The frost seemed to weigh on us. Nobody would move, so any warm won’t get lost. We were all quiet. Nobody was taken “at the middle” … We traveled 4 kilometers. I begin to feel that my water boots pinch me. What would this mean? Did my feet gain more feathers? I touch my boots. It was firm as a plate. It contracted. I was still feeling my feet. I was cold, so cold that my bones hurt.
I ask Heni, the fellow besides me, if he is cold too:
– What do you think?
What should I think? I was among the youngest and I was ashamed to complain about being cold. And how much I wished I could cry. So much pain I felt on my feet as if my heart was folding from coldness. I felt I could not take it anymore. The frost was unbearable.
In that moment a few helpmates called out the driver. The car stopped. About 10 men got off and started to run, slowly, behind the car. It felt like someone was pulling us our feet …
After two kilometers of running, although we didn’t warm up that much, we were tired and steam was going out of us.
At a moment of time I felt as if a needle crossed through my ear. After this I could not feel …my ears.
I got out of these at the lowest price, only my ears were frozen. At the fellow Bob the nose got big as an American potato. It had frozen up. Others left with their hand fingers frozen, feet fingers …
After this “warming up” we had, other changed us, now they were running after the car. Our care assembled with the cyclists car from the cyclic cross – the one with the spare parts – just that in here people were running due to the coldness an not for the love of sports …
When we got at the mine, some of us had more “rounds” taken, others just one. We were all walking immobile as robots to our groves.
After 500 meters of grove, I had the feeling I was “thawing”. It seemed my ears were made of flour. All the time it felt like something white was flouring from it.