The way back is just the way out in reverse. Around the guard, crawling up the slope. There’s a sentry standing by the gap in the wire. Five motionless minutes with his face pressed against the ground. At last he’s gone. Slip under the wire, one leap to the barracks - made it!
The lights are still on in the barracks. It is warm inside. His com-rades are arranging the beds. Chatting and swearing like always. As he comes in they look at him enviously. He was in their dream land: "Outside."
His friend approaches. "What was it like? See your girlfriend?"
He turns his back on his friend, arranges his bed. "Alright" he mumbles, "everything OK." He puts out the light and lies down. "I’m back" he thinks to himself "at home."
4 March 1948
On leave
We are soldiers now
A soldier is not a citizen who is familiar with the use of weapons, who moves in a particular way, and obeys particular orders. A soldier is a special kind of human creature in a world of his own.
The son, brother, or boyfriend is called up. Two weeks later he comes back home on his first leave. He doesn’t appear to have changed in any way. He is tanned, the skin on his nose is peeling, and on his hands are little cuts and sores from his field exercises. But those who approach him more closely notice that something has changed. Something deep and fundamental. He feels different, talks differently, behaves differently. And they will never really under-stand what this change means.
For them it was just two short weeks. But for him it was an eternity. And everything from his past now seems to him to belong to a distant and alien world. What has happened to him in these two weeks? He has changed. He has lost one world and gained another. A painful process.
The first three or four days are the worst. The raw recruit entered the camp in joyful, relaxed expectation, looking forward to new experiences, which he pictures in bright colors. And the reality is gray. Dark gray. His thoughts were on automatic weapons, hand