Status Updates From The Forgotten Soldier

The Snow Man
~ Wallace Stevens ~
excerpt

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted

… and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener ..
Nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Our troops arrived at Kiev. This handsome city had not suffered much damage. The Red Army had tried to stop the Wehrmacht outside the town. No longer able to withstand German pressure, they withdrew to the other side of the city, to spare it the kind of destruction Minsk had suffered. Kiev was our first stop, halfway between Minsk and Kharkov. Our ultimate destination, Stalingrad, was still more than 600 miles away.