English Translation

-16- 113 During the march into the position and then up in the ditch I did not see him. It had become spring, our position was not high and the snow had melted long ago. Between the rocks sprouted grass and herbs and in the lukewarm nights one could read when the moon seemed. Our front cut was quiet, often for days no shot fell. During the day we sat in the warm sun in front of our cavern, below us was the city with the castle, whose tower had received a gaping hole from a grenade. Under him stood the big mortar, which was to shoot only if, as it seemed, an attack would take place behind the city, the river entered a round plain surrounded by mountains, which it flowed through in a comfortable wind. Crossing the plain the trenches ran. Our idyll did not last long. We were replaced and marched back into the city at night, but only to receive an attack order there, A big offensive stood bevos and we were to take the first shock. The city was abandoned by the inhabitants, over the narrow streets mats were tensed against plane vision and the houses were open. In the rooms, which were assigned to us as quarters, there were beds, women's clothes, curtains and books scattered on the floor, the wooden furniture was broken and partly fired, and a married comrade shook his head with sorrow: how this apartment would ever be fixed, he could not imagine VA8. We stayed here for two days and were familiarized with the attack order in every detail. At the officer's fair, which had been set up in the wide rooms of an old patrician house, we went up: we drank our last wine bottles empty. Before midnight of the second day we arrived in the dark main road. Smoking and lighting was strictly forbidden, and unbridled silence was instilled. We only spoke whispering and waited. Outside on the front everything was quiet.