Scenes inside a Gold mine (2)

The Barmaley Fountain in the Russian city of Stalingrad in 1943:

The unbroken circle of children dancing and playing  around the crocodile immune to the war torn city burning all around them.

This was Stalingrad, the pivotal battle of World War II.

If the German's drove the Russians from the city, potentially all the oil and natural resources of the Caucasus could be powering the Nazi war machine for years to come.

The statute survived the battle.

The German 6th Army did not.

The same German soldiers who two years earlier marched victoriously into Paris on top of the world

were now surrounded, freezing, and starving:

What did they think of the dancing children?

Or the inscription at the base of the statue:

"Little children! / For nothing in the world / Do not go to Africa / Do not go to Africa for a walk! // In Africa, there are sharks, / In Africa, there are gorillas, / In Africa, there are large / Evil crocodiles / They will bite you, / Beat and offend you - // Don't you go, children, / to Africa for a walk / In Africa, there is a robber, / In Africa, there is a villain, / In Africa, there is terrible / Bahr-mah-ley! // He runs about Africa / And eats children - / Nasty, vicious, greedy Barmaley!"