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Afterwards, until the age of thirty he fought in different wars. I don’t know what he did in the intervals. All I know is that he didn’t have much time. He was decorated with the military cross because he had saved a battery. He took part in the three wars: First Balkan War, Second Balkan War and World War I. He used to often talk about that occasion but I don’t know during which war it actually took place. While his division was retreating, he saw some abandoned weapons and without having any military rank, being just an ordinary soldier, he gave command to his division, ‘Stand still! Take the weapons!’ and that’s how they saved the weapons. When they returned he was congratulated on his actions.
He told me what they ate in the army. They lived in great misery, in freezing temperatures. He once told me how our army was freezing on 31st January and how close he was to freezing himself. But they formed pairs and succeeded in warming one another with their breath. And I remember how he was saying that it wasn’t cold all the time: on 1st February suddenly everything melted and there appeared rivers of water, and so everything melted. So it was an incidental, momentous freezing of our whole army. And how they waited for a truce, do you understand? They go to war and wait for a truce between the sides so that they could go home. And he sang, he sang a lot: ‘We fought bravely at Bulair, killed a lot of Turkish scum. Now we’re coming back, back…home.’ [Battle of Bulair: a heroic battle that took place on 26th January 1913 between the Bulgarian Seventh Rila Infantry Division and the Ottoman 27th Infantry Division. The Bulgarian army was victorious.] He used to sing that song after falling into a particularly sentimental mood. And when he sang it I understood what a dream, what a yearning it was for them. My father had made some real friends in the army, Bulgarians. I remember that every Easter, our Pesach, some Bulgarians visited, they were his friends, but I can’t remember their names.
He told me what they ate in the army. They lived in great misery, in freezing temperatures. He once told me how our army was freezing on 31st January and how close he was to freezing himself. But they formed pairs and succeeded in warming one another with their breath. And I remember how he was saying that it wasn’t cold all the time: on 1st February suddenly everything melted and there appeared rivers of water, and so everything melted. So it was an incidental, momentous freezing of our whole army. And how they waited for a truce, do you understand? They go to war and wait for a truce between the sides so that they could go home. And he sang, he sang a lot: ‘We fought bravely at Bulair, killed a lot of Turkish scum. Now we’re coming back, back…home.’ [Battle of Bulair: a heroic battle that took place on 26th January 1913 between the Bulgarian Seventh Rila Infantry Division and the Ottoman 27th Infantry Division. The Bulgarian army was victorious.] He used to sing that song after falling into a particularly sentimental mood. And when he sang it I understood what a dream, what a yearning it was for them. My father had made some real friends in the army, Bulgarians. I remember that every Easter, our Pesach, some Bulgarians visited, they were his friends, but I can’t remember their names.
Period
Year
1913
Location
Bulair/
Türkiye
Interview
Sofi Eshua Danon-Moshe