Cattle train trundle slowly, ever so slowly. Mamusia taking us home, her two children Michel 10 and Jan 5. Cattle train consist of 25 wagons, each wagon has sliding doors on each side. In the middle there was iron stove. In each wagon housed two families. We were lucky. The other family was high ranking Russian officer, Admiral, and his Polish wife. He was let off becasue he was wounded (lost his leg) in Japanese 1905 war. His artificial leg was filled with golden roubles. As soon as so called Red Army police started to look, leg was put back and nobody found them.

Our menu varies a lot.
For breakfast – grass
For lunch – grass
For dinner – grass
but if we lucky, when train stop near the nettles then nettle soup was very acceptable.
I remember once when train was put to the sidings among many C wagons, Michel and Jan was searching and to our delight we found one potato. We debated what to do, to take this potato to Mama. Michel declare we consume it straight. He then proceed to cut it on half and we gobble it down. I had stomach upset and Michel had diarrhoea. Luckily we stayed on that siding several days.

The egg episode
Again train stop. The driver refused to move and demanded that whole lot of passengers start loading the coal from heap to locomotive tender. That lasted for four days. Our admiral was excepted from this task on account of his missing leg. So off he went to the nearest village and in the evening brought two eggs. One of the egg he gave to my Mama. That evening Mama boiled the eggs and divided between Michel and me. We ate shell and the egg. From the water in which egg was boiled, she make soup with addition of nettle but that was for her