TUMBULAR 16

Back in the infantry stage, three of us had departed on a mission.  The enemy were after us, but we thought there's three to three and there is time to escape.  A long clearing, with soft green grass about a foot high and then fifty metres away a thick forest.  The enemy were charging us on foot and we had little time to respond.  It was still an even chance, I kept saying, an even fighting chance.   Then on the distant road I saw the cavalry, the elimination of even our slim chances.  Military vehicles were charging down the road, about five in a row, equipped with weapons.  We slammed our hips into the grass and expected to die.  Nothing.  We desperately made the extra five or six metres into the trees and grabbed the branches to suspend ourselves inside them.  There we expected to be shot to death for sure, but nothing happened.  We had been cloaked in invisibility.

That was the first reprieve we'd had in the infantry stage.  Later we were no so lucky.  We were captured and brought here.  But still we had the notion that nobody really knew who we were, that the cloak of invisibility could descend at any moment, making us our own people again, completely free but impossible to understand.

We knew only one thing, that we would live or die together, that we were inseparable.   Even in this prison.   They could taunt us all the liked and tell us everything would stay the same until the moment we grew old and died a natural death, but we were used to miracles.   We had only to wait for one.