LETTERS

 

Huge rectangular slabs are placed horizontally on the ground, in no pre-arranged order. Great pages of history, on which are placed letters sent from the front by the soldiers of the Great War to their families.

I've still in my nostrils the smell of grease on a red-hot machinegun. I've still in my hears and even in my brain the crunching of snow under my boots, the coughs and sneezes from russian lookouts, the sound of dry grass swept by the wind on the banks of the Don. I've still in my eyes the stars of Cassiopeia wich hung above my head every night, and the bunker props above my head every day. And when I think about it all I feel the terror of that January mornng when their gun Katiuska first let off its seventy-two rocket-shells….

Mario Rigoni Stern. The sergent in the snow, 1953