there was a quiet spot in a corner of the double fence of barbed wire surrounding the camp.
A tent had been improvised there with a few poles and branches of trees in order to shelter a half-dozen corpses (the daily death rate in the camp).
There was also a shaft leading to the water pipes. I squatted on the wooden lid of this shaft whenever my services were not needed.
I just sat and looked out at the green flowering slopes and the distant blue hills of the Bavarian landscape, framed by the meshes of barbed wire.
I dreamed longingly, and my thoughts wandered north and northeast, in the direction of my home, but I could only see clouds.
The corpses near me, crawling with lice, did not bother me. Only the steps of passing guards could rouse me from my dreams;
or perhaps it would be a call to the sick-bay or to collect a newly arrived supply of medicine for my hut—
consisting of perhaps five or ten tablets of aspirin, to last for several days for fifty patients.
I collected them and then did my rounds, feeling the patients’ pulses and giving half-tablets to the serious cases.
But the desperately ill received no medicine. It would not have helped, and besides, it would have deprived those for whom there was still some hope.
For light cases, I had nothing, except perhaps a word of encouragement.
In this way I dragged myself from patient to patient, though I myself was weak and exhausted from a serious attack of typhus.
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