Karel Poláček: The Underground City

The underground trench city is a wartime parallel to the peaceful county town. Also its inhabitants, soldiers, just don't like to leave their shelters (night watches, work in the field, de-lacing and a visit to a brothel in a nearby town), and when, at the end of the story, he has to leave the trenches forever, they look back on them with regret as their former home. In unheroic images of everyday life in the trenches, Karel Poláček captured his personal experiences from the Eastern Front. The soldiers just move back and forth without any sense, obeying the incomprehensible strategy of the officers. Military orders resound over a world that has long since ceased to function.