European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Perhaps it was a week or two or three, I can’t say because we didn’t follow calendar days.

They didn’t even know calendars in Russia at the time.

I was taken prisoner when i was riding my horses, packed with food, to the front line, to the German front.

I swear it was a Russian stallion and I swear, when that stallion sensed the Russian language, I didn’t even hear it, he started neighing.

I guess I wasn’t careful; I was taken by surprise.

I rode on another few hundred meters and then five or six people, girls too, surrounded me.

They said that I was mobilized into the German army. I even said so myself.

But I wondered how these strangers could know.

One of the soldiers said to me, actually he was a civilian, to show my bombaska.

How is one to know? …foreign people, strangers …

So I pulled it out of the pocket of my German uniform, up here on the left side we had a pocket,

and I took the paper out and handed it over.

The leader said votja, charasho, meaning thank you that I gave him the paper.

They took my horses there, when I was surrounded;

and I was made to taste some food, to test whether it was really edible.

I don’t know if later they ate that food or not.

They chased me three or four kilometers away.

But even before I was taken prisoner, the watch was taken off my hand.

I remember thinking how it made no difference.

When they caught me, they took me to the village called Balakleja and they locked me up in a hen coop.