Three Hours Later

Eastern Ukraine, 20 miles south of Donetsk, Aboard a train from Sevastopol to Moscow

Starlight’s bored staring out of her window was suddenly interrupted by a horrific scene. Out on the horizon she saw the burnt out remains of a village. A moment later, a patch of trees cut off her view of the now dead village.

“Did you see that?” asked Starlight.

“What was it?” replied Valentovich, oblivious to what Starlight had observed.

“It was a burnt out village.”

“Yah? You’ll see a lot of those here in the Ukraine,” said the Soviet, clearly surprised that it had taken Starlight Glimmer this long to notice the damage of the recently passed Great Patriotic War. “I thought that you had seen the damage done to Sevastopol during our car ride to the train station?”

“Yes, but I had known that there had been a prolonged battle there during the recent World War. However, I didn’t imagine that the fighting would come to such a remote and seemingly unimportant location,” replied Starlight, shocked and appalled that a village, no larger than the one she had once led, had been totally destroyed in the course of a war.

“When the fascist dogs invaded our homeland, they fought like ferocious savages,” said Valentovich. “It was a war of racial extermination. They fought the elimination of the Soviet peoples so that they could conquer and resettle our homeland. It’s a good thing that they were beaten back.”

“I agree,”

In the reading materials she had studied during her naval voyage Starlight had learned a lot about the recent war. Among the materials provided to her about the fighting on the Eastern Front, the majority of them Soviet, she had been most moved by a collection of photographs that depicted the atrocities that had been committed by the Axis forces in the East. Words had provided her with information about the anti-Jewish and anti-Slavic policies of the Nazis. However pictures of Germany’s atrocities had struck a nerve with her. These pictures of malnourished human beings who looked like nothing more than skeletons provided a glimpse into the depravity that mankind humankind was possible.

While she didn’t like the vengeful policies that the Soviet Union pursued with the defeated Germans, as Starlight Glimmer saw more of the consequences of German occupation policy, she had grown more understanding of why the Soviets sought such harsh policies. She only hoped that the victorious allies would try to turn a former enemy into a friend.