Despite our problems we continued the march towards the capital. At this point it must have been the last days of November or the beginning of December, a push to the capital had been initiated by the troops before us in October and rumor had it they had the suburbs in sight, but we were still far away. Our company had been given the task of marching further upstream in order to replace a garrison in a small village, both the garrison and the village showed clear signs of the war. The vast majority of houses had been completely abandoned and a large fraction had been bombed and ruined. My company approached the village during a night with a full moon, and in the dim light I could see some figures dressed in green uniforms lying face down in the snow. As we approached the center of the village I could see the tired defenders, many of which no longer held on to their rifles, but rather spent their time either maintaining campfires or, despite their officers’ orders, had gone to sleep in the snow due to exhaustion. My section immediately placed itself in a couple of the outermost houses facing the direction where the enemy was likely to approach from. In the houses I had been placed in, there were 14 severely wounded foreigners on the floor placed side by side, they were all being tended to by 4 women who most likely had stayed behind to take care of them. When the sun rose, it was still a calm day with the occasional cannon shot in the distance being heard. It soon became clear that there we were being watched by some foreigners in a forest which was at an oblique angle to the left from the house, as gunfire would occasionally hit the house.

The company which we had replaced had left us several machine guns, of which I had been given one, and I was told to follow a sergeant and a small group of soldiers and investigate the forest for foreign presence. As we got close to the forest we could see a flock of soldiers hiding, and as soon as they caught sight of us I could hear some shouting coming from their direction, and I could see some of the foreigners running in wildly different directions. They had yet to fire at us, but none of them had put their hands up. One of the foreigners had in this timespan managed to gather their thoughts and fired a round at me, a violent snap hit my ears and I immediately fell to the ground due to the fright. The sergeant I was with immediately started barking orders to the riflemen in our squad, but I could not tell what they were about. As I looked for terrain to hide behind I felt a rough clap on my helmet followed by my shoulders being shaken, the sergeant had turned to me to make sure I was alright, followed by a very simple order: Shoot.

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As I shot a couple of bursts of machinegun fire at the group it was clear that they were all just as terrified as I was, and I was told to stop firing by the sergeant. The riflemen had managed to approach the foreigners while they were scared, and when the foreigners realised this they no longer defended themselves, but for some reason they did not surrender. Sadly. This led to the riflemen shooting every single one of them.

We then returned to the house with the rest of the section. I received the order to stay outside with another machine gun operator in order to keep any attacking foreigners away, but this was a dangerous assignment, and my cover was not very good. My comrade was almost immediately shot in the head and fell to the ground, dead. For a moment it felt as if time stood still and my mind was emptied of all superfluous and productive thoughts. I stopped thinking. It could have been me.

I therefore ran away from the position and hid behind a corner of the house, where I had far better cover from the enemy. Despite the good cover, I had an excellent point which I could use to observe the terrain in front of me. 500 to 600 meters of flat terrain, with the forest in the distance to the left. In the open distance I could see how the foreigners tried to maneuver from depressions in the terrain to positions closer to the house, and I occasionally sent bursts of bullets to convince them to stay where they were. It was an extremely long day with few pauses, but when I had to take a break another man would take my machine gun and continue sending bullets. During the breaks I could enter the house to feel warm again and eat. When the day turned to afternoon I was still outside the house, but as I could no longer see what I was shooting at, I fired wildly at the dark, and at any moving silhouettes. The foreigners realised that they no longer had a reason to be worried with my inaccurate shooting, and they had brought up a cannon. My section now got to hear the distant cannon bangs up close, and several of my comrades inside the house were injured during their escape from the now ruined house. I had been ordered to abandon my position, and as I turned and ran I could see a young officer setting fire to the house, where the injured foreigners were obviously still in and unable to run out of. The reason was of course to remove any obstacles that the foreigners could hide behind, and at the same time prevent them from having a place to rest. I could not stop thinking of the injured soldiers and the women who took care of them. It was of course impossible for the women to carry all of the soldiers out, but I hope that they managed to save themselves.

As soldiers we all knew that it could be our fate to die at the front, but I had a hard time realising that the war affected civillians in this way.