which are passed around. My steel helmet, rifle, and emergency bandages are in the jeep. I am ready to move.
"I can’t take any more," Zuzik mutters. "I can’t take any more. I just can’t take any more!"
We have had all we can take.
* * *
Up to now it was just the odd one of us who had really had enough.
It is a unique sight. You can tell in advance when someone has had enough. He moves differently from usual. He flinches if he hears a distant explosion, looks around like a hunted animal. You can almost count the days. Another two days, another day. And then, when the time is ripe, the crisis. Some openly admit it. They are the most pitiful. They beg to be posted away from the front, for some duty at battalion or even army HQ.
"I was quite OK up to now," they tell everyone in a whining voice. "I was there in all the battles. Always did my duty. Really. Now I can’t go on. You understand? I can’t go on. If I have to go out once more, I will die. I know that I will die." And you look at him sympathetically, the way you look at a dog that has been hit by a car.
Sometimes it is all quite true. They were in every battle up to this day. Some of them are real veterans. And now they are simply finished.
But most of those who have had enough don’t dare to admit it. They find excuses, sad and transparent excuses. One has toothache. Another remembers that he is an only child. A third has a stiff leg. Of course nobody believes them. And they know that no one believes them. And we are mad at them because every one who leaves us increases our own chances of being killed.
"You can work it out mathematically," Jamus discovered one day. "If the squad consists of twelve men, and each day one is hit, then within twelve days you are either going to be wounded or killed. If the squad consists of nine men who are hit with the same regularity, then within nine days you’ll either be killed or wounded."
It is quite simple. Everyone who leaves us increases the danger for the others. Because the same number of deployments is distributed over a smaller number of people. A company has to fulfill the duties of a company. It doesn’t matter how many people are left in it. And if most of the company have been hit and there are just a few squads