There was only time for a bowl of broth, then it was lights-out.įrost glistened on the window panes, but the oil ration went to the factories so the stoves at each end of the dormitory remained unlit. He was big for his age, so therefore a target. The other boys watched him being led into the mess hall. The noise passed up from the earth like a groan.īy the time they reached the orphanage, night had fallen. From factories came the pounding of metal. He traveled to the ruined city in a farm lorry with his only possessions in a sack. It obliterated his footprints and, while he waited, the wheels of passing carts and trucks cut swaths in the muddy road, but in time the rain also wiped these away. What had been his life to this point vanished into smoke. Then they set the ruined buildings alight. His bare feet left footprints in the dirt as the men led him from the farm. Twenty million countrymen died in the Great Patriotic War and his whole family was among them.
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