My time on leave has now finished, and I have to report to an old training camp located in the moors. This brings back memories of the week training in the mud and covered in sweat. Long before I had actually experienced battle.

The camp is surrounded with high barbed wire fences. Also, to the west, right beside the camp is a Russian prison camp. The prisoners there often beg the men on our side for food. of any kind. Feli, "to see these enemies of ours so close up. They have faces that make one think - honest peasant faces, broad foreheads, broad noses, broad mouths, broad hands, and thick hair... A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends".

It is odd, Feli, I am not used to seeing the enemy close up. Because, if I was, well, I wouldn't be able to write these journals for you.

The figures behind the fences, look like any other human beings. Not monsters, not devils. Just ordinary men like you. Like your brother. Like my brother. Like me.

I have not told you everything, Feli. Sometimes it it just too morbid to recall, and to write the experiences I have had during the battles I have managed to survive in. But I believe I have written enough so that you know just what this war is really like.

However I feel that you have the right to know something, Feli, that I have not said to you directly in these journals.

From here on out, the hope for a German victory is minute, and probably non existent.

I have fought bravely, but only to survive. I am not brave, nor is anyone else. No one in this war is brave. We never will be.