The place where I found myself was essentially a transit point.
One thing I noticed was that the food here was very good. There was a lot of meat. And almost everyone kept telling me that I could eat whatever I wanted, often adding the phrase “while you can.” When I heard one of the stories about how a team of five men found themselves in a situation where they couldn’t eat for almost a week, and then one of them found a sausage that had gone bad, and they divided it into five pieces and ate it. Then I began to understand more why people here behave this way.
I talked to one guy who was a stormtrooper. He said that even now he was ready to return to the trenches. This shocked me. He explained that he simply had nothing to lose and then added “for now.” He said that everything was very simple for him — he felt that this was his land and it needed to be defended.
In general, among those who returned and were assault troops, there was a feeling that these were people who had risked everything, including their lives. I saw a quality of unity and friendship among them that cannot be described in words.
In the evening, the guy I was talking to ordered two pizzas, and on his way to the room with them, he came to me and shared that he wanted to give me half of one of the pizzas, but I felt a little embarrassed and took only a quarter. He smiled at me and moved on.
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