The men get their heads down and load their weapons. After a few tense moments some vehicles appear - but at the last moment the observation post tells us to keep our cover and do nothing. British faces have been recognized in the vehicles.
Each soldier is lying on his own, a few meters apart from the oth-ers. Each one has found a rock for cover. There is no shortage of rocks around here, thank God. The sun beats down. Some have taken off their shirts and are baking half naked in the sun. Drinking is, of course, forbidden. Water is valuable. All that remains is dreaming - nebulous, short-lived, meaningless.
Far away, on the horizon, we can see Arabs tending their fields. The look like miniature chess pieces moved by invisible hands. I am lying behind a machine gun and aiming. Of course you are not allowed to shoot. We have to maintain the illusion that no one knows about our ambush. The bullets couldn’t reach anyone. The distance is over two kilometers. Or is it less than that? I change the weapon’s setting to one and a half kilometers. Even that is much too far to have much effect. Doesn’t matter. The safety is on in any case. Now the Arab is directly on the back sight. The front sight is getting nearer. Too high. A bit lower. Just right. Now it would be simple to hit him. One bullet and that’s it. An idiotic thought. That’s what boredom makes you do - silly things.
I lie on my belly with the sun burning my sweating back. I can’t turn over. I have an impressive boil on my backside. Nothing to be embarrassed about.
That is definitely a front wound. That comes from getting sardines to eat three times a day, two weeks long. Three varied meals a day: for breakfast sauerkraut with sardines, for lunch sardines and sauerkraut, and for dinner you get not only sauerkraut but also sardines. We are all suffering from vitamin deficiency. Some of us suffer from heart-burn, which makes the nightly guard duty hell. Diarrhea is another front illness. My boil is the pinnacle of the romance of war. If I don’t see the medic tomorrow the sore will spread over my whole body.
Behind the next rock Farouk is lying. He was born in Damascus and owes his name to his plump, Arab-looking face. He looks like a pimp, and that was in fact the way he earned his money in Damascus. He prefers not to talk about this phase of his life. T o make up for that, he is quite happy to talk in detail about other activities. How during