What They Carried with Them

What did they carry with them – these boys, thrown to the other end of the world, into tropical jungles, to a foreign, unwanted war? Cigarettes and canned peaches, comics and the Holy Scriptures. Mosquito repellent. Drugs. Letters from their beloved girls. And what else? And also their eighteen, nineteen, twenty years. And their desire to live. And the fear of death, which at times, when concentrated, turned into unimaginable cruelty. And what else? And also the belief that they would survive – although not everyone was meant to survive. Those who did survive had to bear the heavy burden of memory, and they would carry this burden forever.