Kochieva Larisa Vladimirovna, 1975d.b. the citizen of Tskhinval
The seventh of August 2008 has been engraved in the memories not only of each person, who had been found himself in the Republic at that time, but also in those ones, who are not indifferent to the fate of the whole mankind. On the fifth of August 2008 I sent my children to Vladikavkaz, and I, myself, remained in the town. At night from seventh for eighth of August, when the war began, I with my neighbours came down into the cellar, my husband was at the hospital then- he had pneumonia. There were 15 of us in the cellar. There were only women and oldsters there. All were dread from what had been occurring. Georgians were firing us from all types of weapon, including the volley fire system «Hail". The fire had not been falling silent for a second during the whole night.
In the morning of August 9 a missile hit the third floor of our house, we were all frightened much and run to extinguish the fire, and otherwise we all might have been burnt. There was not water enough, and we started to extinguish the fire with the compote jars.
In a certain time a car drove up to our building. We were frightened, we thought, that georgians wanted to shoot us, but, fortunately, they turned out to be the local boys. They have asked us not to come out of the cellar, close the window, and switch off the mobile telephones, since georgians traced the signal, and bombed on these places exactly.
Around the noon we all dared to leave the town and go to the North Ossetia. We went through Zarskaya road (by-pass road, connecting South and North Ossetia - com. ed.), One could not express the whole pain, which we have suffered on this road. We have passed the smoking car, in which the whole family had been burnt.
I thought, I would never be able to embrace my own children. I was mentally saying good buy to them. The other cars were following behind us. When we reached the village Gufta of Dzausky region, Georgian aviation began firing us. We all ran out of the car, someone yelled, that we would have hidden under the bridge. Then we could not think that georgians were going to blast this bridge.
While we were running, the passport with money has fallen out of my pocket, I have not even noticed, how I had lost it. I could think of nothing then, but not to die, I was praying God for saving us. Some unknown man has found my passport and money and has returned me all in wholeness and safety. I could not even manage to thank him. Even in such dreadful moments of life someone does not lose their human qualities.
We spent about an hour under the bridge, and then somehow we made our way through back to our car and went further. While driving we have seen the Russian army, which had already been going to help South Ossetia.
