presented with my first meal in a festive ceremony. Maybe it was only some mush and a soft-boiled egg. But it was godly! Then the big day came unexpectedly and on my tray lay the first slice of bread! And it was no mistake by an over-tired nurse. I was really allowed to eat it. From that point things advanced by leaps and bounds. I could sit, then take a few steps and one day the tray came with a piece of choco-late. A small one perhaps, but real chocolate!
On the next day I got the chocolate out of my drawer. I looked at it for a long time. Each piece was wrapped in colorful paper. I decided to eat one piece. But which? I can’t eat any nuts nor any chocolate with cognac. I closed my eyes and took a piece blindly. I unwrapped it. Then came the great moment. I hesitated, and then, as if in a reli-gious ceremony, I raised my hand and placed the piece of chocolate on my tongue...
In the hospital, the soldier faces his ultimate test. In battle he has some-thing he can rely on: comrades who fight next to him, faith in his leaders ... but who was there to comfort that anonymous Etzel man who suf-fered terribly with thirst until he was taken to the operating theater and did not come back?
One-legged hero
He was lying in the room next to mine and I never saw him. But I heard his shouting. This woke me up in the middle of the night, about a week after I was wounded. "Yitzhak ... help me! What should Ido... Oh!... My leg! My leg!... What can I tell my parents? ... Who is going to look after them?..." The nurse whispered me the information that he was an explosives specialist who had lost a leg and most of the fingers of one hand.
A day later I was moved into his room. He was depressed and could not be comforted. His hands were bandaged. He did not know that he had also lost his fingers.
Whenever his pain or his desperation became too much for him he began to shout. But he never called to his parents, always to "Yitzhak." That seemed strange to me. I knew from experience that