November 1940

Across Europe today, people displaced by war once again make quiet decisions about what to carry with them: papers folded small, documents kept close, records that might one day explain who they are and where they came from.

This small booklet is a Soviet military billet (with an unrelated fragment, always kept together), issued in November 1940.

On its face, it is administrative: a name, a stamp, a date, a signature. It places one life inside a system built on registration, order, and control. Its significance lies in its journey.

From the moment it was issued, it travelled through the German invasion of 1941; through violence, fear, and flight; through the decision to flee west in 1943; through forced labour, displacement camps in Germany; and eventually to the UK. Across those years, it remained with its owner, moving alongside him as borders shifted and survival took precedence.

November 1940 is the date. War was already underway. Western Ukraine had been forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union. Mobilisation was accelerating under the language of routine. This booklet fixes a life at the point where uncertainty begins to harden into fate.

What it records is narrow, and that narrowness is revealing. It captures presence within a system, while leaving everything else unstated. Within a year, millions of men like this one would be killed, captured, or scattered across Europe. Survival would hinge on timing, restraint, and chance.

This is why small documents endure. They travel at the scale of a human life. They show how displacement unfolds step by step, and how memory survives through what people choose to carry.

This billet is one such fragment. The Quiet That Remains is built from many like it.

If you’d like to read more about the lives these documents trace, the book is available now.