April 22

​Next day I find Great Grandmother sitting on a bench under the apricot trees beside the house. She waives me over. ‘I am so glad you are coming with us’ she says. ‘My many summers up in the mountains have given me a lot throughout my life. Perhaps even a short experience can also give you something’.
 
During this week of preparation for the transfer to the mountain pastures we find time to sit together for a few hours each day. ‘I love this summer migration’ she says. ‘It has always been part of my life. But there was one period when it was very special, when the experience shaped the way I viewed my life and the world around me.’
 
‘It started, long before you were born, in the summer of 1941 with the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. All the families were on the point of starting our migration when the news came through of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union of which we were then part.

​Immediately all the men were conscripted for the army or other duties. The town was left only with young boys and old men. There was an immediate decision to be made. It had to be made by the women. Should we go up to the mountains or not’.