Everyone who suffered in the Great War.
On this day, my maternal great-grandmother screamed and tore at her chest in the narrow bed with the curtains drawn – her son would not return. It was embarrassing to celebrate anything. But my great-grandmother is long gone and, we hope, at peace, because even her picture in the silver frame smiles differently, or so I’m told.
We still have Volodya’s letters from the front, they stopped coming at Stalingrad.
Theirs not to reason why…
My grandfather always told me that combat slowed time – stretched it painfully thin across every part of his body. My paternal grandmother said every part of dead bodies she was forced to bury as a child hurt to look at – you weren’t safe looking at the hands, nor the boots, nor the matted hair. You weren’t safe anywhere, and you would never be safe – although time went on, children were born, and the old bones slept, and they dreamed.
The picture above was featured as a poster in the legendary 1970’s miniseries – “Can’t Change the Meeting Place” (the best translation that IMDB could come up with, apparently) – set in criminal-ridden Moscow right after the War. The miniseries featured Vladimir Visotskii and Vladimir Konkin, among a great supporting cast, most of whom are gone now as well. Notice the foreign flags, etc.
Natalia A. 
blissful are the ones that don’t
They just removed two 1000 pound bombs in my hometown, left over from the war and the bombardment it suffered.
Even if you want to forget you are still reminded.
Two years ago some fishermen were blown up because they caught an anti-shipping mine in their nets which exploded on deck killing 3 crew.
The leftovers from that war are still causing death 60 years later.
I can only imagine what the leftovers are like in the former Soviet Union buried in the mud and forgotten by time, only to emerge at some building plot years later and killing whoever stumbled upon it.
My wife’s grandmother was in Lenningrad (now again St. Petersburg) during the siege. She was, I think, 17. They gave her a choice. Be a nurse to tend the wounded or go out into the woods and collect wood. She, ever the people person, went out into the freezing woods and got wood. She’s one tough babooshka.