I went to the river because I had left some fishing lines out, when suddenly I saw the corpse of a little boy in the water. He was kneeling, naked, his head in the water. All you could see was his back. I had seen the bodies of Russian and German soldiers before, but I had never seen a dead child. I didn’t dare to touch him with my hand, so I turned him over with my foot, and I saw that it was my friend Sergueï.”
