—— Duel ——71gathered all the documents, letters and photographs from his
pockets. In the field bag I found some Dutch chocolate, Turkish
cigarettes, an Austrian lighter, German biscuits, an Italian safety
razor and other stuff. The watch on his wrist was Swedish. ‘What
an internationalist! Been everywhere and plundered everywhere!’
I decided to take his rifle and binoculars. Now everything was
ready and I could set off. It was not worth tempting fate any
further. But at that moment the muffled buzz of a telephone came
from somewhere. ‘Just look what comfort he lived in, the bandit!’
I thought and I decided to acquaint myself with the Nazi’s lair and
at the same time, just for the hell of it, reply to the call.
First of all, I noted that, as I thought, they had not dug a passage
from the trench to the firing site – a distance of three metres. So
they were responsible for his doom. His firing site was no more
than a spacious pillbox on top of a foxhole. The observation slit
was curtained with a double layer of cheesecloth and everything
outside was covered with snow. Just imagine trying to locate it
from 200 metres away! Inside, apart from the telephone and the
stool on an actual wooden floor, everything was like our facilities.
Only a bit more spacious, and the entrance was covered with a
warm blanket.
The telephone kept buzzing. It was persistently demanding that
the marksman respond. I picked up the receiver.
‘Was wollen Sie? (What do you want?),’ I asked politely.
‘Wo ist du? (Where are you?)’
‘Oh, go on with you.. .’
‘Wa s, was? (What, what?)’ resounded through the receiver.
‘That’s right, not us but you!’ I answered with a pun on the
Russian word ‘vas’, which means ‘you’, and put the receiver down.
‘Time to run,’ I decided and, cutting the wire, took the phone
with me.
Tired and sweating, but happy, I collapsed into the arms of my
friends. Those arms carefully let me down into the bottom of the
trench. Having watched the duel for several hours, my friends now
hugged me and congratulated me on the victory.