29-XII-1981.
Rambling around the barracks for two or three days, with nothing to do and no designation, and not even in the mood for the beer. I'm off the guard duty, finally, not even the deputy dispatcher of the guards. Which was sort of fun the other day when I did that, as I could sleep all day - this is a night duty - in the guardhouse, where no officer has jurisdiction but the chief commander (mostly absent) and the officer on duty - whose office is unfortunately too near, but then he either sleeps or watches TV or just walks around, never much trouble unless we cause some. At night, I led the change of guards at 22:00, at 0:00, but by 2:00 I just had enough. Now to distribute guards to their posts is called "razvoditi stražu" - the verb being the same as "to divorce". So I asked the guys "was I getting you married?" "no you weren't" "then you can divorce yourself".
Well, someone made a decision of my fate today. Mercifully, they thought I wouldn't have to go back to Vis (and they didn't send back neither Dudek nor Toške), and sent me to that hill above the highway, to a transmitter and antenna post, officially dubbed "meteorology station". Yeah, right, the antenna rig could be seen from the city with simple opera glasses. And you can see the whole city from here.
The dorm was, well, almost at home, compared to what I had down there. Warm, with carpet, and an almost pleasant smell, not bad at all. And I got the upper bunk again, good. For the toilet I don't quite remember whether it was a čučavac or a seat, probably the former and better that way, who knows who sat on it previously. At least we had hot water at all times, and could take a shower whenever we felt like it, didn't have to wait for the organized trip to the other building once a week like we did down there.
Only about sixteen to twenty people, far enough from civilization and the hierarchy, with just one sub-officer (that's anyone without college, corporal to bannerman) on duty, 24 h a day for two weeks, when the other guy would relieve him. The younger one was there at the time, a quiet and nice guy. There seemed to be a "you don't cause any trouble, you get none from me" deal between him and the crew, and it seemed to work. There were four bunkers at the corners, a real fortress, built by Italians during WWII. Later I understood why this remark was made, when they showed me the underground installations. My hair kept touching the ceiling, and I am not particularly tall... but I'd probably stand out in Italy of the forties.
The jobs were simple - I'd get a phone call from the guys in the valley when they needed to broadcast, with frequency and time, I'd set up one of the six transmitters, call them when ready, then they'd call me when they were done and I'd turn it off. There was some schedule, roughly three or four times per night. The transmitters were all vacuum tube type, even the new fourhundreder, which was made for ships. We had a couple of oldsters, one was an airport transmitter, sized like a two wing cupboard, which was functional for a while last year, when there was one soldier, a Slavonian with hungarian surname, who was an electronics crazy geek, but the nature of the beast is that all those hundreds of watts have to get out somewhere. If the parameters are tuned right, all the energy goes out through the antenna cable. When they are not, the power goes to heat up some lamps, and if such a condition lasts long enough, one of them will just break - melt the metal parts inside, or break its glass. That cupboard made it for maybe three days after that guy disrobed.
The oldest one was a ship's transmitter, probably dating from late thirties, a gift from Amers after the war. It was sized just about our fridge at home, all shiny black enamel on the outside, which was probably work of ours, here the labels for the dials are in serbocroatian, engraved. It had a pentode or some such stronger tube, of about two liters of volume. You could fry a chicken on it when it worked right, and if it was out of tune it'd probably heat better than the TA furnace.
And we did have that TA furnace. True, it didn't have the thermostat, but had a wire for it, and we'd just put its bare ends together. I found it incredible that these wires were kept like that since who knew when, and nobody ever put at least a simple switch on it. We sat on it, it's a Magnohrom sixer (six kilowatts, i.e.), same as the one we had at home. Somewhere in its manual it did say not to sit on it, but nobody ever observed that. It was sold disassembled, because it was so heavy, and I've assembled it myself and I knew how strong its casing was. I was just waiting for someone to start spewing bullshit of the usual kind - „do you sit on it at home too?“ (which was the main technique to get the victim to feel guilty for careless abuse of societal property while taking care of personal) - to fight back with „no I don't - I lie on it“. But nobody gave a fuck on the matter, so at least we warmed our asses.
That was us, the shortwave tech in the building, plus that radiotelephone. There was the other branch, the microwave connection from the hole, there under few meters of stone, where they never needed heating, the machines were producing enough. That was newer stuff. The other corporal later told us how it's something swedish, which we got under a severe discount, because it had encryption to which NATO held a backdoor, so they'd be able to hear whatever we talk, at least here on the sea when some side branch of the wave cone can be caught to eavesdrop from. Ours brought some professor from a PMF (maths and sciences college), encryption specialist, who posed as their driver who just wanted to sit in on the presentation, so he could tell his son who wanted to study electronics. During the presentation, when the encryption part of it was finished, one of the generals looked at this 'driver', who just gave a calm nod, which meant „yup we can break it“, and so they bought it. The guy later redid the encryption from scratch, no backdoor, and these guys couldn't eavesdrop. Sounds like yet another story of the „and in the end the Serb fooled them all“, exactly the kind any of these Services would push to subofficer staff to spread further. (Comparing with what Les later told me, they could just listen at it, at will)
The other duty was more like the switchboard operator, where I'd get the FM call from a ship and patch it into the phone network. These came unannounced, but then the machine was next to the bed and it either rang really loud (if the call came from the land) or I'd hear a voice from the speaker (if from a ship or another such machine).
That day Krleža died, and there was nothing else on TV... but the TV was in color. The first time I ever had time enough in front of a color TV, it had to be something boring like this. But then when the corporal went to sleep, the guys showed me the other channels - italian soft porn. We were just high enough above the ground that Italy was in line-of-sight, and their transmitters were surely elevated as well. So, if the weather was good...
Mentions: čučavac, Dražen Jerić (Dudek), Les Paul, TA furnace, Tošić (Toške), in serbian
15-VII-2022 - 25-VI-2026