bad. My right leg, the one with the tube for intravenous feeding, hurts and itches. I can’t lie on my stomach or my side, and my back is burning even after Rachel has rubbed it with alcohol.
There are things I don’t want to think about. During the day I can avoid them. But at night they catch up with me, grab hold of me, and won’t let go. Damned memories. Why is it so hard to forget?
It is the eighth night since I was wounded. The eighth night that I can’t sleep. And every night the same memories haunt me. They are clearer and sharper than reality itself. Maybe it is the fever that makes them so colorful that each detail, however small, acquires tremen-dous significance.
During the day pleasant memories predominate: smiling com-rades, a landscape flying past at high speed in a jeep, the battalion mess, nice, funny events. In the night other memories take over. Sometimes I try to imagine that I am asleep and it is all a nightmare. But I know that I am not asleep and that what I can see is not a dream.
I stare at the dim light. My eyes fixate on the little light that shrinks, retreats, approaches, and is once again far away. It is flickering, flickering, flickering ...
* * *
... the light flickers and flickers and flickers.
I am in Camp "Jonah" in Tel Aviv. The wind is howling outside. February wind, announcing the end of the winter. It is pleasantly warm in the tent. Only a slight draff gets through and plays with the petrol lamp that is hanging from the ridge pole.
I am lying on the bed in my dirty clothes, reading (for the thou-sandth time) All Quiet on the Western Frontby Erich Maria Remarque. Actually I am not reading. I am scanning the lines and absorbing none of the content. I am overcome by fatigue, and have lost all motivation. This is more than the physical tiredness of a recruit who has worked his whole life with his head and suddenly has to take part in physically demanding exercises. It is more a mental helplessness, the first shock. For three weeks my soul has been suffocating in the grip of military discipline, confronted with the cruel herd mentality. Your own will is suspended. Any idiot who happens to be appointed a squad leader can push you around anyway he wants.
The squad leaders... with relief I remember that our chiefs are not there. They have been unexpectedly called upon as a reserve force,