His deputy, the sergeant major, met him upon his return, and informed him that the men had removed all the rubble and stones from the area, and that a group of soldiers was working to rebuild the trenches. But now a command tent and mess tent were pitched next to these huts, and the sounds of hammering stakes and clattering poles filled the air as the soldiers worked to pitch the three tents that would serve as their quarters. It was all that had survived in this place after the heavy shelling the area had experienced at the beginning of the war. When they had arrived, they found two standing huts and the remains of a wall in a partially destroyed third. Then he began making his way through the thick, heavy afternoon air, back to the camp.
Finally, he lowered his binoculars, wiped off the sweat and returned them to their case. Against the sun’s harsh glare, he carefully followed the course of narrow paths across the sand, occasionally pausing to fix his gaze on a ridge for a moment longer. These reached his ears as he gazed through binoculars from his position atop a hill, examining the scene before him. The only signs of life in the area were distant barking and the noise of soldiers working to set up camp. Aside from these, nothing at all, just a great expanse of the arid Negev desert, over which crouched the intense August heat. The only details that could be discerned were a faint winding border which aimlessly meandered across these ridges, and the slender shadows of dry, thorny burnet and stones dotting the ground. Vast stretches of barren hills rose in layers up to the sky, trembling silently under the heft of the mirage, while the harsh afternoon sunlight blurred the outlines of the pale yellow ridges.
0 kommentar(er)
