By the time we arrived at our home for the week, none of us felt any better. We were staying in the pit of an abandoned strip mine with a stone floor and a wind tunnel. The temperatures were as unforgiving as -30oC and it got even down to -35oC at midnight. To make matters worse, we all had to do night patrol for at least an hour.
Sleeping in a tent with a small stove was the only time we could stop shivering and enjoy a brief moment of warmth.
During the day, we practiced sharpshooting by camouflaging (aka lying motionless in the snow and trying to crawl towards a target), measuring distances with binoculars, making landscape maps by drawing on a piece of paper, firing long distances, and so much more.
My squad and I were constantly drenched in the rain, sleeping underneath trees, crawling through the snow, making our way through swamps, crossing waist-deep rivers, or just walking for hours through the forest in the middle of a cold winter night.
