Kochieva Elena Akhsarovna, 1987 d.b., a dweller of the settlement Dzau, Dzausky region of RSO.
That fatal day-8 August 2008- I was on a visit at my relatives. I, myself, live in the village Dzau. That night about 23:30 suddenly the rumble was heard. We came down into the cellar of the nine-storey building. At first we thought that the fire would subside, because it was not the first time for the Georgian side, so we took nothing with us to the cellar. But some of our neighbours turned out to be more provident. They took blankets and candles with them. None of us expected that the war would begin.
There were oldsters and children with us in the cellar, even a mother with a baby. We have nothing to feed the baby, and he had been constantly crying. The other children also had been whimpering, the oldsters had been wailing. The Georgians continued bombing from the miscellaneous type of large-caliber weapon.
Each instant seemed the last one. The strength began failing us, we were exhausted from hunger and thirst, but the most terrible thing was a fear of inevitable death. Really, it was the end, I thought, but I did not want to believe in that horror, which had been occurring around us. We so wanted to have a hope… So, we spent five nerve-racking days in the cellar, whereupon it emerged the hope on salvation, at last. It seemed to us, that the bombing had stopped, and we gradually began coming out of the cellar. I could not describe the happiness I felt when I had seen the long-awaited light, the clean sky. In spite of the fact that there were ruins around us, we felt the smell of death and the corpses were lying all over the town. One could appreciate the LIFE after such sufferings.
