"16.11.35. It's 26 degrees below zero and a hurricane is blowing. It's cold. It's cold outside and inside. There's more ventilation in this house than construction material. The administrative manager who has just come in says: 'Never mind, guys, don't be so upset about this frost; it's going to be twice as cold.' Cheered us up. How evident the inept management is. They didn't manage to get the railway embankment finished before it started freezing and now they are torturing people by making them cut a thirty-centimetre layer of frozen clay which is as tough as stannum. Day follows day, and what lies ahead? I don't feel like serving in the army, let alone on the BAM. But what's to be done? If it were at least warm in the quarters where one could have rest. No chance, though. One side is heated by the small stove; the other side is freezing. A kind of indifference is spreading - OK, we'll manage somehow. And every day is a fragment of a life that could have been spent living instead of vegetating. There's nobody to talk to here; we are prohibited from talking to the convicts, nor may we talk to the guards; as soon as you start getting too familiar you're no longer a commanding officer. We're mere workhorses and will humbly leave the scene once construction is finished. The full burden of the construction - or at least a good part of it - rests with us, i.e. the simple guards, sq[uad] com[manders], and platoon commanders."