The story of the grandfather Lenu from 28.02 inspired. About the one who “ruled the coil” and never talked about war.

We, children, grew up in the military without realizing it. Our parents were absolutely, to the tip of their nails, civilians, but we somehow got more in touch with grandparents of all kinds and all degrees of affinity.
I remember a younger grandfather, who by age could not go to the front - so he turned out, became a military pilot, and he even had something to be silent about. He taught us how to build plugs and play the preph.
We seemed to know that all our grandparents served, but since it was not common to talk about war in our family, we perceived the army as a pioneering camp, with a strict pioneering. If someone did not have one of the grandparents or grandparents - it was also perceived as something given, we did not understand the difference between cousins and cousins before 10 years.
We grew up in some military units, in fields, in warehouses. I remember once looking at the clothes of the cosmonauts from the Orenburg puff. But it was all like a game. We knew about war only from movies. We were even forbidden to play the game. Well, how it was forbidden... on the forehead could give, without a discount on whether you are a girl or a boy. and :)
I learned about the war when I was over 20 years old.
My grandmother’s sister died. A few months later her husband, who was then well over 90.
They talked to my parents about his wife, about life. He drank a couple of drinks and cried. First about his wife, and then he began to think of the war.
More than 60 years passed, and he remembered, and he was hurt.
No, he did not talk about heroic battles and feats. He said they were surrounded and then captured. What was scary. He told me that they didn’t eat at all in the camp. They, people, ate grass from under their feet, and when it disappeared, they began to dig roots. He tried to run several times, unsuccessfully. Then they succeeded, and fled.
He told them how they were hanging on raw potatoes in the fields. Then our own, and back to the camp, now our own. And the story goes round – there is, there is, there is want to eat. Once again, the grass.
Then, apparently, they found out, they let go.
If you haven’t seen how your eyes become square, then you’ve missed a lot. They were like that with me.
I began to carefully ask my parents, uncle and aunt about who their parents were.
In the dry remains:
My grandfather: artillery, penalty, infantry and artillery. After the war, he shot the bird without targeting, just raising his hand. He died in Gulag at the end of the forties.
I don’t know the army, I am punished, I am dead.
Grandma: the communications regiment, the Belarusian front, demobilized in the 47th, remained in the army on "unserious" positions.
Grandmother’s sister: taking Berlin. She was able to give birth to my aunt. What is it like to go to the city on the 9th month? How did they not be demobilized?
The second sister of the grandmother: the aircraft, missing, apparently died
The third grandfather: I have no idea where and who, but until his death he remained in the army. I don’t know, I didn’t talk about it in my family. Obviously something is not very important.
The fourth is aviation.
The fifth, who I wrote about above, no one knows where or who. I couldn’t tell him at once, and then he pretended that there was no conversation. No one in the family knew where or by whom. and :)

What I understood is that those who went through the war remain silent about it even among themselves. If they talk, it is by chance.