15-VIII-1981.
Or thereabouts... the day may be even later.
Now the picture to this article is interesting. Don't know who shot it, perhaps this guy Rašić from some Belgrade photo club, later a reporter, was around rock'n'roll a lot - I've heard he was around, and maybe we even met once, but whether he did this I wouldn't know. Note the glaring dalmatian sun (luckily, it wasn't that hot yet, the guys were smart enough to do this in the morning). Why would two legs of the table require bricks is beyond me. Three bricks is about 19cm. Possibly this was made to stand with one side on a platform or lowest step of a staircase?
The boots were good. Never had any problems with my feet. Generally, the stuff made for the army was well-made, made to last, though there are only two or three items I would liked to have had in my civilian life - like the cutlery set, where the knife's handle was just hollow bent sheet steel, and the handles of the spoon and fork slid neatly into it.
I remember that there some rumors that our command were pure morons for not being able to organize that one live ammo shooting practice for us, which was a requirement for this event. The event was the laying down of the oath, which is some ceremony where we all repeat what the guy says ("repeat after me" and the crowd goes "after me, after me, after me..."), then we sign a paper and then have some time with our near and dear who came to see. Of course, dad was there - luckily, this was seaside, so he and mom were on vacation in Borik, then drove here (not far really). I don't remember whether I went out to town with them; I know they brought me some money and that we either went to the department store or they bought it and brought it for me to see - a red phone, nice design, rotary dial (tone dialing wasn't available on our switch until very late in the nineties), which they'd take to her so we can talk.
There was another fire just about that week, and I almost got there, but this time it was too much going up and down and I couldn't keep up the speed, my heart was at limits of capacity. So I just sat down and was then taken back into the barracks by a van which was carrying the unneeded equipment, mostly clothing. I helped myself with a parka which was stolen from my "casette" (military name for the tin box, sized like hotel room fridge, where we kept our stuff) and then guarded the rest of the stuff until the boys returned. They said this was worse, it wasn't fields like last time, it was a pine forest. Far more flammable material.
Because of this case I took the opportunity to report for the medical the very next day and got to the local doc (another unit which was on the premises) who was probably specializing cardiology, or planning to, so he took a full ECG of me, saw that it wasn't quite good, and sent me to Split for a full cardiologist's review.
I did go to Split twice, taking the same slow train and then spending the whole afternoon buzzing around town, even having a modest dinner at a restaurant (money was still limited). Slept there in the big barracks, they had a room room for visiting soldiers. Since I wasn't theirs, I just got supper but nobody was commanding me anything. So I got to see how it is in a big one, and boy was it ugly. Much more shouting and ordering around and generally shoving discipline into the collective asses. The desetars (lowest rank, below subofficers aka noncoms, soldiers themselves, pretty much sergeants) were far worse than what I saw, even on Vis. At least I got to know I was lucky with where I was. Us comms were the second burgeois in the ranks, just a rung below the medicinars.
The doctor there gave me a good look, put me on EKG while running a bike. Said I'm basically OK, there are some obvious traces of an arrhytmia I had, and the heart is actually running fine, at 80% capacity. I said the bike is not a proper test, I'm a biker myself and I can pedal all day - it's the crouch, pushups, running, walking up the stairs that gets me down. He told me to go back to the bike as soon as I get home, the bike is keeping me in good shape. Then told me to come back in about ten days (and wrote me a proper paperwork for that).
Next time I wasn't alone, was accompanied with one Albanian from the platoon, who was sort of illiterate (also in his tongue) and hasn't seen much of the world, so I was his guide through Split. Other than that, repeated the tour of the last time, but shorter, he wasn't much fun nor a good cotraveller. More of a dependent.
So in the end of this I was back in the ranks but with some tag attached, where it said "don't push this guy physically too much, you don't want to be responsible for his health", which helped. Pretty soon, starting in september, we got into the guard duty and pulled more of it than was ever planned. The officers we got weren't too good at planning, or were on a lower rung, specially Elvir (who was in charge of two buildings: the canteen and the lavatory, in high esteem indeed). This also meant that we sort of had it easy - guard in a place like this is a joke, and you don't do anything else while you're at it, you're out of the classroom, out of any kind of drill, basically you run on four hours rest, two hours walk cycle. It's a bitch that we were on it so much, sometimes five days in a row, than two days off, then again. By mid-november it got easier, the october class finally had their day at the firing range (another example of their planning, these guys couldn't organize that for weeks) and could hold guard, and we were largely behind the schedule in the classroom, learning the higher speeds of Morse code. Which we largely forgot after so many nights of guard. In the end perhaps half of us passed the test. I actually never ever had to use the Morse for anything. It was kind of fun to spend so much time learning something so useless. On the ships they did use it, but they had a machine which would translate that into text, and another one which would beep as you type. The ships' telegraphists (including freighters and passenger ships), they said, were the most pampered and relieved of all other duties, but were slightly prone to schizofrenia. But I'm glad I learned the transmission equipment, there was useful stuff which will later help me understand networking.
Someone got me the better cigarette paper, "Halo Lulu 11". It was so thin it was almost transparent, and yet somehow stronger than the regular 22. I've had it perhaps once before and once after this.
Mentions: Borik, Elvir Pozder, in serbian
17-XII-2019 - 31-X-2025