat in this stalemate position for some time, there wasn’t much I could do about it. If I begged for mercy he would defiantly shoot me, and if I reminded him of my opinion of him it was also possible that he would shoot me. After a while he lowered the pistol and unloaded it. He put the pistol and cartridge back into his pocket and went up to the bar. I looked at Goran and wondered what he felt about what had just happened, before I could comment the HOS guy came back and placed three beers on the table.
Well that was a turn of events! A few moments ago he was going to blow my head off, and to be honest after he left I felt the same way about him. He sat down with us and we then had a more realistic conversation about what he really did on the front, and he invited Goran and I to go across to join them. We often had offers from HOS to going them, but being in a government unit was the safer all round bet.
We said our goodbyes and Goran and I got back into the van and headed back to Nustar.
After our last fiasco, Goran and I decided to take Richard out with us to the factory for some normal observation work. The idea of having a third man with us sounded good. We would have someone to watch our backs for us and it would make getting there a lot easier.
We went out past the restaurant and checked through the labyrinth of bunkers, checking those that covered our route in and those that over looked our possible routes out. We would split as we checked the bunkers Goran and Richard would get into positions to cover me as I approached the bunkers from the rear and looked inside.
Quite often I would find signs of disturbance in the bunkers where someone had rummaged through the discarded kit on the bunker floors, the question always came to me as to who this could be. The Serbs had superior equipment and logistics to us so it was probably very unlikely that they would sift through their own rubbish, so it had to be patrols from our side.
In the past when we had crossed this area we had seen signs of other parties but had not met them. In some ways it was ridiculous the amount of small units creeping round in this tiny area of woodland and how we never came into contact with each other I will never know.
Once we were sure that the area was secure, we moved over to the other hill. Again we checked the area for signs of recent movement but there were none. We always checked way outside our possible perimeters, in case we were to lay up next to an enemy unit and end up in a close quarter battle that we were not equipped to fight. Though I by habit carried four full magazines, over 150 loose rounds and two grenades. The others made do with two magazines a piece. My philosophy was that if I did get stuck somewhere I would have enough firepower to get out of it, as the Americans are want to say “peace through superior firepower”.
Goran and I checked the factory and followed our old tracks through the ash to the steps. We went upstairs and crawled into our positions. There wasn’t that much to see the Serbs trench discipline was excellent. Mind you if they hadn’t of been our snipers would have got them. I checked the T32 to make sure it wasn’t showing any signs of life. I was always nervous about being in an op that was in the direct sights of an enemy tank. I had earlier resolved that if I saw any movement from the tank, I would not bother with the steps and just jump down inside the factory. After all broken legs are better than no legs! The hours past away without anything new coming to surface and Richard was starting to get impatient downstairs. So we decided to head back.
We took the most direct route that we could to get us as near to the restaurant as possible. We stepped out of the scrub and walked in single file towards the building.
We could see no one at the windows and were starting to get worried, when a face appeared at the window. Before we could give a reassuring wave the man had ducked back from the window. We were now in big trouble.
The man obviously hadn’t recognised us and was going to open fire on us in any moment, we were stuck in the open and in a very bad position. I took a snap decision and ran at the house, Goran split off to my left and went to the exposed front of the house, whilst we told Richard to go right and come in through the back door.
I ducked down and had a quick glance in the cellar. I didn’t want to fight these people, but I didn’t want to be shot by them either. I had to make sure my way forward was clear and try and get as close to them as possible.
The cellar was clear I crawled in through the window and made my way up the internal stairs. I kept close to the wall with my rifle aimed up at the door, at the same time I was dropping quick glances down for trip hazards or something that would betray my presence. When I got to the top I found two very frightened men. Goran had come at them from one side and Richard from the other, when they saw me coming out of their cellar they were horrified. You see everyone has their vision of war, heroics, and injures. Your imagination is not capable of potraying war, if it were their would be no war! The two men had probably imagined themselves fighting of hordes of Serbs to the last bullet. In under thirty seconds we had assaulted them, surrounded them, and were in a position to kill them, fortunately we were on the same side so it didn’t happen. We explained to them that we had thought that they were about to fire on us and had to do what we had done and left them hope fully with no ill feelings. It felt good that we had got to the stage that Goran and I could work together only using hand signs and not speaking.

The last patrol Richard ever did with me was a very simple affair. The idea was to get out onto a road very close to the Serbian positions and watch the Serbs up close. This was to be a major disaster.
Richard and I left the village and made our way up to the OP. Once we were there we went through the usual rigmarole of explaining to the guards where we were going. We skirted into the brush of the first hill and checked the old bunkers to make sure they were clear. Once we had secured our rear we made a suicidal run down the valley and up the other side. Getting our breath below the crest then a quick dry assault on the shell scrape on the top and a fast run up to the factory. Once these places were clear we could continue at a more leisurely pace.
We turned down into the ditch passing a dead mans foot and came up onto the road, turning left we patrolled along it until we were below an old concrete bunker. Due to its closeness to the lines it was possible that this one could have someone in it. When I went up the slope I had a grenade ready just in case, I got up the bank to find that the bunker, which was surrounded by depressions in the ground to be deserted. I called Richard up to join me and explained the next part of the recce. To get to the position I wanted to be in I was going to have to crawl 25 meters over a flat field with absolutely no cover; this was to be Richards crowning glory. He was going to cover me then when I was across he would crawl over and join me.
The field had probably been a cornfield but after the harvest they had not had time to plough it over. It was completely bare of plant life except for the sparse three inch stubble left by the harvester; crawling over it is probably the scariest thing I have ever done in my life. I inched my way across the field keeping as close to the ground as possible, waiting for someone to start shooting at me.
When I got close to the edge of the road my worse nightmare came true, someone was there already. I could hear movement in the ditch by the road. I was less than 1 meter from the enemy this was going to be a very hard and fast engagement with just one of me and god knows how many of them. I bought my weapon up and waited for the worse. I could see their olive drab jackets in front of me by my estimate there were about two of them but something held me back, I was in the open with no cover and something didn’t seem quite right with what I was seeing. They were creeping in their own territory and seemed to be very cautious towards their front? Then I saw that one of them was wearing a ridiculous acid green woolly hat. I had seen that hat before in Nustar, they were on our side. Now I had a new problem these guys were scared and jumpy; I had to let them know that I was there without them trying to shoot me!
I hissed at them but stayed well down, it obviously frightened them but I was hoping that they would realise that someone close enough to hiss at them was definitely close enough to kill them but hadn’t. Logic conclusion friend! I waited for them to calm down then hissed again and risked a peep over the scrub at them. They saw me and couldn’t believe who it was I slid down into the ditch to join them. They then went into a discussion about how nuts I was to be out there on my own, but I took it in my stride with a smile, “don’t worry” I said “I have back up”! I gave Richard the whistle and turned to my friends, nothing happened! Gave him another whistle, still no response, this didn’t look good. Well, the retard is probably deaf and he’s making me look a incompetent so nuts to him.
The two Croat’s were hiding behind a knocked out T55 and using binoculars to observe the Serb roadblock. They lent me the binoculars to have a quick look. As I looked down the road and the first thing I saw was the Serb roadblock and next to it bold as brass two Serb’s standing under some firtrees having an animated conversation. Having seen such conversations before, it looked to me as if one of them was telling the other how he had knocked out the tank that I was laying next to. I couldn’t believe my luck, I told the Croat’s what I could see, but they couldn’t understand. So I then had to draw little pictures on the ground, by the time this was done and the Croat’s had looked for themselves the Serb’s had gone.
After some time in the position we decided to make our way back along the road and the problem of Richard reappears. I had to find out what had happened to him. So we doubled back on the position. I climbed the bank expecting to find him dead and an ambush waiting for me. As I quietly crawled towards the old bunker, I saw him lying on his back staring up at the clouds. His weapon was next to him with the safety catch on. The guy was in a world of his own. I called to him and asked him what he thought he was doing? And why he hadn’t come across when I whistled for him to follow? Well the first answer was that he decided after I was already half way across that he didn’t want to risk it, ok, fairs fare you didn’t have to be there I couldn’t make him do anything. So my last question was one of idle curiosity. “Why are you lying in the middle of a combat zone with your safety catch on?” His answer was “well I don’t think I have the experience to have it off” too bloody right Richard! Too bloody right!
Goran had invited Stepe and Richard over for dinner one night. As Goran’s cooking was normally fatal I was the one who would be doing the cooking. We had some instant vegetable soup that we had found in a house and I was going to slice some bread and make pizza in the oven and a kind of milk pudding with some milk that we had scrounged from the headquarters. I started off by boiling the water and toasting the bread for the pizza bases. The soup was Croatian and I couldn’t understand the packet label, but it was soup or so I was told. Fare turned up unexpectedly with his guest, I was now in a fix for food. I had counted on cooking for five people not six and I was even pushing it there with the food that I had available. I decided that I would have to go hungry, the soup powder wasn’t that impressive. When I put it in the water all I got was a slight yellow colour and a few bits of spaghetti.
I decided to chuck the whole bag in as it really didn’t look very appetising. The new stronger soup looked better and had a bit of body to it. I served up the soup to them and put toppings on the pizza bases and put them in the oven. The whole thing was awkward, the Croatians were busy eating and chatting while Richard ate his food in silence and stared ahead. By the time they had finished their soups the pizzas were ready. I gave them all a pizza each and opened the door to see if the pudding had set or not. When I came back I looked with satisfaction at the happy faces as they tucked into their food. Then Richard leaned forward and puked onto his plate, the Croats looked at him in supprise but carried on eating. You would be supprised by the amount of things that could have no effect on us at those times.
Richard lent over his plate to cover the pile of puke in front of him, he was obviously embarrassed by what had happened, but I wasn’t going to let him have any leeway. I was bloody hungry and Fares guest was eating my dinner, and Richard had just puked all over his. This was going to give a great impression about English table manners!