Yeah exactly! The fact that it was so cold that it affected the soldiers in that specific way is far more interesting to me than like, just hearing the number of degrees Celsius it was, or that the cold weather caused x number of deaths, or whatever. The book had another interesting story to tell that's similar to your friend's grandfather, actually, which was that during an evacuation attempt in the middle of the worst winter, the trucks driving the Leningrad evacuees away across a frozen lake couldn't stop to help if anything bad happened to anyone because if the trucks stopped the engines probably wouldn't be able to start again, because of the cold. So you just had to barrel on and leave others behind knowing that they'd die, but if you stopped too you and your truckful of people would also die.