►May 1945◄

It was a beautiful end of May 1945 and the Red Army troops, it should be noted that only some of them were ready to leave.Some of them stayed in the forests somewhere in the west until August, but that was not the case. The young boys, the old cunning men, the soldiers liberated from the camps along the way and certainly there was at least one blue-collar man, started to prepare for the departure. Where to? It's hard to find out, maybe back home, maybe to help comrades in Manchuria, some of them even involuntarily to Siberia. Who knows where the journey of our fictional hero, let's call him Vasil.

So when Starshin announced to his comrades, including Vasil, that tomorrow would be the day when they would have to pack up and go on one of their journeys, they had conflicting feelings.In the forest they were well cared for by the local people /some of them cursed because it was known that there was no coal and the Ivans, compared to the defeated German army, were boys smelling and drinking at the end of the war.and they were still washing and bathing and this year May was not so warm so some who were told by the soldiers about the coal that was rationed sputtered and cursed the soldiers and complained about freezing in Kladno...they helped themselves(O:/but most of the locals liked them and even the girls came to the camp to get some golden trinkets which the handy Red Army boys had full of.

Sometimes a girl liked a piece of jewelry so much that she refrained from stroking the hair of one of them in the zemljanka...it happens.But to our Vasil.He couldn't even grow up anymore.In the morning, Starshin gave out new caps to the soldiers, comrades, so that they would not be embarrassed with those who had cut out all kinds of German aluminium...Vasil proudly pinned the star on the old boat that he had sawed out of something because there were still visible remnants of the branch and the inscription GOOT MIT UNS.He hung the mirror on the tree, looked at how it suited him and decided to do something with his beard and that unruly mane before he set off.Then he remembered that he had found somewhere on his way through the forest a comb that would be very useful to him.He reached into his bag and soon took out the object he had found.He trimmed his beard and then combed his hair and put on the boat again.Finally he was satisfied with the result.The heroic and beautiful Vasil was looking at him from the mirror hanging on the tree.He was so satisfied that he had forgotten about the poor comb he had found /somewhere in Prussia, I guess(O:/quite a bit.Vasil left that day and so did all his friends, comrades, comrades-in-arms from that forest.All that was left behind were the buried latrines and Vasil's comb and many more...but that's another story.