We arrived at the farm and village about noon. And this farm was also named Shevchenko. We had to call it Shevchenko II. It was very different from the first farm we had seen, for the land was rich and versatile, and the town had not been destroyed. The Germans had been surrounded here. They had killed all the animals, but had not had time to destroy the village. This farm had raised a great many horses, and when the Germans were finally captured, all the horses and cows, chicken and geese and ducks, were dead. It is hard to imagine these Germans. Hard to imagine what went on in their heads, what their thinking process was, these sad, destructive, horrible children.

The manager of Shevchenko II had been a partisan fighter of note, and he still wore his brown tunic and belt. He was blue-eyed and had iron lines along his jaws.

This was a farm of over twelve hundred people, and a great many of its men were killed. The manager told us, “We can rebuild what houses we lost, and we can raise more animals, but we cannot get our men back, and we cannot give new arms and new legs to our maimed people.”

We saw very few artificial limbs in the Soviet Union where so many are needed. Perhaps this industry has not been developed as yet, but it is surely one of the most necessary ones, for many thousands of people have lost arms and legs.

Shevchenko II is a thriving farm. The land is rich and rolling. The crops are wheat and rye and corn. There was a late freeze last spring, and part of the winter wheat was frozen. The people rushed to the earth and prepared it for corn, so that the land would not be lost for the year. And it is good corn land. The stalks stand eight or nine feet high, and the ears are big and full-bodied.

We went out to a threshing machine in the fields where the battalions of people were working with wheat. It was a very large farm, and all over in the distance we could see the people working with scythes, for there were only one small reaper and one small tractor on this farm. Most of the grain was being cut by hand and bound by hand. The people were working furiously. They laughed and talked, but they never paused in their work. And not only were they in competition, but this has been their biggest year for a long time, and they wanted to get the grain in, for their prosperity depends entirely on this.

We went to see the granary where the produce is stored, the bins of sesame for oil, the rye and the wheat. The grain was being distributed: so much for the state, so much put aside for the new planting, and the rest distributed to the people of the community.