“It’ll soon be over. You can take my word for it.” His eyes glittered with enthusiasm, and there was a hint of derision in their corners. Was it aimed at me? Because I was stuck there in the training camp, far from the places where the real fighting was going on?
“You really think so?” I asked hesitantly.
“What a question!” Yehuda gave me a knowing wink. “We’ll finish them off right away!”
His confident voice made me feel ashamed. I wanted to open my mouth, to protest. But he stopped me with a decisive gesture. “In general I’m fed up with training greenhorns. This training camp isn’t my line.” I nodded in agreement. “I’m going to the front,” he added. “Must get a few shots in before the whole thing’s over.”
“Yes, you’re right,” I muttered. “I’m also fed up.”
“I’m leaving camp tomorrow,” he snorted proudly.
“Has the camp commander agreed?” I asked, taken aback.
“Listen to me,” he retorted with a swagger. “That Old Ramrod cuts no ice with me. I just forgot how to train the men. I lost my memory, get it? So, he had to get rid of me.” My astonished look only increased his flow of words. “Look, chum,” he went on, “I wasn’t born yesterday!” His eyes rested on me for a moment while he savored his triumph. It was almost as if he was asking me, “Aren’t I terrific?”
“You certainly know the ropes,” I said with envy. “I just haven’t got the courage to get away with tricks like that. The only thing I can do is to ask Ramrod for a transfer to a combat unit . . . Think I’ve got a chance?”
“Huh!” Yehuda snorted. “You’re just wasting your time. You’ve got to be smart, on the ball—like me. Else you’ll stay right here. The OC will keep you in camp until the war’s over.”
“Rubbish,” the platoon commander, Arthur, chimed in. “You boys are just looking for trouble.” And he added, in a strict tone, “What do you need it for? Do what you’re told to do, and don’t poke your nose where it’s not wanted.”
“He’s dead right,” added Yehiel, the instructor, who was standing next to us. “War isn’t a game of tag. Don’t be so anxious to get to the front.” He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a photograph.
“Have you seen this?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t.”
Yehiel held it out to me. “These are our boys. The enemy’s spreading it around.”
I glanced at it, and my blood froze. I felt like choking. Paralyzed. Our soldiers: a heap of naked bodies, their limbs cut off; a smashed white hand, fingers clenched, stuck into the air as if trying to grasp it; drops of clotting blood trickling over their pale skin. Our boys . . . The photograph shook in my hands. Heads bashed in, with ears cut off. Black splotches covered their faces. I looked desperately for their eyes, or at least for the place where the eyes should be, but they weren’t there. Instead I saw hollow black pits, dark caves. Their feet had also been cut off. Ropes were tied around their waists. “No, no,” The sight left my hands and feet trembling and gave me a feeling of weakness and slackness in my muscles.
“I’ve seen atrocity pictures before,” Arthur said. “Those shots of the German concentration camps. Naked bodies, gas chambers, rows of corpses lying in trenches. You must have seen them.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s what war’s like. Perhaps it’s the symbol of fate. If you’d been in the camps, you might have been dead too. But you’re here, in Tel Aviv.”
“It’s all a question of luck,” Yehiel summed up. He took the photograph from me and stuffed it back in his pocket.
“It couldn’t happen to me,” I blurted out.
“Why not?” Arthur jeered. He took a pipe out of his shirt pocket, knocked it against his palm, and emptied out the stale tobacco. I was silent. A fatherly smile spread over his face, as if he wanted to say: “Really, my boy, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I coughed slightly, to indicate that I didn’t agree with him. “Well, I’ll be seeing you,” I said abruptly, strolling to the center of the camp.
Near the parade ground stood Old Ramrod, looking at the recruits passing by. He was staring at a group of greenhorns, standing next to the taps outside the dining room, who had just finished cleaning their messtins. “Hey, you there!” the OC shouted. “Don’t you intend to turn off these taps?” The greenhorns, who wore faded, threadbare clothes, stopped in their tracks, panic-stricken, and gazed at him like a flock of frightened ducks. “Is that how you behave at home, too?” he yelled. The recruits stood rooted to one spot, unable to move. “Well, hurry up and turn off those taps at once!” he roared impatiently. They hurried to the dripping taps, their boots spattering mud over their trousers as they closed them. Then they made for their huts, leaving trails of mud behind.
I came up to Ramrod. Suddenly he turned to me, in a movement that took me by surprise.
“Well?” he asked. “Want something?”
“I w-w-wanted to talk to you,” I stammered.
“Then come to my office at one,” he dismissed me.
—
At one o’clock I presented myself in his office. Ramrod was standing behind a broad desk. He gestured to a chair, and I sat down slowly.
“Well, what’s it all about?” he asked, fixing a stern eye on me.
His penetrating stare scattered all my thoughts, and I didn’t know how to begin.
“Well?” he encouraged me.
“You see, here in the camp . . .” The words stuck in my throat. I breathed deeply and raised my voice: “I want to go off to the front . . . to fight . . . like all the others . . . To leave the camp . . .”
His lips clenched in a worried expression. “Listen,” he growled in quite a kindly tone, “the war’s only just begun. There’s no need to hurry.” He stopped abruptly, leaned back in his chair, and went on in a soft voice: “And don’t think that our soldiers will always be in rags, as they are now, without proper uniforms, without enough arms. The day will come when all these things will change.”
“But . . . but . . .” I mumbled, confused and unsure of myself.
The OC cut me short: “I don’t intend to keep you against your will.” He went on in an angry voice: “Think about it until tomorrow, and then, if you still want to leave, you can go.” His voice hinted that our talk was over.
“Right,” I said. I got up from my chair like someone who had just had a tongue-lashing, and went outside.
Arthur was standing on the porch. “Well, did you see him?” he questioned me.
“Yes, I’ve just been there.”
“So?”
“I want to leave.”
A
