Last Witnesses : An Oral History of the Children of World War II

“A IS FOR APPLE, B IS FOR BALL…”

Fedya Trutko THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. NOW BRANCH DIRECTOR OF A LIMESTONE FACTORY.

Here’s the story…

Just two days before the war, we took mama to the hospital. She was gravely ill. The hospital was in Brest. We never saw our mama again.

Two days later the Germans entered the city. They drove the patients out of the hospital, and those who couldn’t walk they took away somewhere. Among them, people told me, was my mother. They were shot somewhere. But where? How? When? I never learned, there was no trace left.

The war found my sister, my father, and me at home in Bereza. My brother Volodya was studying at the school of highway engineering in Brest. My other brother, Alexander, graduated from the Red Navy School in Pinsk and worked there as a mechanic on a steamship.

Our father—Stepan Alekseevich Trutko—was deputy chairman of the Bereza district executive committee. He was given the order to evacuate with documents to Smolensk. He came running home. “Fedya, grab your sister and go to your grandfather’s in Ogorodniki…”

We arrived at my grandfather’s farm in the morning, and that night my brother Volodya knocked on the window. He had walked for two days and nights from Brest. In October, Alexander showed up at the farm. He told us that the steamship on which he was sailing to Dnepropetrovsk had been bombed. All survivors were taken prisoner. Several people escaped, among them our Alexander.

We all rejoiced when the partisans came to my grandfather’s—let’s go with them! We’ll take revenge!

“How many grades have you finished?” asked the commander, when we were brought to him.

“Five.”

I heard the order: “Leave him in the family camp.”

My brothers were given rifles, and I was given a pencil for schoolwork.

I was already a Young Pioneer by then. It was my best card, that I was a Pioneer. I asked to join a combat unit.

“We have fewer pencils than rifles,” laughed the commander.

War was all around, but we studied. Our school was called “the green school.” There were no desks, no classrooms, no textbooks; there were only students and teachers. We had one ABC for everybody, one history book, one problem book in arithmetic, and one grammar book. No paper, chalk, ink, or pencils. We cleared a meadow, scattered sand over it, and that was our “blackboard.” We wrote on it with little twigs. In place of notebooks, the partisans brought us German leaflets, old wallpaper, and newspapers. They even found us a school bell somewhere. We were very pleased with it. Can it be a real school, if no bell rings? We had red neckerchiefs.

“Air raid!” shouts the sentry. The meadow empties.

And after the bombing, the lesson continues. The first graders write on the sand with their twigs: “A is for apple, B is for ball…”

We made a big standing abacus out of sticks and stones. We cut out several wooden alphabet sets. We even had physical education. We equipped the playground with a crossbar, a racetrack, a pole vault, and circles for grenade throwing. I threw grenades the farthest of all.

I finished sixth grade and said firmly that I would go to seventh grade after the war. They gave me a rifle. Later I got hold of a Belgian carbine; it was small and light.

I learned to be a good shot…But I forgot my math…