A student fighter

'It was one of the most awful sights I'd seen. Just old people came out, with their walking sticks, limping. And they came carrying packages: clothes, food, dishes. They were barely dragging it all. A girls' unit came to help the women… There were people who had lived there the whole time… I remember them carrying bits of bread, Primus stoves, kerosene lanterns. This exodus created… this unbearable picture'