Burial
When our friends in the army sadly passed away, we still had to get permission for their burial from Soviet soldiers. In addition, the condition of the Russian terrain was unbelievably cruel. The freezing weather, below 30 to 40 centigrade, made the ground completely frozen and made it impossible for us to dig holes. No matter how hard we tried to dig with picks, they only hit the ground and bounced back. Even after warming the ground with fire, we could only dig down 10 centimeters deep. Wood to burn was scarce. In such conditions, we had to just lay our friends’ naked corpses in an area that was only a little lower than surface. A little amount of soil, sand and snow was sprinkled on them. Then we made their tomb with a long flat stick, put a little bit of water in the rice container to add formality. Such burials were so sad and difficult to cope with.
Around December, 1945