The temperature, after the brief thaw at the beginning of the year, had plummeted catastrophically—it must have been twenty-five or thirty below. The meager fires lit in empty oil drums weren’t enough to warm the wounded; even in town, the soldiers had to wrap their penises in cloth to piss, a stinking rag, preciously guarded in one’s pocket; and others took advantage of these occasions to hold out their hands, swollen with frostbite, beneath the warm stream.
