Finally got my announcement (funny name for a pass, military has its own language throughout) to go home for a bit. Just 8 days, I think, or maybe 10. Not even close to the speed and length of what the Albanians were getting (there were two in the platoon, and they were both in the first batch to go). I somehow got into the second batch, probably as an afterthought. Two other guys went a day before, I was the only one for this day.
I was almost out of the barracks, just didn't want to miss lunch, so I stayed around to get it. Then I went to the canteen, which was halfway between the mess hall and our dorm, to have a beer, or two. Two beers were my norm, I was brimming with cash from my photo business, and the beer was the only entertainment around. I had some hours to kill, as my train wasn't leaving before 21:00, and it was still 14:00 or so. Going out to town is always nice for a soldier, when he's in company. Alone, not as much - suspicious looking so alone, may run into the MP or a higher officer, so hanging out too far of the railway may even get me in trouble (which never happened to me or my pals, but one hears about cases).
So I was having a beer, in my exit uniform (so it's called, what can I do), including shoes instead of boots and no straps, and then some kind of hell broke loose outside. Me having the announcement in my pocket, technically I was without a post and pretty much ineligible for anything that can be done around the yard. One of my platoon came in looking for the lieutenant, "where's the little one?" (i.e. Elvir), "none here - what's going on?" "alarm" "who raised it?" "nobody knows, it's a chaos, nobody knows where to go - captain says we line in the ditch, we get into the ditch, then that other lieutenant says we who are in offcommand here should go to the battery station... we get there, they send us to the playfield... best you can do, sit there and finish your beer". "I understand!" (which is the official response instead of a yessir), I said and went for the second beer. The chaos subsided before I was finished, and nobody bothered to look into the canteen. It was just me and some guys from the repair shop in there.
Of the trip home I remember very little. Just that someone in Perković, where we switched trains and had to wait in the bar, asked about the caouchouc factory in my area, once he heard where I was from, curious to know when will it go into production. In the train, of course I ended up with some other soldiers, there probably was some booze to kill the time. I saw a picture of a guy from october (class, i.e. came three months later)... playing drums in Ljubljana on some rock festival. Look at that... he did say he had a rock band (of which I never heard before or later), and he was a mobile character... it would be quite possible to pretend to be night duty on the guard, have his pals cover for him, and sneak out. OTOH, I was the guard at the time, I would know... Two weeks later I asked him how he did it. It was his brother, a drummer in a (still) famous band in Belgrade.
Some time next morning I arrived home.
p.s. The drummer brother died some years later. His face was made immortal on several album covers and video clips (also in another band later). This younger brother went with a friend to New Zealand to rehab of sorts, to find a new path or whichever way they sought to clean up their act, and that's the last anyone heard of them, no further news, whistle on (v. house dictionary)