holds the knife against my neck and tries to cut into it. The blade is blunt. He starts sawing at my neck as though it were a block of wood. Back and forth. Back and forth. It sounds awful. It whistles and rattles and bangs ...
The world around me explodes.
I open my eyes and at the same moment jump out of the trench. All around me thick, white smoke and the sweetish smell of powder. I run into the orchard without looking around, half blind, uncon-sciously. I bump into trees and twigs. I run, hear a loud whistle, and throw myself on the ground, press myself against the earth until it fills my ears, nose, and eyes.
The next bomb explodes, sending earth flying and making the air tremble, hiding the trees in thick smoke.
"Medic! Medic!"
Someone is screaming. And another. Two wounded. One is
Nehemia the driver. Who is the other? Someone is running. Someone curses.
The roaring in the air is getting louder. An aircraft in a dive. A moment of quiet, as though the world was holding its breath. Then the automatic weapons open up. The bullets whistle, thrash, scream, rustle in the leaves. And the second aircraft is diving toward us. The air trembles. And the earth breathes, groans, embraces me in terror, draws me to itself...
The aircraft are gone. I run back to the collection point. Comrades stand up. One after the other. Pale and green. They were all asleep until the first bomb woke them up. Nehemia was woken by a piece of shrapnel in his belly. Eli too didn’t wake up until his face was smashed. His blue eyes peer at us out of his destroyed face as if he still can’t believe that he has been wounded. Two others have also been hit. Drivers who only joined us yesterday to replace our losses. We don’t even know their names.
Instinctively I gather my things together. We have to get out of here. To the other side of the village, before the aircraft come back. My bag is lying open and overturned under a tree. The contents are spread over the ground - a clean towel, that I have never used since we left the camp, a completely unnecessary bag with washing things, a dirty paperback book, the stub of a pencil. I have long since lost my mess tin. The whole company eats from three or four metal plates