"I Was a soldier" "We saw a field shrouded in mist." "There was a thin layer of snow covering the ground." "There was light frost." "We were in an open area." "We were on horseback." "I couId see a green forest." "It was a bitter, drizzly morning." "It was cloudy... and cold." "I stood at the gate." "A bit to the Ieft, there was a burned-down house." "I'd seen smoke coming out of it since the uprising." "There was the so-caIIed Sino river about 25 kilometres away." "I couId hear troops approaching from the other side, from up above." "They were coming from Monte Cassino." "We had to clear a mine field before the river." "Everything was up in flames." "There was gunfire coming from both sides." "It looked like the earth was on fire." "The explosions were really powerful because of the frozen ground." "I felt a thump as if somebody had cIouted me over the head with a stick." "What the hell?" "I saw my friend flung aside." "I heard a scream and saw a horse lying on its back." "I imagine a bullet, damn it, coming towards me." "I want to wipe off the sweat and realize that it's blood." "I feel my body and realize there's blood everywhere." "I wipe it off but there's no end to it." "I couId still see at that point." "I think to myself, what's going to happen to me?" "I ask the doctors what time it is." "I ask the doctors what time it is and if it's daytime, because I can't see anything." "I can hear the drone of a conversation and some kind of a commotion but I can't see anything." "I don't know if it's day or night." "I can just hear the bustle around me." "I pleaded with the nurses and doctors to give me an injection because I didn't want to live." "I'd been able to see for 28 years." "I'd been a healthy man and... full of beans." "And now I was to become a blind man." "I didn't see the point..." "in carrying on." "I wanted to cease to exist... without my eyesight." "especially in a foreign land, with no one to talk to, no one to guide me." "More than anything, I feared being left alone." "I was afraid that no one would want to take me in, hug me or care for me." "Then I also thought that I'd never have a girlfriend again because they wouldn't want me anymore." "That night I generally thought there was nothing left there for me." "One day, I got a glimmer in my right eye." "I lay down on my bed and begun to pray eagerly." "Then I fell asleep." "Light." "I thought to myself that if I couId see light then maybe" "I would be able to see the world." "slowly I started to recover." "After one month, I began to see pale outlines," "like through a fog." "I couId see the windows." "I started to talk to an english girl." "There were an english and a belgian nurse there." "I couId speak a bit of english." "I try to explain to her that I can see the windows, and she says "You'II be able to see lots more soon"" "I started to think that everything would gradually get back to normal." "But then my eyesight stopped getting better." "eventually, it started to wane." "until it was gone for good." "Sometimes, in my dreams..." "Sometimes, in my dreams" "I see things that have nothing to do with my past." "I may see a dead person that I'd never met, or something that had never happened to me." "I can see houses..." "I can see everything vividly." "Everything..." "Then I get up and see nothing." "I can see." "When I'm asleep," "I can still see." "Sometimes, I dream that I'm a blind man walking with a white stick." "But then I can see that someone's standing ahead, waiting for me, although I'm supposed to be blind." "I've never had a dream where I couldn't see." "I don't have grey or black and white dreams." "A Iot of people do." "My dreams are in colour." "I can always see my dreams." "I see images, colours... and beauty." "I see orchards and flowers in bloom." "I sometimes dream that I go bird hunting." "I go bird catching." "I see them fly up." "I set traps and snares," "Sometimes, I fly up with them right under the clouds." "I often dream that I fly up in the air." "As if with wings." "I'm simply in the air." "I don't see much there though." "If only I had one day or one hour..." "just to see my brothers, my sister, my mother and father..." "The strongest desire's been to see my own children." "I've got children, you know." "To see your own family..." "It was my duty to fight then..." "I believe it was my duty to fight then." "And when you're in a battle anything can happen." "So you went to fight for your motherland." "I wasn't the only one, everyone had to." "I fought at home, but it was harder to fight in foreign lands." "You didn't even know who you were fighting for." "In the sticks somewhere..." "Whether abroad or in poland, my only thought was that I was defending poland," "the polish identity and my homeland." "I was driven by those thoughts." "Any form of disability is a terrible thing, but I used to think that blindness was the worst of them all." "I don't think that anymore." "That's the way it's going to be." "One must accept one's fate." "The worst thing you can do is put it off," "Iie to yourself and wake up hoping for the impossible." "You must cut it off with one snip." "When you get over it, it's easier to start adapting to life." "You start seeing yourself as that person." "You gradually get used to it and feel as though you were born this way." "It isn't worth thinking about." "It won't change anything if you keep fighting." "It passes and you pull yourself together and do what you've got to do." "To me, the most important thing is to have a skill and work." "You need to make yourself useful somehow." "Work is very gratifying because it proves that you haven't thrown your life away completely." "There would be nothing without work, nothing." "Nothing at all..." "We used to have a farm." "It was a good farm." "I used to have a talent for art and I dreamed of becoming a painter." "I used to like farming." "My father was a farmer, and so was I." "I used to paint landscapes." "That's what I was best at." "They were full of colour and light." "Awash with sunlight." "You remember places, forests and paths, lakes..." "Where you went... where you lived..." "and all your surroundings... my brothers... and our discussions..." "So, all of a sudden everything was wiped out." "That's what hurt the most." "Even now the pain keeps coming back." "The war's to blame, nothing else..." "The war's to blame, nothing else." "only wars are to blame." "Even if you've come out of the war in one piece, still, you've suffered a great loss." "Wars don't do any good." "They only bring destruction, disability, and all that." "When you stop to think about it and use your common sense, you reckon it's time to end it once and for all." "Who'II understand that?" "I wish for peace." "Peace for everyone."