I went out along the edge to leave room for him. I wanted to close the door after he'd got out. There wasn't anything to hold on to, and I just hoped he'd come out quickly.
His mouth was open and his eyes, too, were wide open. He was hanging on the door as if he'd never let go, so l reached over past him and said, 'All right, Soldier. Just hang on. I've got to shut the door,' and he understood. At that moment he fell off.
I didn't look to see what happened to him. I just shut the door and jumped too.
The train must have been going about fifty klometres an hour, maybe fifty-five--too fast for an easy jump. I felt the wind, and then my mouth was full of wind and snow, and I was twisting over in the air and it felt icy and hard. I hit the ground and rolled over and over and felt a sharp pain in my knee. Then 1 was sitting between the railway lines, sick with the pain in my knee. I looked round and there was Soldier sitting between the lines, too. I turned to watch the train and saw it disappear round a ben. I stood up.Soldier started walking towards me.
There wasn't anything to see: empty land,grey sky,falling snow,while fields. That was quarter past twelve on Saturday, 24 December. We had just three hours of daylight left.
I said, 'There ought to be a road over on the right. I saw it when we went through a village a few kilometres back. We'd better get to the road and try to get a ride into town.'
It was pretty bad, the knee. It made me feel sick just to put any weight on it. But I knew I had to walk.
The snow was about a third of a metre deep, but the wind had blown so it was up to our arms in some places. We went in a couple of times, and some time during this soldier started to fall behind. I heard him when he started to cry and looked round and he was some way back, so I waited for him.