have never yet dug a decent one. I hate this work. Besides, I am immune. The bombs won’t hit me. All the others will be hit. Not me. I cannot die, I can’t be wounded, never mind losing a limb. It simply cannot happen that a piece of rough metal, a bit of scrap without any value, could put a sudden end to this complicated organism with its senses, feelings, thoughts, and all its secrets. That simply cannot happen! Of course I know that everyone else thinks the same. All those who have already left us, without legs, without arms, some of them without a head. And still -1 am quite certain ...
Why did I get into this trench? I don’t know. The fabled sixth sense. The sense that only those with experience have. That’s why they keep getting sent out. Again and again and again and again, until the last of them is finished. Who else should be sent out? This logic applies in all the armies of the world: once in combat, always in combat.
Whose trench is this? No idea. Probably one of our comrades who returned later than we did. He saw me asleep and was too tired to chase me out. He didn’t have a sixth sense. He did not feel that they had to come this night, to come and bomb us ....
This night...
What a night! Yet again we attacked that damned Beit Jamal. For the second time, the third time? I can’t remember. There was a battle. Battle? More like a slaughter. Healthy boys set off, mostly green recruits. They didn’t know about the bright moon, didn’t know that the Egyptians were expecting them exactly where they appeared. And not many came back. Some remained there. But most were brought back. Brought back on my jeep. Bleeding flesh, with smashed faces, broken bones, without fingers, without ears. One load after the other. Each time six or eight groaning bodies, crying, screaming - as well as the silent...
The bunker in the kibbutz, the "collection point," stuffy, with the wounded almost lying on top of one another. They waited, patiently or in shock, till the medic reached them and at least gave them an injection to reduce the pain. The wounded didn’t know how lucky they were. If they had had to rely on being carried by their comrades, most of them wouldn’t have reached here alive ...
I am sleeping in the trench. Around us are the jeeps, under the trees, more or less hidden.