Read Wars I Have Seen for Free Online

they have no hope and no adventure. Think of the dictators they are just like that. What did I say. I said it was just like that.
    However fifteen is not just like that, not very likely although when it is the lower middle class it tries to be but fifteen is really mediaevel and pioneer and nothing is clear and nothing is sure, and nothing is safe and nothing is come and nothing is gone. But it all might be.
    At fifteen they light a pack on their back. It makes them feel strong. At fifteen they conquer when they have a pack on their back. And now in 1943, everybody has a pack on their back, they go about just like that, they need anything and everything that can be put into a pack on their back. And so from fifteen to twenty-four and now from five to ninety everybody can have a pack on their back, in hope of finding something to put into that pack on their back.
    From fifteen to twenty-four there was the Boer war, and it was the first time I knew about how many or how few should surrender and it was the first time I knew about khaki and all that, and it was the same with everybody, and now here khaki is over, at least right here, Germans and Italians wear sad green and grey, and any color can be dirty that way.
    Between fifteen and twenty-five they all can be quite a good deal alive.
    From fifteen on to twenty-five it is natural to think that every Sunday is good weather. And to hope that every day will be Sunday bye and bye. At fifteen walking and riding and coming and going is always a pleasure and everything else is an indecision, and everything else is better or more than that. And here and now in 1943, now that the war is coming to an end, everybody that is nobody knows whether there is or is not any future and at fifteen it is like that everybody and nobody knows whether there is or is not any future. Funny things happen, you milk a goat for the first time, you see a girl taller than yourself for the first time and you are not sure whether she is beautiful or not, you spend all day intending to go somewhere and nothing happens and you wonder if you will ever be revenged. That is what is now happening in 1943 and fifteen years old is like that. You think everything is funny and the moonlight is not clouded over and the wind blows and trees make a noise and people say funny things, they do not mean what they say, fifteen years old is like that and now in 1943 it is like that. There is a funny story about a goat.
    A young woman came from Switzerland to Aix-les-Bains to work in an embroidery shop, and she went to live with a woman who always had one boarder. When she came the woman said to her I must tell you that I do not keep a cow I only keep a goat. Oh dear said the young Swiss, I come from the mountains where my people ever since I was a baby kept one cow just to nourish me. Oh dear I cannot drink goat’s milk, never never. All right said the woman I will arrange with a neighbor and you shall have your cow’s milk as you want it. The young woman stayed there for threeyears and lived happily ever after. She married and from time to time she went to see the woman who had been kind to her when she had come there a stranger. Many years later the older woman was sick and dying, and the younger woman went quite often to see her, and then one day a message was brought that the woman was dying and must see her. She went and the dying woman said, before I die I want to tell you, all those years you lived with me I deceived you, it was not true that I got you cow’s milk from a neighbor, I just gave you goat’s milk and you did not know and I did not tell you but now before I die I must tell you, I could not die deceiving you, and they cried together and she died and it was all over.
    She told us this because we were all happy, this was in 1943, she had just gotten a cow for herself and her husband and her children and we had just gotten a goat, and we were all so happy and we were telling about it to each other. We said that