These are words of Capt Sarr!!
   
  Back to the events of 22nd July 1994, I was on my journey from the marine unit in Banjul via Bond Road to Yundum Barracks after Major Antouman Saho would not buy my hasty tactical blueprint. It was about 10.00 am and the first sign I read to indicate that things had totally gone wrong was the eerie manner in which the Banjul-Kombo highway was virtually deserted at that time.  Not a single thing was in motion on the road except my car. It was an absolute sign of trouble ahead. I was in goose pimples from head to toe not knowing what the heck was ahead. 
   
  Then I arrived at Denton Bridge. There I realized why the road was so quiet. The TSG had closed the bridge in the same way they did two years ago when they successfully stopped the demonstrating ECOMOG soldiers from entering Banjul. It looked like they were in two defensive positions. A detachment had dug in under the supervision of Major Swareh (a captain at the time) at the foot of the bridge on the Kombo end facing the advancing GNA troops who were about two hundred meters away. The second detachment was positioned at what was very close to the center of the bridge, under Major Chongan's command. I had to park my car at the foot of the bridge on the Banjul end and ran to Major Chongan without even taking the keys or closing the door. The major was in total rage with the GNA. His words were sharp and uncompromising. He put it to me that their tolerance for the army's misbehavior had been exhausted and that the bridge was closed with a final warning to any GNA personnel to risk
 being shot if anyone attempted to cross it, especially with arms. Despite his inferior weapons, I could sense that he was prepared to battle it out with the soldiers. At that moment I did not know that a short while before my arrival the major had already fired warning shots to the soldiers at the other end to show them that he meant business.
   
  Anyway I was able to reason with him to allow me to go and talk to the soldiers before any fighting was started. The men around him did not trust me. He later confessed to me that they had recommended that he allowed them to arrest me if I tried to cross the bridge. But I appealed to Major Chongan telling him the odds in winning a battle against the GNA with the light weapons they had at their disposal. My appearance, i.e. the number two office uniform I was wearing might have helped in convincing him that I was not part of anything close to the GNA coup operation. Soldiers ready for combat would usually wear battle-dressed uniforms (BDU). I was in full office uniform that day. I warned him to go back to Banjul and try to get the weapons at the marine unit. "I was there", I told him, "but I couldn't convince Major Saho to get them out". Beside, they knew that I was determined to cross the bridge, come what may. When I took off with all those weapons pointed at my back, I prayed to
 god aloud to help me survive the crazy situation.
   
  Chongan, I later understand, immediately returned to Banjul and was able to go to the Marine Unit with the Nigerian military adviser, Kebba Ceesay, Director General then NSS and now in the same position as D.G. NIA and Lamin Kabba Bajo the commander of the presidential guard at the time. According to Chongan, Saho refused to see them when they sought to meet him. It took about a good two hundred meters or more of running before I reached the soldiers on the other side. I also learnt from them that the only thing that saved me from being shot when they saw me galloping towards them was that some soldiers recognized me, plus I was not carrying any weapon. But after Chongan's warning shot and then suddenly they saw someone running towards them, they thought it was an assault from the TSG and had almost opened fire on me. Anyway to be very frank, I was never prepared for what I saw when the soldiers started emerging from their hideouts in the mangroves. I was shock to see officers and
 not ordinary soldiers as I expected. There were Captain Momodou Lamin Sonko, officer commanding "Bravo Company", Lieutenant Yaya Jammeh officer commanding the military police unit and Second Lieutenant Edward Singhateh platoon commander "Charlie Company". I asked them what was going on and Captain Sonko responded, yelling at me that it was a coup operation and whether I liked it or not I must join them or die. While verbally threatening me, Sonko kept on hitting me with his 9mm pistol on my chest. I was afraid it was going to explode and kill me. 9mm pistols are taboos to me because a good chunk of the bullet that hit me in 1988 is still lodged in my thighbone.
   
  Doctors had long since given up trying to remove it and I have now learnt to live with it. They are messy and very deadly. I was worried but I could still think straight. I told Sonko that I could not join in a coup that I couldn't understand its head or tail. Then I slammed him with my own threat too. I told him that the American troops in Banjul, twice their size in strength having all sorts of modern weapons including amphibious tanks were waiting for them. I told them that they would all be wiped out if they tried anything stupid.
   
  There Sonko lowered his weapon for the first time and turned to look at Yaya who was carrying more "jujus" than ammunition. He also loosened up in what I thought was a marked change of heart. Both Sonko and Yaya now turned to Singhateh to hear from him.  Amazingly throughout that encounter at the bridge, Yaya never said a word. But find the clown lately in his periodical state of delusion and he would tell you a lie so big about what he said or did that day that you would think that he alone toppled the government without anyone's help. Yet everything was Singhateh. Singhateh fired back to me saying that they did not care about the Americans. Their mission was to overthrow the PPP government and if the Americans decided to interfere on the government's side they would all die fighting them to the last man. Singhateh's bold remark and defiant position told me an important thing-that he was actually in charge and he was not prepared to give it up.. I could not reason out what was
 going on but I at least knew who the main person was. So I focused on him. I told him how unnecessary it was to start a war with the Americans when all they needed to do was to go back perhaps to Radio Gambia and announce to the country that their problem was not with the Americans but the PPP government. In that case the Americans who were preparing for an exercise until they were informed that their would-be-training partners were actually bent on to assaulting them would leave the ground back to their boat.
   
  Sonko tried to yell at me again but Singhateh yell back at him to shut up. The captain obeyed instantly. That brings me to principle number two of a coup situation. EXPECT THE COMMAND STRUCTURE TO TURN UPSIDE DOWN. By all indication the second lieutenant was in charge of both the first lieutenant and the captain. It was pitiful. Singhateh started negotiating. He wanted me to go back and inform the TSG personnel to stop firing and get out of their way or else they would open fire on them. If they had opened fire on the TSG, something I later realized Singhateh to have the capability of doing, then I am afraid the country would have never recovered from that crisis. And I don't think those sadists cared much about the preservation of the country's peace and stability that day. I agreed to go back. Sonko insisted that I must take along a weapon. I refused to take one. One of the reasons why I survived coming from that end without being shot at was because I was not carrying arms;
 therefore going back there armed would be totally suicidal.
   


		
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