European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

It was a matter of honor; you would not hesitate to risk your own life.

Once I dragged a fatally wounded comrade almost three kilometers.

Luckily, the Germans knew that a Partisan brigade was somewhere in the vicinity,

so they chose not to hunt me down directly but tracked me through the shooting lines.

That time I was almost sure I would die too.

Honor prevailed over thoughts of self survival in such moments.

It was one year later when the army ‘lent’ me to civilian society,

to help organize Slovenian Partisan schooling in the entire Primorje territory.

I had always collaborated in the Karst. Then I returned once again to the unit.

I was very active in cultural matters: I wrote songs, recited at meetings.

Brigades were named after poets, I was in the Kosovel brigade.

There was also the Gregorcic battalion and the Levstik brigade.

Culture and combat were amalgamated at the time.

I had founded schools, taught, been the district headmaster and I don’t know what all, anything that was needed,

I’d recited my poems at many a meeting…

It was 1944 and we were sure the war would end almost the very next day.

I was called back to the armed forces yet again. They put me among the miners.

Once I went with a colleague to mine a track-line between Gorica and Trieste.

We fell straight into German occupation near Doberdob. Somehow, and to me it’s still unbelievable, we stayed alive.

I can only imagine how that group of Germans shot right past us.