"Thank you.

Everything is familiar to me here, and I'll be home in an hour. I barely made it, fell on my mother's bed and cried, cried...

"What's wrong with you, daughter?" Mom and dad caress me.

This shock changed my character, my soul. I was ill for twenty days. And when she recovered, she returned to the labor front again, but this time different.

I returned to the labor front in early May. My classmates had already worked in other companies formed earlier. I found myself in the company of strange women, mobilized from cutting and sewing courses, but soon I made friends with a young modest teacher, so I did not feel lonely. Life on the labor front was already established. At five o'clock in the morning, there was a thunder of "beating", that is, they were hitting a suspended rail. We got up from the floors, because we all slept on the floor, there was no furniture. But somewhere in another building there was water to wash my face, and in the evenings there was even a boil of titanium - a huge tank with a tap. In the mornings, we quickly went outside and walked two or three kilometers to our point on the highway. Above us, in the role of a warden, there was an elderly woman, a political instructor, who did a roll call for us. Armed with shovels, we dug holes that looked like graves: one and a half meters and the same in depth, and fifty to seventy centimeters wide. When the pits were ready, we went to the forest for obstacles. They were solid fresh logs made of spruce and pine about three meters long. We rolled logs onto a thick rope folded in half. Then, having made a "dead loop", they pulled this log by both ends of the rope. We had to drag over hummocks, bushes, shallow forests... Often the heavy log did not yield, we had little strength: only women were weak, hungry, thin. Then we pulled the ropes. I commanded: "One, two, we took it! And the log moved thirty to forty centimeters forward. So we dragged this log for an hour or two. Finally, we lifted it above the pit and placed it vertically with an inclination towards the front. Under the "feet" of the nadolba, we brought runts from the forest, that is, logs of half a meter, which we put in the hole before we began to fill it up. Finally, they compacted the ground and proudly admired their work: a long strip of obstacles, i.e. anti-tank fortifications. And other companies sawed wood, put high fence stakes in three rows, winding everything with barbed wire.

At lunchtime, cars came to the clearing, brought cauldrons of soup and soup, and gave out bread. The food was hearty, with the expectation that people would take something for dinner. After lunch, I had time to take a nap near my holes. I chose a shade under the bushes, put a bag with a bowl and bread under my head and immediately fell asleep. A blow to the "beat" roused everyone, and we worked for another three hours. On the way back, we could not pass by the flowers, and collected large bouquets of daisies, forest blue bells, lilies of the valley and other flowers. Where are there so many of them? We stopped at the fresh mass grave of the soldiers who died here and covered it with flowers.

It was my first spring spent in the lap of nature. After all, we spent all our school years in the month of May reading books, preparing for exams, which then went from the fourth grade. We left for the dacha in June, or even later. And then, in 1942, I saw for the first time how the lily-of-the-valley arrow breaks through the ground, how the buds open on the bushes in turn, how the first greenery appears. And the weather was magnificent, the birds were singing, the sun was getting hotter and hotter. I got tanned and got stronger, as I was outside all day, in the forest. And in the evening, having finished my bread with boiling water, I immediately fell asleep on a pillow of birch branches. It was still six or seven o'clock in the evening, and the noise of young people, laughter, jokes, songs could be heard in the street for a long time. But I heard it through a dream. I read evening and morning prayers on the way and in between work. Therefore, I had no time to take part in conversations, and I did not get close to anyone. But in my heart I respected the women around me, I saw how enthusiastically they worked. I felt that all of us here are united by love for the Motherland, the desire to provide all possible assistance to our people. I almost cried when my light shovel, which I loved, slipped from my hands and sank into a deep hole as we crossed it on slippery boards. Good women consoled me.

I turned my attention to a thin, swarthy girl who looked to be about fourteen years old. With what persistence she knocked on the roots of trees to remove the first layers of earth! And next to the girl invariably stood her beautiful old grandmother, tall, still straight, but wrinkled like a skeleton covered with brown skin. I saw that the grandmother was wringing her hands in front of her granddaughter, almost on her knees begging the girl to rest and save her strength, but the baby stubbornly knocked with a shovel that could not cut the tree.

"I feel sorry for my grandmother. And the girl is so weak," I said to the women.

"Aren't you the same?" I heard in response.

"I don't!" I am strong, I have muscles! Then there was a merry burst of laughter.

"Our Natasha has muscles!" Everyone was pouring in.

I was not offended, I laughed with everyone, showing my bare hands. And my legs were all scratched, especially the calves of my legs were torn. After all, when we dragged the logs, we did not pay attention to the spruce forest, to the branches under our feet, walking in a line. When I got home, my mother told me to wear stockings, ashamed of my torn legs, and I was stupid and proud of them. Instead of the expected three weeks, I worked on the labor front almost all summer. Only in August did I take up books again, but this time in the 10th grade. "What's wrong with you? How you have changed!" the teachers told me. And I myself felt that my childhood was over, that I had become more serious, more thoughtful. I was no longer interested in secular literature. What can it give to the soul? I now understand that our life is in the hands of the Lord, that He is free to take it whenever He wants, and therefore we must protect every hour. It will not be repeated, and eternity is near...