Scramble out of murderous anarchy

THE sound of automatic fire still rings in my ears. When I close my eyes I see red streams of tracer bullets in the night sky.

But the picture most firmly impressed upon my mind is the face of a man exuding evil as he stood in front of our mini-bus brandishing a crowbar.

To the right and left of us, looters ransacked food stores, fired shots wildly and several of them made menacing gestures. But this man would not move.

This was our first stop on the road from Tirana to Durres on the day Albania collapsed into anarchy.

The man wanted money before he would let us past. We were the last car in a convoy making for the sea and the hope of evacuation. Every second he delayed us, the distance between ourselves and the convoy increased.

Our mini-bus had been nicknamed Celtic One as it was occupied by three Irish, two Scots and two Welsh. The Irish, apart from myself, were Sister Veronica Gibbons from James's Street, Dublin, and Mr Tom Englishby, from Porthcawl in South Wales, a native of Navan, Co Meath.

The next stop was even more dramatic, if not as frightening. Our driver ran out of petrol. That was quickly rectified and finally we caught the convoy as it reached the port.

The Italians would, the man from the British Defence Ministry said, be arriving in landing craft in seven minutes. It was now 6 p.m. About 5 1/2 hours later the blue and green lights of the craft showed in the distance and another horror story was about to begin.

We knew our party of British, Irish, Canadians, Americans and Hungarians would not be taken out on the first run. That was to be the privilege of another group, consisting mainly of Italians, who had been at the port for eight hours before we arrived.

But there were major problems:

more than 100 Albanians wanted to get on board as well. When they were refused, there was chaos. Shots were fired and finally the Italian special forces scattered the Albanians with machine gun fire and thunder flashes as we lay on the ground with our baggage to guard us.

The first lot left and the Albanians became more threatening, having driven away in a number of cars in which three bodies were reported to have been taken away.

The The Albanians lit bonfires, tried taking our documents. We formed a defensive square until help arrived in the form of a party of huge Croats, who were working on a nearby oil-rig. These were tough guys. Most of the Albanians melted into the distance.

After that it was a long wait, and there were jokes. Tom Englishby took first prize. In a classic Irish twist, he told the 120 refugees: "Look at it this way, the longer this goes on, the sooner we'll get out."

Two other Irishmen in the group, Mr Declan Staunton and Mr Michael Lyons from Dublin, warmed the spirits with Bushmills.

The Croats rowed in with white and red wine, bread, sausage and cheese and, as day dawned yesterday, the British Defence representative gave us cause for calm by saying that six special forces members were on their way to protect us.

Very soon the special forces arrived, cunningly concealed as 250 Italian marines. The first officer to reach the shore defused the situation completely by announcing he would take Albanians on board.

The rag-tag bunch who had remained gave a resounding cheer at the thought of leaving their own country; and we piled into the landing craft and headed out to the assault ship, San Giorgio. Here, it was hot chocolate and fruit salad for everyone, before a transfer to its sister ship, the San Giusto.

As the day proceeded, evacuees from other parts of Albania arrived in different groups and there were more than 700 of us when we pulled into the southern Italian port of Brindisi last night, after 16 hours at sea.