"You there! Don’t stagger around like a pregnant hen!"
Despite the cold of the night we are dripping with sweat. Our desire to drop our burdens is growing. You need a strong will to resist the temptation.
"Heroes! You wanted to go to the front..." Joker grumbles.
"If only we were back in our jeeps. There we would really be kings," Jamus answered.
The march over that short distance takes hours. We reach "our" position around midnight. As soon as we hear that this is our place, we drop everything and fall to the ground ourselves.
"Don’t just lie around like whores after work! " the company com-mander shouts. "Listen: by dawn we have to be prepared for an Egyptian attack. Three hundred and sixty degree defense. I will show you the individual positions in a moment. I want the trenches to be exemplary. Show that you have learned something here. One trench for every two men. Connecting trenches in between. Special trenches for the machine guns. Tomorrow we will lay barbed wire around the whole position. So! Get up! For God’s sake ..."
"He knows what he can do," Mundek grumbles. But we all get up and start working. The trench for two is an invention of the devil. If you just have to dig a trench for yourself, you can do it as well or as badly as you like. But when two are digging a trench together, each one keeps an eye on the other, to make sure they are not taking advantage.
Your eyes are flowing with green light...
I hum idly, lying on my back, with my head resting on a block of wood. My gaze sweeps over the Egyptian-occupied area. Jamus and I have volunteered to spend the whole day in the lookout post. This is situated in a little vineyard, a few meters away from the barbed wire. The quiet is absolute.
For a couple of hours I read an English book of short stories. The stories captured all my attention. Now and then I would glance around the area. But there is nothing to see - only the next village, whose inhabitants fled when we took Barchaba.
Jamus is also reading an English book. Most of us read English books. The few of us who only know Hebrew read trashy novels in translation. Since I joined up I haven’t seen anyone reading a work of