Photo Attribution: Bundesarchiv, B 285 Bild-S00-00326 / Unknown / CC-BY-SA 3.0
I consider myself
a bit of a keeping-warm expert after having spent many years working outside in
Winnipeg. So here’s some advice. Forget about how you look…this is all about
how you feel. Dress in layers. Something windproof is essential. Keep moving.
Cover your face with a neck warmer or scarf. Don’t drink too much
liquid, because then you have to peel off all those layers…and usually in a
hurry. Don’t get wet.
Moisture chills to the bone. East Prussia, on the Baltic, would not have had the benefit of the 'dry cold' we here on the prairies are known for. I can honestly say that when
dressed properly, a sunny, windless day of minus thirty will feel
balmy…assuming you keep moving. My mother cried bitter tears when she knew I worked outside in January weather. She'd say, I didn't survive Siberia and East Prussia so that my daughter would be cold here in Canada. I'd have to remind her that I was dressed properly, that I was healthy and that I'd had a proper warm breakfast. My favourite is porridge.
On a positive note, extreme temperatures
keep the snow hard like concrete and make it for good walking…again with an
assumption. Someone needs to shovel the darn stuff and make a path. Back in
East Prussia in January of ’45, there were millions, like my mother and her sisters, fleeing. Most of the time they couldn’t
use the main roads because those were reserved for army vehicles. So they'd get stuck on the snowy forest trails. I grew up imagining the faces of doll-like infants, hurriedly buried in snowbanks and left behind as their frightened
families looked to the sea for help. Above them…not sundogs…but enemy bombers.
Other horrible,
sad refugee stories are in the news nowadays. Different faces, different wars, different
technologies, same human suffering.
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