A large family lived in the village - four boys and a girl, their parents and grandmother. When the war began, father Kirill and eldest son Ivan went to the front. Only his father returned from the war - wounded in the leg. The family needs to be fed, and he got a job in the fire department. The place of work is a hut with two windows and a shed for horses (there were no fire engines then). And there was a cemetery nearby. Then the deceased were given wooden crosses, there were almost no monuments.
Winter came, and the lame Cyril, in order not to go to the forest to fetch firewood, dragged crosses from abandoned graves and stoked the stove in the back room. Local women, learning about this, were outraged and said:
- Cyril, do not disturb the dead, or expect trouble, - and they were right. After the war, children had few games. The guys either kicked the gunpowder out of the cartridges, or looked for shell casings to make a "lamp", because then there weren't even kerosene lamps. And then Kirill's son Andrei told the local children that he had found an ammunition and would be burning it in a funnel. Many children gathered to see it - 15 people. Andrei himself was making a fire in the pit, the rest of the guys sat down at the edges to watch. Including Andrey's brother Petya and sister Nina.
Women were returning from work, and suddenly a deafening explosion and a minute silence, then the screams of children, crying and moans. Enough for everyone: Andrei died right in the pit, Petya lost his eyes, and Nina was cut with shrapnel. And the rest of the children - at least henna! So out of five children of Cyril, only one son remained alive and unharmed. So do not believe after this that the dead do not take revenge for the desecration of graves.
Zinaida Prokofievna Mogritskaya, Rossosh, Voronezh region