for me, the front is an uncanny vortex. Even when you’re still far from its center, in the calm water, you can already feel the current drawing you in, slowly, inexorably, with little resistance. But powers of defense flow to us from the earth, from the air—most of all from the earth. No one needs the earth as much as the soldier does. When he presses himself against it long and hard, when he burrows into it deeply with his face and limbs in the mortal fear of fire—then it is his only friend, his brother, his mother, he moans in fear and cries into its silence and its security, it accepts
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