All around them were the bodies of dead Chinese soldiers. They lined the verges of the roads and floated in the canals, jammed together around the pillars of the bridges. In the trenches between the burial mounds hundreds of dead soldiers sat side by side with their heads against the torn earth, as if they had fallen asleep together in a deep dream of war.

I was sleeping on the bodies of killed German soldiers. The Germans were very orderly people. When they found they didn’t have time to bury these bodies, they laid them next to each other in a very neat and orderly way. I saw straight rows, like pieces of cordwood. Exact.

All these men with their corpse-like faces, in front of us and behind, driven to exhaustion, emptied of words and will....All these men laden with earth, who, you could say, are carrying their own graves...

A dead soldier was stretched with his face hidden in his arm. Farther off there was a group of four or five corpses keeping mournful company. A hot sun had blazed upon the spot. In this place the youth felt that he was an invader. This forgotten part of the battleground was owned by the dead men, and he hurried, in the vague apprehension that one of the swollen forms would rise and tell him to begone.

I make my battle plans from the spirit of my sleeping soldiers

Jim knew that he was awake and asleep at the same time, dreaming of the war and yet dreamed of by the war.

"Soñadores

"Los soldados son cautivos en la tierra de la muerte, no especulan con los riesgos que los hados les reservan, a la hora del destino le dan la cara a su suerte.

(...)

Los soldados se conjuran para alcanzar la victoria, en exultante y fatal culminación de sus vidas, desoyendo de las balas la terminal trayectoria.

Soñando íntimos hogares, y con esposas queridas; yo los veo en agujeros y roídos por las ratas, azotados por la lluvia, en las trincheras... hundidos.

Soñando infantiles juegos con bolas, peonzas y estacas; fingiendo sin esperanzas ansías de tiempos perdidos.

Fiestas, bailes en la aldea, caricias tras de las matas; y aquel marchar al trabajo en un tren… adormecidos.

Soldiers are dreamers.

Dream after dream we all lie in each other's arms

Soldiers' graves are the greatest preachers of peace.

Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.

Having wounded each other thus, deeply, almost mortally, the two sat quietly side by side on someone’s sunny grave, haemorrhaging.

Those people who are buried next to each other are perhaps not as crazy as one might think. Their ashes might press and mix together, and unite. What do I know? Maybe they haven't lost all feeling or all the memories of their first state. Perhaps there is a flicker of heat that they both enjoy in their own way at the bottom of the cold urn that holds them. Oh, my Sophie, I could touch you, feel you, love you, look for you, unite myself with you, and combine myself with you when we are no longer here.. Allow me this fantasy.

The dead were buried above ground, the loose soil heaped around them. The heavy rains of the monsoon months softened the mounds, so that they formed outlines of the bodies within them, as if this small cemetery beside the military airfield were doing its best to resurrect a few of the millions who had died in the war. Here and there an arm or a foot protruded from the graves, the limbs of restless sleepers struggling beneath their brown quilts.