As father and son spoke, the flames of war in Europe—or rather, Eastern Europe—still raged fiercely. Incited by Russia, underground organizations throughout Eastern Europe had fully harnessed the strength of the people, making the foreign intervention forces suffer bitterly.
A small Polish village named Lyuban.
Lyuban actually lay within the borders of western Belarus in his previous life, though it now nominally belonged to Polish territory. Yet the people here clearly leaned more toward Russia, with whom they shared East Slavic roots.
Night fell over the rather desolate village. Inside a house at its southeastern corner, guerrilla members plotted beneath the light of an oil lamp.
"Village Chief Rovtashenko, I heard a Polish White bandit grain-collection unit would be resting in your village soon. Is that information true?" a young man with a crew cut asked Rovtashenko.
Village Chief Rovtashenko was in his forties, with a somewhat balding head. Puffing on his pipe, he exhaled a choking cloud of smoke. "Yes, Secretary Popov. Those beasts arrived in our village yesterday. They came from Bilarus City."
"It is almost time for the autumn potato harvest, yet those beasts have come to requisition from our village again. This is already the third time this year they have forcibly collected grain."
The Belarusian region's main crop was potatoes. In his previous life, Belarus had been the country with the world's highest per-capita potato consumption. It could be said that potatoes were the Belarusian people's favorite staple food. Ever since potatoes had been introduced into Russia, they had become the basic crop Belarusian people relied upon for survival.
Or, to put it another way, this barren land was suited only for growing crops like potatoes. For the vast Belarusian populace, there was no more perfect crop than the potato.
Rovtashenko stretched out his lean,