From Snow to Sand

By Valentin Lycho

Valentin Lycho’s "From Snow to Sand" is an autobiography written simply and honestly, and provides a unique insight into the life of a civilian family at the Eastern Front of World War II. Surviving the devastation and terrifying horrors of war, they later found themselves as immigrants on the other side of the world where they faced the difficulties of beginning a new life in a new country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: Apr 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781742841984

Book preview

FROM SNOW TO SAND

Valentin Lycho

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 Valentin Lycho

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The information, views, opinions and visuals expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the publisher. The publisher disclaims any liabilities or responsibilities whatsoever for any damages, libel or liabilities arising directly or indirectly from the contents of this publication.

A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia.

ISBN: 978-1-742841-98-4 (pbk.)

Published by Book Pal

www.bookpal.com.au

Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks go to Margaret Johnson from ‘The Book Doctor’ for her assistance with editing the manuscript, and for her guidance, encouragement and valuable advice.

My gratitude goes to my son Timothy for his generous contribution to the printing of this book.

Thankyou also to my niece Nadia Namuren, and friend Peta Langmaid for reading the manuscript and providing me with useful feedback.

Contents

1. Introduction

2. The early years

3. The war begins

4. Leaving home

5. Slaves

6. Freedom

7. Leaving

8. Wogs

9. Changing loyalties

Epilogue

1. Introduction

I have seen many interesting things in my life.

I originally set out to write these memoirs for the interest of my family so that they would have a record of all the stories I shared with them about my life, and especially those of my childhood during World War II. But through their encouragement I realised my memories would be of interest to anyone who wanted to know more about life during those times. And so I have compiled my memories into this book.

My point of view is not that of a soldier. It is through the eyes of a boy in Ukraine where I witnessed first-hand the effects of war on the civilian population. This is always where the true horrors are seen. Living underneath the German ‘Eastern Front’ was not something many civilians survived, and as you will see, one needed a good amount of resourcefulness, and a generous amount of luck, to survive.

As you can tell by the fact that I am writing this, I was one who managed to survive this terrible period in human history. Now here I am, the bitter winter snows of a world at war are a distant memory, and I find myself living a happy and healthy life on the other side of the world – Australia; a land with sandy beaches, and most importantly freedom and opportunity.

This is my life. The way I lived it. The way I saw it. The way I perceived it to be.

2. The early years

I, Valentin Petrovych Lycho, was born on 20 December 1932. This date was later changed by my father to 20 January 1933; the reason for that, I was told, was that I would miss the army call-up. I found out later that this was not the real reason. ‘Petrovych’ means that my father’s name was Petro.

I was born in a village called Velyki Molodky, near the town of Novohrad Volynsk, in the part of western Ukraine called Volyn, a long way from the family ancestral home. This was because there was famine in Ukraine at that time, and Papa took the family to where there was a bit more food available. Otherwise our family might not have survived. On my father’s side, my grandfather’s name was Marko Pavlovych Lycho and my grandmother’s Fedora Swynar. On my mother’s side, my grandfather’s name was Vasyl Bondarenko and my grandmother’s Domacha Ilichna Stepura.

My father, Petro Markovych Lycho, was born 2 September 1904 at Velyka Lychivka in the district of Kharkiv. He had one brother and nine sisters; I only remember the names of two: brother Mykola and sister Maria. My mother Halyna Vasylivna Bondarenko (later called Anna) was born on 8 March 1909, in the Kovjahy district of Lubotyn, which is a region of Kharkiv. My mother had two brothers, Ivan and Mykola. My parents were married on 28 September 1929, and lived in Lychivka in the family home with their parents.

My older sister Alexandra was born there. My parents had wanted a boy and had already picked a boy’s name, Alexander; so that was that.

The story goes that two Cossack brothers, of family name Lycho, got together at the completion of their military service, pooled their money and purchased some oxen and wagons and went to Crimea and bought some salt. Salt was very scarce in some parts of Ukraine. They made a decent amount of money and bought a quantity of land in the district of Kharkiv. One brother was married and the other remained single. Where the married brother settled down a village grew, called Velyka (large) Lychivka. Where the single brother settled, the village was called Mala (small) Lychivka. Perhaps not many people wanted to settle next to a bachelor. During the war both villages were totally destroyed and were never rebuilt by the Soviets, perhaps because most of the people who lived in those villages had perished.

My earliest recollection goes back to three or four years of age. I remember I was near a house on a footpath, and there were three geese trying to bite my feet. They had their heads down and were hissing, and they kept coming at me. They appeared so large to me. My mother was in the yard chopping wood and I could not understand why she was not helping me.

I don’t remember my father ever chopping wood - it was always Mama. I tried to help once and was chopping sticks on a wooden block with an axe. I missed the block and the point of the axe embedded in my right leg. Luckily it missed the bone. I still have the scar and remember how the blood squirted out. My grandmother bandaged my leg.

I remember trying to look into a bassinet on my tiptoes. There was a little baby there. I was told later that the baby had died. Mama was nearby washing some clothing in a tub, and I could see across a little valley. On the high ground I could see the silhouette of a tall man walking. He had a long black coat on and was carrying a basket. That is the only memory I have of my grandfather. I also remember what was in the basket. It contained apples with grubs in them. I suppose because of the grubs I remembered what was in the basket. Every time I see a Wyatt Earp movie, the men in long black coats remind me of my grandfather. I was told he was seventy-two years old when he passed away just before the Second World War.

I also recollect going somewhere in a truck at night. I was in the cabin with my father and the driver. There was a hare running across the road and the driver told my father that there was something wrong with the headlights. I solved the riddle of the headlights and hares years later: the truck’s high beam didn’t work. They say that hares freeze on the road when struck by high beam.

I remember sitting on a windowsill and watching army tanks racing across the fields, their caterpillar tracks throwing clumps of dirt high into the air. I remember somewhere in the country I was in an orchard behind a house with my cousin Pavlo, my djadja Vanya (uncle Ivan) asleep in a hammock tied between two trees. Somehow I tipped him out of it and he came crashing to the ground. I tried to run away but had difficulty opening the gate to the front yard. I thought that my uncle was going to kill me. He was a big man with very muscular arms.

I also remember our family visiting djadja Kolja (Nicolai) in Kharkiv. He had built a new house in an area called Kholodna Hora (Cold Hill), but one room was not finished. The adults were going to some friends in the evening, and djadja Kolja said that any kid that misbehaved would be locked up in the unfinished room. It is said that I muttered that one would have to be a durak (fool) to lock up a kid in that spooky room. Guess where I spent the time until they came back that night? I learnt to keep my mouth shut.

The uncles mentioned above were my mother’s brothers. It is said they did not survive the war. They were both in the Red Army. The last news we had from uncle Kolja was that he was at the Kursk front.

All these memories are just glimpses, without any continuity.

When we came to live in the village of Katerynivka my memory becomes more continuous. We were renting half a house that had two rooms. We had the rear part of the house, and the front half was occupied by an old man. There was a large orchard which was screened from the street by thick hedge. Katerynivka was a large village of about one hundred houses. Most houses had large blocks of land, and in the front yard there were mostly vegetable and flower gardens, and in the rear some fruit trees and more vegetable gardens. Most people had chickens and some geese; some had goats, pigs, and some had a cow. The village people mostly worked on the kolkhoz (collective farm) and were paid by the kolkhoz, sometime poorly, depending on the harvest. So they were producing most of their own food. In the villages people generally ate much better than town people.

My father worked in Lozova, a town about four kilometres away. Lozova had about ten thousand inhabitants and a very large railway station. It was a junction of four lines from the north-west, north-east, south-west and south-east. As the town had no restaurants, the railway station had a huge dining room to accommodate all the people from the express trains. Trains in those days didn’t have dining cars.

My father’s job was to purchase and supply produce and livestock to the restaurant. He was allocated a horse and buggy for that purpose, and spent lots of time travelling around the countryside. He would purchase the livestock and arrange delivery to the abattoir and from there to the restaurant. Before I started school, he would sometimes take me with him on day-trips. I know he always carried bottles of vodka and lots of cash, I suppose for oiling palms and making purchases. I was about six years of age and as you see I was witnessing corruption early, but that was part of life and shows the culture of the people and the system.

I remember once my father went on a trip to another city called Donbas, where there was a good deal of industry. He brought me a present, a toy rifle that fired caps. Lozova was not an industrial town, so there was nothing much in its shops. As far as I can remember that was the only toy I ever had. I must honestly say that buying toys for their children was not part of my parents’ culture and to them it was not a priority.

One evening I remember playing hide-and-seek with other kids and I had the rifle with me, although by that time I no longer had any caps for it. It was a nuisance that evening, so I hid it in the hedge next to our house. The next morning the gun was gone, and of course I got smacked for being durak (stupid). Eventually it got handed back because even in a large village a toy gun could not be hidden for long and the culprit had to return it. I don’t remember what happened to the gun after.

Next to Katerynivka village was a large stavok (weir), and in winter it used to freeze over, the ice was over a foot thick. They used to cut the ice into blocks and trucks came from Lozova and drove on the ice almost to the middle of the weir. There they would load up the blocks of ice and take them away. I never found out what they used ice for in winter.

One summer when I was about six, my father took me fishing in the weir. We didn’t have proper fishing line or hooks. Papa got some strong thin string, and for hooks he bent some safety pins. There were fish there but we didn’t catch any. I will always remember that outing, as that was the only time that we did anything together like that. He was not a sport minded person, so things like that were of no interest to him. I don’t think he was a fisherman.

There was a forest near the weir, and I used to go there to look for mushrooms. I was lucky only once, but they were the only mushrooms I ever came across in Ukraine.

I remember the day the war with Finland started in 1939. My mother gave me some money to go to the shop and buy a loaf of brown bread. When I got there the lady told me that they didn’t have any brown bread, only white. So I bought a loaf of white bread. As I found out when I got home, white bread was very expensive in the Soviet Union. Mama gave me the stick for buying white bread. Mama’s favoured spanking stick was a thin reed, and she was very good with it. She was the family flogger. I only recall my father hitting me once, and that was in Germany when I was about thirteen years of age.

For the duration of the Finnish war there were frequent shortages. The government told the people that the soldiers at the front had to be supplied first and people should make sacrifices.

In Ukraine kids normally started school at seven years of age, but I started school when I was only six. An inspector came to our house to register kids for school. He was surprised that at six I could already read the newspaper Pravda, so he enrolled me in school one year early. I still remember the newspaper lying on his knees as I was reading it. I loved school.

I clearly remember my first school, too. The schoolhouse was on high ground, with a large grassy area around it. It was about ten minutes’ walk from our house, towards Lozova. I also remember one kid in our class didn’t like school and the teacher had trouble with him. I could not understand how anyone could not like school.

My childhood before I went to school, I would have to say, was about average for the times we lived in. As I had no toys (most kids didn’t anyway), we had to invent something to occupy ourselves and use up some energy. We played chasing and hiding. I remember an old cemetery on a hill next to Katerynivka, all dug up which I presume was from grave robbers. There were big holes everywhere and some very old wrought-iron crosses leaning here and there. It was a good place to play hiding. Sometimes we just roamed around. Some older boys had slingshots and tried to hit a bird or knock down an apple or a pear from high branches. I was still small and didn’t own a slingshot. Sometimes we went to the fields and watched the tractors at work, or the combine machines harvesting wheat.

We didn’t have much to do in the evenings. Sometimes we played cards or dominoes if the adults were not using them or would let us play with them. We didn’t have a radio as it was not permitted for ordinary people to own radios in the Soviet Union. Winter used to be very boring as we could not play outside some days because it was just too cold. A blizzard could sometimes last several days. In Ukraine the windows were double glazed with a space of about four inches between the frames. In winter the frost made fascinating patterns on the outside glass. I used to spend quite some time looking at them.

Perhaps that’s why I learned to read Pravda early in my life, just to use up time.

One time Papa brought home from work a paper bag full of crushed biscuits. They were just small crumbled pieces really, but it was a treat and I still remember it. We were not a biscuit-buying family. For all the time I spent in Ukraine, I can only recollect being in a shop three times.

Papa was getting paid once a month, like the rest of the workers. He was a smoker and liked his vodka so I don’t think Mama was getting much housekeeping money. Mama was a dressmaker and a very good one. She had her own hand-operated Singer sewing machine. She mostly got paid for her work with goods, as people didn’t have much money. The goods mainly consisted of milk, honey, flour, millet, sunflower oil, potatoes and other vegetables.

One time I almost burned the house down. That was before I went to school. There was a small nook under a bench in one room, where Mama used to throw clothing before wash day. One day Mama was out and I crawled in with a box of matches. It