15. Mai 1947
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| Sidings at the edge of the forest? | 
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15 May 47. There is a transport of “civilian prisoners”. These are the civilians deported from Germany illegally and without reason. - I am very weak, but not ill. I owe it to the careful attention of my good parents, my (innate and acquired) lack of fastidiousness when it comes to food, and a healthy constitution strengthened by a lot of exercise, that I am able to hold out like this. - I always exchange my tobacco ration for food. - Tensions arise between us officers and the WK people. - ... Silence is golden. There are informers among us.[1] There are obscure types also among the officers.
On the western edge of town, already outside the city, there are some wagons with coils of wire on a siding at the edge of the forest[2]. That’s where we go every day now to unload them (for KMTS?). We are always taken out here with a “Raupenschlepper Ost” (RSO – caterpillar tractor “East”) out here. It’s not very comfortable, because we’re crowded on the small vehicle, which only goes 25 km/h, and it’s still quite cool in the morning. We cook our own lunch out here. We have enough wood in the high pine forest that starts next to the tracks. Only the products are modest, which the kitchen hands us in turn: Flour, millet, potatoes. That’s why two men are sent out right before the work begins, and during the morning they search the surrounding villages for additional food, while the other men unload the wagons. The “food fetchers” are back by noon. Some of the food is used to thicken the soup (potatoes), others (bread) is divided up. This procedure does not always work, because it depends on the behaviour of the Russian guards. They change frequently. Among them there are spiteful or fearful ones who don’t let us leave at all. There are cautious ones who accompany the food fetchers to the villages. But there are also those who divide the work themselves. Before the work begins, they divide us up: “1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - rabotatj! - 1 - 2 - kartoshki (fetch potatoes)!”[3] We always invite the friendly posts to eat (soldiers are always hungry), the unfriendly ones get nothing.
Once again, a guard had accompanied us to the villages. On their return, our comrades tell us: They had gone into a house and were sitting at the table with the farmers’ folk to warm up a bit, because it was quite cold. Through the window they saw the guard standing in the street, freezing. They drew the farmer's attention to this and wanted to bring the guard in too. But the farmer flatly refused and said that the guy should stay outside. Our guards belonged to the NKVD[4], the State_Security_Troops, and they were not popular with the population.
A colony of crows is nesting in the crowns of the tall pines. We could tell from the fluttering of the young ones that they would soon be fledged. At this stage they are also particularly fat. Now that would be a treat. By chance we had a signalman in the brigade. He made a pair of crampons out of two iron bars and one day climbed the pines with them. It was a dangerous undertaking. The climb was arduous, for the pine trunk was high and slippery, and the Landser’s strength threatened to fail. But he reached the crown, in which there were three nests. He threw out the young, which came fluttering to earth, where we caught them at once. They were immediately prepared and thrown into the kettle. This time our lunch soup was enriched with tender crow meat, and large, golden-yellow fat eyes floated on top. The exhausted climber, however, sat limp and languid in the grass. For him, the brilliant feat was hardly worth it.
Our detachment is accompanied not only by soldiers but also by a civilian. His name is Michai.
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- ↑ The nuisance with informers was felt and described much more dramatically by most prisoners of war (Cartellieri p. 116 ff.).
- ↑ The only station west of Smolensk, but still part of the urban area, where wagons could be parked seems to be Krasnij Bor/Красный Бор. Bor/Бор means pine forest!
- ↑ работать, work; картошки
- ↑ since 1946 “MVD”