in the family.¹ And a dark-haired girl, whose opinion was very important to me, implored me to shave it off. But when I was back in the camp I regretted my rash promise. Am I a woman’s slave or a frontline soldier? In brief, I broke my promise and left the beard where it was. It flourished splendidly.

But I had left one thing out of account - the ceasefire. This brought some things that we didn’t like at all. Being woken early, morning roll call, a thousand little rituals from earlier times that we had long for-gotten during the fighting and that we had hoped we would never have to submit to again.

In short, our commanders had decided that it was time to put an end to our partisan existence and to reintroduce what they, for unknown reasons, called "military order." This order is very popular among the superiors. And if it didn’t occasionally happen that an army also has to fight - which disturbs the boring routine seriously - they would have introduced this "order" at the front too.

The first victim of this order was my beard. First to come to me was my immediate superior, then the sarge, followed in the end by an official order from the company commander. No lesser person than the battalion commander made his remarks when he visited our company. They had all decided that my beard symbolized this damned "partisan spirit." So it had to go.

I am a soldier, dear reader. And an order is an order, whatever you think about it. My comrades stood around me. Some felt sorry for me, others radiated schadenfreude. The news spread quickly, and my naked face became a popular theme for gibes and various kinds of joke.

Poor beard. With a heavy heart I write your obituary. You were a good friend to me, a source of comfort and joy on difficult days. And now you have met your fate ...

Why are my comrades suddenly looking so sad? Have the

Egyptians broken the ceasefire? Has the fighting started again? ... Maybe, after all, my beard will get another chance to grow...

This mental crisis strengthened the comradeship and the esprit de corps among those left in the fighting units. They despised the "HQ heroes" more and more. We carried in our hearts the words of the Russian song that Abba Kovner brought us during the eleven days in the trenches:

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