Václav Štěpančík

"In a few days I fell into [typhoid] agony. Agony, there was too much of it. There were a lot of civilians riding horses. In Poland, when the war started, they used to take the landlord like that, if he wasn't a soldier, he had to ride horses and he got five crowns a day for it. There were a lot of civilians there too. But they usually died in agony. Very few of them woke up. Even the doctors. Some were so scared they wore gloves. He just peeked in the door - wie geht es? - that was the whole visit. How's it going? Wie geht es Ihnen? They told him how many people were unconscious, how many were conscious, and he left again. And a fortnight later he also got typhus and died. He went mad, jumped out of a window and killed himself. And I also went into agony. They said two days. That's when I thought I had died and they were burying me. I was in the cemetery, the hole dug, fresh dirt on the pile. There I was, lying on that fresh dirt. The gravedigger was standing over me with a shovel. And I didn't move. "Well, sir, I'm not gonna wait here." "But I don't wanna die here." I had one foot down in the grave. Then I said: I don't want to die here. It's not a funeral, there'd be bridesmaids at home and nothing here. I don't want to die here!' So I pulled my foot out and stayed on the dirt."