European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

There would be a meeting and we would dance and go wild, then we would fight the very next day.

This became the norm of our lives, we learned to count on it.

It was all the easier in the Primorje region, in the Karst especially.

Anywhere you came, someone immediately gave their cow to slaughter so the entire brigade could feast on goulash.

When I traveled as a courier, I was always fed.

If I was wet I was dried no matter what house I stepped into.

Despite that you were alone, everywhere and anywhere you always had the feeling that you belonged together.

There was never any danger that you might take the wrong turn into the wrong house.

Everyone was inclined to the Partisans.

This relieved us of the fears that took rise elsewhere throughout Slovenia,

where one had to consider the potential betrayal of the locals.

That is, elsewhere, the Home Guard and their informants were lurking. There was none of that in the Primorje area.

I never came across a single Slovenian enemy, dead or alive.

So I realize I have a somewhat idealized conception.

Nonetheless, it was genuine, the idealization that a war could unfold such a beautiful humanity,

if I may say so, because war is far from beautiful.

It is true though that as a poet it was hard for me to choose death, even the enemy’s.

This is also why I selected tasks which were far more hazardous than being in the brigade.

However, it was less imperative in the tasks I chose to have to kill someone standing before me, even the enemy.

I have always tried to live my life with as little death as possible, even with regard to the Germans.