Young Writers Society

[/i]Entry VII – February 24th 1949

A filthy shovel was slung at my feet. It thudded to the ground; sent a sharp clang rippling through the sodden earth.

A glimmer of sunshine peeped from behind a mass of indigo snow-clouds. I squinted below.

‘Beest rayeh!’ balled a young Russian guard. The irritatingly repetitive phrase allegedly meant “hurry up” in Russian. He seemingly lacked any sort of grasp of the German language. I have decided that he shall be known as “Pretty-Boy”.

Ten minutes earlier, the throng of women had been separated into six groups of five. New officers had come on shift to keep a close eye on each unit. Assigned to our grouping was the young man stood before me. He possessed somewhat girlish features: a slight nose, rounded lips, and an oval face. He was most definitely younger than I; perceivably only seventeen or eighteen.

I scrambled for the handle of the shovel, wrenching it off the soil of the earth. It was so chillingly cold. It stung the calluses dressing my palms. I shot a brief glance behind, watched as the strangers with whom I was working hauled their shovels and begun plunging them into the solid ground.
I followed suit, summoning all the vigour my muscles had stored within their tissue, and began to dig.

Nausea seized my stomach. A moment later, I swallowed back down a gut-full of bile.

I could tell that the other women’s minds were troubled by the horrifying, sickening question plaguing my own.

Were we digging our own graves?

*

We ploughed the concrete soil until our hands blend and sweat was gushing off our bodies. It was a rather unnatural occurrence, considering that our extremities were numb; frozen, and our faces stung stiff with the slaps of bitter wind.
It was terrifyingly black when we flung our shovels to the ground and trudged exhaustedly to our shacks. We finished digging at eleven o’ clock; an unearthly time.

The last few hours of our labour dragged. Fortunately, Pretty-Boy felt sound asleep by half-past ten, and so we were able to slow our pace a little. The triumphant, simultaneous clang of our metal shovels woke him with a start. We tittered silently as he sprung from his spot, surrounded by stubbed-out cigarettes and a half-drunk bottle of vodka.

‘Move!’ he screamed. The pride of fulfilling his duty to stay awake was clearly in tatters.

His tone was aggressive. Our crooked backs snapped straight, and we obeyed at once, slowly backing away. He scrambled for his gun, and clutched it fiercely; protectively. Pretty-boy thrust the barrel forward. Our tired feet sprung back into action, and we sprinted away.

My fellow team-mates and I separated, wishing one-another goodnight. The night air was cold; the aura eerie, and so I ran back to the shack as fast as my blistered feet would take me.

When I arrived back, I found the door ajar. If Nikola and Hannah were home, they wouldn’t have wanted the cold drafting into our hovel.

My heart skipped a beat. Was it a Soviet guard?

I inhaled deeply, trying to calm the thudding deep within my chest. I padded closer, and peered in through the crack of the doorway. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. I breathed a sigh of relief, and gently pushed open the door. It gave way to a long, eerie creak.

In the same split second, a hostile clash of metal and stone echoed through the tiny shack. A petite, hooded figure was squatting – cowering - over our small, wooden table. A puddle of rippling water had pooled in a dip in the concrete from where the tin cup had been knocked.

I took a step further inside. The tang of urine hit me.

The person bundled within the cloak was a youth, who had clearly just wet himself.

I sighed deeply. I was embarrassed for the little mite. A twang of pity throbbed within me as realisation dawned. The child had been scavenging for food.

The youth slowly turned his head. It was a boy. He looked straight at me, or rather, through me. His gaze was cold, piercing; epitomised a lack of innocence. His cheeks were sallow; cavernous. His eyes were inset as those of a person eighty years his senior and his brow-bone protruded painfully. He was a disturbing, bile-churning sight.

I was completely taken aback upon sight of him. My stomach flipped and groaned. The lad was, judging by the maturity of his features, clearly a teenager, and yet, going by his physique, appeared not a day older than seven or eight.

The cold fact-of-the-matter hit me hard, and alarm-bells began pounding in my skull. My empty stomach growled viciously.

The boy was starving to death. And so would we.

It took me a moment to decide what to say. My tongue was paralysed with sheer shock. My limbs were heavy with lethargy, and my mind was intent on succumbing to sleep. I could barely string together a sentence.

‘How...old?’

He continued to stare at me, unblinking.

‘How old are you?’ I managed to spit out.

Silence.

Suddenly, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t need to know. I didn’t need spoken confirmation. All that was necessary to comprehend was the fact that he was disgustingly skeletal for his age.

‘Get out!’ I screamed; my throat as dry as sandpaper. ‘Get out!’

The boy swivelled, sprung to his feet, and shot of the door like a bullet.

I watched after him for a while. I stood, tears of realisation – of desperation - blinding my vision.

We had been brought here to slave until we starved to death.