Foreword

Dear reader,

Here you are presented with a unique book. If in buying this book you seek a literary standard, remember that no literature is of use but that which claims the author's whole strength. This is a document of my life - this is a document of an era. General events and personal doubts, successes and failures, bad and good fit into the picture - described unembellished and without an attempt to excuse anything. The diary entries, begun by a young boy at Kibbutz Ein-Harod and continued by the same man as an IDF soldier, are submitted to the reader in their full content and original style. No corrections have been made from foreign tongues - to maintain the authenticity of the original ones. Over the years, various papers published some of the entries, but they were often distorted. There is thus no comparison between the passages as they appeared in the press and the events narrated in the diaries as they occurred.