smeared with dirt and blood, jumps out of one of the trenches. He no longer looks human, more like a wild animal fighting for its life. He exchanges a few words with Asher Asherov, who decides to dismount two machine guns from the jeeps and set them up here. This order means that the situation is hopeless. The regulations for jeeps, that one should on no account abandon the vehicles, are no longer in force. We look at each other. Reuven leaves one of the vehicles. David and I get out of the second jeep. The vehicles cannot remain here. Under this fire it would just be a matter of time. We load them up with dead and wounded and then the jeeps race away.
Nobody takes any notice of us. It is up to us to know what we should do. Our task is clear: We have to reach the forward position. The only way is the one connecting trench which leads there. But it is not deep enough for our purposes. The lads who captured the hill yesterday from the Egyptians have simply taken over their positions. Since then they have had no time to dig any deeper. Part of it is no deeper than half a meter. It is not even worth crouching there — all you can do is run and pray. The first one gets through OK. A sniper’s bullet whistles between the legs of the second. I jump and get through without being hit.
The next part of the trench is deeper, and branches in several directions. In one of these continuations two figures are lying as if they were hugging each other. But their heads are missing. I feel ill.
Later I hear that this happened in the morning, but there was no way to get the corpses out. All the fighters on the hill have been past this place at least once. The shell fell directly in the trench. A direct hit. A third comrade sitting next to them was flung right out by the force of the explosion. But he was otherwise OK.
I look for a place and David and I move into it. Reuven takes a position nearby. Six people in the trench. People? They are filthy, their eyes dusty and reddened. It is a long time since they had a thought, or hunger and thirst. Four of them are wounded and patched up with bandages. The other two hold rifles in their hands. The automatic weapon is out of order.
David sets up our machine gun and fires off a salvo. The immedi-ate reply is a shower of bullets around us. He loses his grip on the machine gun, which falls in the dirt and is now full of mud. It doesn’t work any more. I duck down, pull the weapon into the