European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

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.

Perhaps they didn’t want to kill us, considering that we were within ten meters of them.

They just didn’t hit us. The commander later called a unit meeting and said:

You see? Ciril almost fell today. It’s some kind of miracle that he’s still alive.

We were all astounded, myself most of all.

He said: When it gets dangerous, Ciril does not go into action anymore. He writes poems.

I was to be a molder of Slovene words, in a time when it was officially prohibited to use the Slovene language

and when only two years earlier I had been expelled from school for using Slovene words.

These men paid reverence to the Slovene literary word, song, Gregorcic, Presern…

It was constantly recited, and we all carried miniature books of Presern and Gregorcic.

They were all too ready to protect me and keep me safe, while they went into action.

Half of them had already fallen within a year.

They were consciously prepared to risk their lives to protect me.

They would fall, while I, the poet, and I wasn’t much of a poet back then, would only write poems.

Such comradeship, such ethics as I experienced then… Mind you, I’ve mentioned one mere example…

I never before, nor ever thereafter came across such again.