From: Mortimer Serrano <ygz@acmp.be>
Date: Sep 9, 2006 9:53 PM
Subject: editor principality

Thisoperation ought to have been carried out months earlier. The Fascist parapet wasvisible now, a dim black mound, looming high above us. But on the sodden ground it was almost impossible to move quietly. After you had pulled the pins out there was an interval of seven secondsbefore the bomb exploded. They used to smash thefloorboards of a room by bursting a hand-grenade in it. Our bombs had wrecked all the huts and dug-outs. Of course, he knew the ground better than I and had soon slipped away fromme.

The evil little shellswhizzed over, zwing-crash! But on the sodden ground it was almost impossible to move quietly. While my arm was in the sling I spent several blissful days wandering aboutthe country-side. The bomb had, in fact,wounded several people round about me without touching myself. A heavy fire was comingfrom that direction, but it did not matter greatly. As the days went on the unseen but audible guns began each to assume adistinct personality. There were four or five of us round this side. However, there were only four ofthem, three Germans and a Spaniard. It seemed tome inconceivable that thirty men could get there unheard. We must drag the sand-bags from the front parapet and make a barricadeacross the unprotected side.

I had to puzzle over it for a long whilebefore grasping that it was a harrow. Obviously they were working their way up the communication-trench. The trench-mortars, small though they were,made the most evil sound of all. Peasant lads went out with buckets hunting for snails, which they roasted aliveon sheets of tin. All this while I was lying on my side in the greasy mud, wrestlingsavagely with the pin of a bomb. The Fascist fire seemed to have slackened very suddenly. We had been creeping forward for such an age that I began to think we hadgone the wrong way. Suddenly a succession of tall figures came leaping over the front parapet. Once I raised my head; insilence Benjamin put his hand behind my neck and pulled it violently down. I felt a vague sorrow as I heard him screaming. I knelt besideBenjamin, pulled the pin out of my third bomb and flung it. Of course, he knew the ground better than I and had soon slipped away fromme. Finally Irealized that I was twisting it in the wrong direction. The dead from the front were normally sent to Sietamo;these were the village dead.