22. Mai 1943
The greatest thing happened today:
I’m sitting in the back of my bunker when I suddenly hear gunshots in front. I immediately run the hundred metres or so to the positions, but find everything quiet and peaceful again. The following had happened: A guard had been half-asleep in his foxhole when he heard footsteps nearby. As he now sleepily looked up, a Russian was standing in front of his foxhole. At first they are both paralysed with fear. But then the Ivan turns around in a flash, wades through a shallow pool and disappears into the bushes. In the meantime, the Landser had raised his rifle and blindly fired two shots at the Ivan, without hitting him, of course, because indeed he was still half asleep. I quickly took some men and ran into the forest in the direction of the fleeing Russian, but found no trace of him. But the Ivan had also had an improbable stroke of luck: he had run into the biggest fool of the platoon.
Those cursed mosquitoes! We wear mosquito veils in front of our faces, but these beasts always find an entrance, usually at our necks. When the guards wear the veil, they can’t see properly because the mosquitoes crawl around on the veil en masse in front of their faces. But when they lift the veil to observe better, the mosquitoes bite their faces. When they are chased away, the guard reveals himself by his constant movements. Today I stood next to a guard who was standing in his hole with his hand on the rifle butt. The hand was black with mosquitoes! The poor sods in front. If they don’t have thick skin, they go crazy from itching. And in addition to the typhus that lice bring us, malaria comes as a gift from mosquitoes. Even the Atebrin that we swallow against it does not always help, although it is very effective. But the mosquitoes and the itching of their bites, which deprive us of sleep, strain our nerves more than the danger down here.
First Lieutenant NN, the company commander from the bunker above the gorge, has just been down here to take a look at the positions that in fact are lying like a protective shield in front of his command post. Gosh, he’s careful! We walk from my bunker to the positions in front. He actually has a garland of soldiers walking in front of him as a screen! Just in a semicircle, like an umbrella! And yet we are behind our own line. I walk this way day and night several times, but alone!
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