Around this time the octobrists came - Morkec, Bogi, Šime, the other cook, the roompainter Marković and few others. There were a bit too many of us, because we still had a few of last year's januarists, who waited for shortening or extraordinary [leave] or whatever, to shed the uniform and go home. The trouble was that here we were so sheltered, so out of sight that there was no chance to catch a connection for any of it, everyone forgets about us, so we were too many and nobody on leave.
There we had one smallish, almost illiterate Macedonian, the doghandler. Completely confused and uninformed on anything, he barely managed his duty, to feed those two mongrels and walk them at times. They had quite a cage, could host two large bears, and were fed well, were just bored. He was most often on guard duty, because most of the rest of us had hours off for each night shift, which happened every third night. When the wind would start its tune, he'd warm himself up the best he could - double undercap, two sweaters under the jacket, long underpants, and said everything was fine except his feet were always cold. What do you mean feet, c'mon man, these boots can keep you warm indefinitely, as long as you keep walking, you shouldn't get cold ever. Dunno, I have triple socks and it's still not any warmer. Ouch, take those off, you're cutting your circulation, you're lucky you didn't damage anything. No wonder you're cold when you just closed the heating ducts.
We didn't have a fireguard, there aren't any other units here, no need to guard the equipment from theft at night. The duty to wake the men up was thus to that one guard. And the house rule has long ago established that it's not nice to burst into the dorm and shout „get up, vojska!“, there was just one short signal with the bell, even shorter than in school. Knowing that the boss won't get up before breakfast, we got up slowly, went to bathroom at random times to avoid crowding, and we'd get everything done and would be at the breakfast right on time. Bogi, then, when it was his first time in the morning shift, 6 to 8, wasn't quite informed about all of that... so he thought we haven't heard his bell. So he insisted, pressed the button three long times. Which was the alarm signal, to which we all got up, dressed up and spread to our positions in some 2-3 minutes. The first cook's position was at boss's door, where he knocked and reported that all men are in position in case of alarm, waiting for orders. The boss nearly shat himself, who raised the alarm, did they call from Split straight into the hole, how come he knows nothing... It took around half an hour to clear the story of how we raised our own alarm out if ignorance, without any officer having anything to do with it, Split being altogether ignorant of the matter...