The Torn Souls 5 страница

– Comrade Major, due to the spare time in this moment, allow me to proceed with the urgent submission of two soldiers’ characteristics to the Communist Party Committee that is located at the nearest outpost. (Before to be considered for Communist Party membership, the candidates have to submit their characteristics. – Editor).

– Why you did submit them before?

– Nobody told me to do so. Since the ceremony has been postponed for two hours, I will be back in thirty minutes! With your permission, lunch could be taken then too..

– Okay, proceed. But do not be late...

– Could I go too? – Samy asked.

I noticed how unbearably it was for him to be here, not far from the place of his punishment, and the civilian “could “ in his question also unpleasantly scratched my ear. All of this was evident that the guy was not himself. Instead of answering, I simply waved him off with my hand. This outpost was within the suburbia line of a town, with a bitumen road of ten minutes driving each way. Although the road is very old, the day is clear. What could happen? Let him blow the cobwebs…

But a war is a war and anything could happen… and the next thing that did happen was an ambush... Classic and contemporary themes of the unexpected.

In the beginning of our trip we drove impressively in style. We had the mood of celebration because it was not every day that Orders-for-Bravery were handed out! Our hands were off the weapons. The radio communication was not on. A gun fired suddenly from some cliffs overhanging above the road. Everyone who was sitting on the APC, or “the armor “, dropped down into the hatches, frantically grabbing their weapons and checking themselves for wounds. Speeding fast, the APC missed a turn, behind which a man with a grenade launcher was kneeling. But nobody could fire at him – everyone was inside of the APC!

The bloodcurdling yells simultaneously came out from both mouths – the driver and the commander, as soon as they caught a figure of dushara (see “Terminology and Glossary”  – Editor), an Afghan’s fighter, targeting at them at a close range. Seemingly moving in a slow motion, everything looked unreal. In the oncoming direction, local vehicles known as burbahayki (see “Terminology and Glossary”  – Editor) with natives, were approaching the APC, on both sides of the road heavily loaded donkeys were being dragged by their owners.

The gunner operator slowly turned the turret around. Samy, who did not even have a weapon, finally understood what his commander had yelled, turned the radio on. The dushara’s ’ shot came exactly in the back of winch hatch. Cumulative jet pierces went through the entire APC, including its right engine. On the way, it cut off both hands of Samy. The driver, shell-shocked by a grenade explosion, has lost the ACP control. The machine rolled into a roadside ditch and stopped.

Whilst a wounded dushara was twisting on the road, another two men popped out from behind green bushes. Both of them have the launchers and grenades in barrels! Now they definitely will try for a direct fire to burn the staggered ACP! Samy spotted them from his side and compressing his own pain, screamed:

– Dusharas!... you have dusharas on the right!!! – and pointed with remains of his hands from which blood unstoppably gushed.

His gesture was understood by the commander and the gabber, thanks to the re-activated radio communication. The gunner turned the turret and with a very long salvo of coaxial machine gun, both dusharas were literally split apart. After that, he began firing from a heavy machine gun, towards the green bushes from which dusharas popped out. Blanked by this fire, the commander stuck out his head and assessed the situation.

– Get ready for the fight!!! Let’s fire at everything that moves on the hill!!! Do-o-o-o it!!!

From this shouted voice, a mechanic came to his own senses. He switched off the right engine and started the left. Roaring with only one engine, the machine jumped and reversing, crawled backwards on the road.

– Turn backwards, god damn... To the regiment!!! – the commander shouted to the mechanic and only then he understood that Samy had pointed at the mujahedeen, not with his hands but what was hanging on to his stumps in a jacket.

He jumped over the turret, and without stopping he grabbed a tourniquet hooked to a butt of his gun. White-faced, with eyes filled with superhuman pain, Samy was sitting in a puddle of his own blood.

– Samy, how can it be?! Let me twist it... Hold on, comrade... Give me more torniquet! Faster, god damn!!! But look around too, for god’s sake! I need promidol (see “Terminology and Glossary”  – Editor)… who has it?!! Go, mechanic, run them over, mother-fuckers!

How the driver managed to start the ACP with one engine, it was a mystery, but carts of natives were running away from our wheels.

At last we reached our regiment, our medical unit... At the checkpoint we came face-to-face with our hurriedly departing on alert subdivision – on-duty. Samy was losing consciousness. During the way back he didn’t make any noise. Carried to the medical unit, he was handed to the doctors. They already were running to him from everywhere with a sound of jingling medals on their chests. The driver was the last one who came to the medical unit. He awkwardly held close to his uniform the rest of Samy’s hands. He, like everyone at war, entirely trusted doctors. Although doctors were close to God, they could not perform miracles every day. The boy’s life was rescued, he had surgery, the blood was transfused in time. Doctors did their best: he was stitched, but not his hands, unfortunately! After this, Samy was at a military hospital for some time, then he was evacuated back home to the Soviet Union where finally discharged from the army.

I remember how for a long time we had been washing off his blood from APC (see “Terminology and Glossary”  – Editor). In that evening, sitting in our headquarters, we were overwhelmed by what had happened. With no apparent reason we shouted at a new soldier, who brought us dinner, as if he was the one to blame. Everyone wanted the see Sam’s funny face, and the Battalion Commander would sing his usual line from a Rosenbaum’ song, and all of us, rubbing our hands, could gather together for a dinner.. Why everything is different?!

I have not seen Semenenko again. He had been writing to the Battalion Commander from his hospital, and then his wife has sent his regards... After his first letter, we got blatantly drunk with Gennady Vasilyevich, but it didn’t help...

***

At the beginning of the 90s, the Battalion Commander sent me a letter: “Sam feels very bad, help if you can”. At that time of total depression, I was in-charge of a regiment located in Belarus. I was able to organize and send several parcels with a uniform, buckwheat and cans of preserved stew to the Donbas, until one of these returned with the inscription “not residing”...

Often I catch myself thinking, what if... When I am sober, I understand that nobody knows what could happen if we would do things differently but this “if” keeps coming back again and again… bitch.

International assistance

Nothing comes so easy for us and, at the same time,

so expensive as our own... stupidity.

The idea about international assistance in Afghanistan was seriously embedded in our brains.

I have been there for six months already. I had seen various scenes and had done different things, but I would not call it “assistance”, when urgently I was ordered to come to the regiment for some meeting.

Having no guilt, I went there with an easy heart, even peaceful, I would say, and took notice of all things along the way.

For a short break we stopped in a kishlak (see “Terminology and Glossary”– Editor). A little girl, around eight years old, in a dress and colorful panties was forming a kind of pancake from a mixture of cow shit and straw, and stacking them on the sunny side of a duval (see “ Terminology and Glossary”– Editor). A toddler, next to her, was crawling towards a small spring that was, in fact, sewerage collected from a human waste in the yard. The girl fetched some water with her hand from this ditch and gave it to the kid for drinking from her palms. I almost puked.

I turned my back. In this direction, I spotted a Russian truck ZIL-130 that was firmly stuck in the green fields. If “Ford” was there, I could not care less, but in this situation, it was like meeting a relative. The truck was full of stones and its owner – a native Afghani of uncertain age – was running around the truck, clapping on his butt in desperation. In my mind I even felt sorry for this poor fellow, but the road was open, and two armored troop carriers-70 began moving forward.

After spending four hours in the regiment, I was coming back the same way. Near the same kishlak, I saw that this ZIL-130 was still in the same place, only stones were unloaded. I do not know what had possessed me, perhaps, an opportunity to provide international assistance, but I decided to get involved and rescue this ZIL.

The first of the ATAs (see “ Terminology and Glossary”– Editor), moved into the field and unexpectedly drowned into dense mud to its belly. All eight wheels scattered black swills, but it was pointless – the vehicle was being sucked into the mud more deeply. This was the situation that we apparently called “to be in deep shit”.

A crowd started gathering together around us. Mainly it was the little ones who came from all nearby places. Of course, this was a free entertainment! Trying to keep a cool face, I quietly ordered to my driver to unwind the winch, and we easily pulled out the ZIL from the mud. The ”native” with his constantly repeated “tashakur” (see “ Terminology and Glossary”– Editor) was very happy, but, seems to me, wanted to disappear without payment to us. I said to him something like “you won’t get away with only tashakur”, and stopped him.

Although we had rescued the ZIL, our ATA is now bogged. I was franticly trying to estimate our odds of escaping from this trap. Strengthened with the second ATA on solid soil, and the help of two winches, I attempted to release my first ATA from the mud. The engines roared, the winches tried in vain, but... the second ATA also slipped into the swamp slowly!

There was nothing to tie up to, not a tree, neither a building! The first ATA apparently sat down deeply in the muddy field. For a half an hour we were trying to pull this ATA with a help of the second ATA but only got the second ATA sucked into the muddy field as well and have torn apart both winches and two cables.

Covered with the dirt and boiling with angriness, we noted that our entertainment crowd has gradually changed. A lot of bearded men were there giving us not really friendly looks. Guns were noticeable under loose Afghanis’ tunics. There was only an hour left before the twilight. If we will stay here – they will shoot us down. If we will leave without the ATA s – they will plunder them first and then burn them. A bloody international help, damn it!

Ordering everyone to be alert, I jumped into the ZIL and I directed the Afghani where to drive. Coming to the nearest outpost, I collected cables and another two ATAs and returned to the scene.

It was getting dark. The Afghanis’ ring around us was getting smaller and denser. Our dear ATAs are powerful, passable, but... too light. They went into a skid. We decided to pull them again but the cable burst into pieces again. The soldiers’ faces became gloomy and I became so angry that I decided to take it out on “natives”:

– Why are you looking for? We got into this mess because of your idiot. Let’s all pull the wire!

I was telling them this just to blow off steam, with no hope. But what do you think? One of them dragged over a hank of wire which was so solid, with its thickness of a little finger! Five times I twisted around the hook of our second-in-trouble ATA and we all pulled. The poor ATA rose out of the mud. Thank God! Solders were so happy! Quickly we fastened the rest of the wire to three

ATAs, and in one attempt pulled together. With a loud sound “sh-sh-viak!, the swamp spat out its prey.

After disconnecting our equipment, we looked at each other and began to laugh. When we finally stopped laughing, we noticed that “the natives” disappeared into the twilight. There was only one white-bearded “native” left, the one who had brought the wire. He was a teacher at the local school and he decently spoke Russian. So I grabbed a few boxes with lunches and came to him to say “thanks”. He refused to accept my baksheesh (see “ Terminology and Glossary”– Editor), but shook my hands with a great pleasure. He was talking something about an international help. And I, who had already thousands of times damned this international help, unexpectedly concluded for myself that I had done the right thing.

Nikolay Ruban

Ruban, Nikolai Yurievich was born in 1961, in Uzbekistan. After the graduation from the Ryazan Airborne School and the Military Academy of Frunze, he was ordered to serve in Afghanistan. Currently, he is Lieutenant Colonel in the army reserve and lives in Moscow.

The Soldier’s Grey Hair

Tashkent, the year of 1985. The cargo compartment hatch of a military aircraft IL-76 is wide open. The ex-sergeant, dembel (see “Terminology and Glossary – Editor”) Dimon Zamyatin was marching on the concrete of the Tuzel airfield runway; his boots play a metallic sound like clattering against a duralumin frame. He is very popular, a kind of hero for mates to follow, about whom can be said “the cock of the walk”, especially if you noticed the Medal for Bravery on his uniform. Wearing a blue beret and rusty tan, he holds a little suitcase packed with cheap souvenirs for the family. There is also his dembel photo album (a compulsory attribute for a soldier after army service– Editor). His well-kept fancy forelock of grey hair stuck out from his beret and told us as much about the owner as the medal and the stripe for being wounded on his chest.

When his mother spotted this grey hair, she began shaking with a silent cry. Trying to comfort her, Dimon was softly stroking his mother’s shuddering back: “Come on, do not cry, I am here! I am back home, alive and healthy. ”

This evening, in the village, Dimon transformed himself into a vivid image of the famous Tyorkin (a fictional hero – the soldier of the Great Patriotic War from the famous poem “ The Book about the Fighter “ by Alexander Tvardovsky  – Editor).

But nowadays, unlike Tyorkin, Dimon did not smoke “Kazbek”, he preferred Bulgarian “BТ”. Otherwise, it was almost the identical conversation that you can find in the Tvardovskiy’s “Tyorkin”: “– How was it? – On day-to-day. – Were you scared? – Sometimes I was. – Did you often rush to attack? – Sometimes I did... ” When the conversation led to his grey hair, he frowned and spoke through clenched teeth: “There was just one event…” And the listeners respectfully sighed; nobody dared to stir his wounded soul.

This is how it happened…

When Dimon finished his military training, he was assigned to Afghan, to a landing-assault force that was located in Jalabad. Carrying a transmitter on his shoulders, he was running up and down to the mountains for half a year. He had a tough life, but got used to the heat and frost. His guardian angel kept him away from bullets, but did not save him from hepatitis. Nobody was surprised: in the past, hepatitis in Afghan had knocked down two armies: the army of Alexander the Great and the English one.

From the hospital, Dimon returned skinny and barely alive; to fully recover he needed occupational therapy. No need to say that around the hospital there was enough work, such as digging countless trenches, for instance. The battalion commander looked at this goner and sent him to the radio retransmission station in a hope that Dimon, who was not able to carry any equipment after occupational therapy, will get a good chance to accumulate some fat under his belly and shape himself back to a human appearance. The retransmission station was situated on top of the mountain, at the foot of which the transmission brigade was stationed.

For a good half a day, Dimon was walking to the station on a snake-like road alongside the rocky walls. He stopped for a break more than one hundred times, gasping and clearly understanding that to reach this damn station is beyond his strength, and the damn battalion commander send him there just to get rid of him. But eventually he got there, and he found a real paradise for himself.

The station personnel of seven people was led by the sergeant Lyoha Kedrov, a solid and thrifty Siberian man. He was strict in discipline, but he did not use his fists and did not allow anybody to do it. There was plenty of food and they ate as much as they wished. The food was prepared by soldiers, or to be exact, it was the one – Uzbekistani-born Ravshan Mirzoyev who did the cooking, while the others only peeled potatoes and washed the dishes. There was no drill. Nobody marched. After the duty at the station or outpost, you could sleep or do whatever you wanted. Ravshan has a great talent for cooking. From ordinary standard supply, he managed to create such delicacies and yummy dishes. On top of this, assiduous Lyoha made the tasty home-brewed beer for holidays, not too much, but enough for everyone. Once a week, the first sergeant delivered supplies on a donkey, called Vaska. The first sergeant was the only superior who solders see. So, everything was as supposed to be in a solder’s paradise.

Does a soldier need more than mentioned above, if he wants to be happy in a soldier’s paradise? Maybe, just a touch of a sincere devotion or personal affection. And they were given all of these by the shaggy dog named Padzhak, the common pet who lived with them. Padzhak loved all soldiers with no exceptions.

Being sincerely generous, he always hid bones after lunch under their pillows. Soldiers scolded Padzhak for it, but not seriously, as they knew that he wanted to please them.

Padzhak served not because of fear, but according to his conscience. That is why the sentries often slept on their duty: they knew well that Padzhak will not miss any stranger. And when Sanya Bashylov received a letter from his fiancé e, well, you know what kind of letter it was… So Padzhak came up to petrified Sanya, put his head on Sanya’s knees and was sitting there all evening long, not moving a step from Sanya. And he had not let Sanya step anywhere. When he tried to move a little, Padzhak put his paw on him: “Sit! ” Eventually Sanya started to beg: “I want just to piss, I swear! ” Padzhak accompanied him to the toilet back and forth and spent all night under his bed. Clearly, this dog was the best friend for soldiers; and there was a paradise not only for soldiers, but also for him among these mountains.

As for the toilet, the soldiers had to do “bombing” from the edge of the rock, because it was impossible to dig a hole there. They placed themselves on a narrow path, crouching and moving their asses out towards the precipice, and start their bombing. Meantime, they held a climbing carbine, which was hammered into a rock fissure, to prevent them falling down from the cliff.

It was all right as they became used to it, although at first it was weird to hear the wail of night wind blowing from the rocks into their asses. Sergeant Lyoha demanded that soldiers should go to a poop only as a pair: while the first one did “bombing”, the second one should be on guard, because anything might happen.

One night Dimon went off duty and wanted to do “bombing” before going to bed. Who could he ask to be on the watch? Sanya was on his post at the station, Gogy was on his guard duty. To wake someone? This was out of question.

Well hoping for the best, Dimon put his submachine gun together with the pyramid of others, and went to do business on his own. Not a big deal! As the saying says “If God helps, nobody can harm”. He placed himself over the precipice as usual, and holding on to the climbing carbine, he started his business. Icy wind was blowing as hard as if it wanted to blow off all the stars from the sky. And it was wailing in the rocks as if a witch was giving the birth, even neighboring jackals were answering to her.

Having been woken up by Dimon’s horrified screams, soldiers jumped out of their beds as if they were tossed up by an unknown force. Indeed, there was not simple fear in that scream, but the chilling horror and unbearable anguish. The solders snatched their submachine guns and barefoot rushed outside, wearing only underpants. Suddenly they spotted rushing headlong towards them Padzhak with his tail between his legs. He whisked into the house and hid under a bed. In a second after him, Dimon emerged in their view. The rage distorted features on his face, his hand was holding a cobble; and Dimon himself was running towards them with lowered pants and he was shouting without stopping:

– Bitch, bitch, bitch!!! I’ll kill you, fuuck!!!

It turned out that clever Padzhak decided to guard Dimon just to be sure of safety. He was used to seeing the soldiers going there in pairs, and made up his mind to take the initiative incognito. He followed Dimon, stepping on a stony path with no noise. Then he sat in the darkness not disclosing his presence, protecting Dimon from any misfortune. When in the most responsible moment of Dimon’s “bombing”, Padzhak decided to cheer up Dimon as if he was tried to say: “Don’t be afraid, my friend, I’m here, next to you! ” and under the light of the moon licked Dimon’s shiny ass!

Next morning, shaving his whiskers in front of the mirror, Dimon noticed that his cossack forelock had gone grey. Was it dirty with the lime from rocks? Dimon ruffled his forelock with the wet palm, however, this grey colour could not be shaken off.

Ravil Bikbaev

Bikbaev, Ravil Nagimovich was born in 1961 in Astrakhan. During 1980-1982, he served in the 56th Airborne Assault Brigade, located in Afghanistan, Paktia Province, Gardez. Bikbaev Ravil Nagimovich was awarded the medal “For Battle Merit”. Currently he works as a lawyer. He is a member of the Writers’ Union of Russia.

My Dear!

Who has not heard one of those tearful army stories about soldiers who, after receiving news about betrayal of their loved ones, shoot themselves, unlawfully left the army or fell into depression? In the Soviet army, there was a sacred tradition of sending a letter with an enclosed picture of an imprinted soldier’s boot with the pathetic patriotic text: “If not for this boot, you would have been raped by the foreign soldier” to the girls who betrayed loyalties and expectations.

As for me, I do not blame the girls. A well known Russian saying stated: “Do not judge and you will be not judged”. I know a number of situations when a girl who waited for years for her beloved soldier, in the end got the proposition “to just be friends”. Sometimes she was even introduced to a wife of her ex- boyfriend. I think, there is no need to blame one side because both parties can be equally responsible for the breakdown of a relationship. But the story I want to tell you, will not be a classical unhappy scenario of a separation, a fatal betrayal, a broken heart or an inevitable retribution… It will be a kind of different love story…

…Sitting at a clay pit, we keep counting the bricks over and over again without any hope. You see, our daily task was to make five hundred bricks, but so far we managed only a hundred, and the day was half gone, already after noon.

– I wish, I could go sooner to hospital for my surgery. I am so fed up of making these bricks! – Vitek lit his cigarette, – It is a joke! Back home, if you will say that paratroopers were making bricks for building houses, nobody will believe you. Everyone will think that you served in an engineering battalion, not paratroopers.

– “Two soldiers from engineering will replace any excavator’s digging”, – I rhymed one of the self-made army slogans and sat down on a molding box. – I bet, at home we will tell that all day long we were fighting in close range, and when we had breaks, we were piling hundreds of mujahedeens’ bodies on top of each other.

– Do not jump in front of horses! Wait till you will get home, – tanned by clay dust, Forelock (the Ukrainian) sarcastically commented and climbed out from the pit with a heavily sweaty face, – hold on to the time, when you will be at home and you will figure out what to lie.

… January 1980. Our brigade has been brought into Afghanistan and left at this bare clay plateau, so-called airdrome, the closest one to Kunduz. In this place we are supposed to serve the army, not how we wanted, but how we were told. We were not only paratroopers during combat operations, but also the soldiers for the Building Construction Army Forces between these combat operations. How we managed to survive in such bare and empty conditions and, at the same time, to fight, is a special topic for another story.

All textbooks underline the reputation of paratroopers as a strong military force, namely: if paratroopers got involved into a military situation, it does not matter how hopeless this situation will be, eventually, they became winners. This quality has been tested in our current situation. Being completely surrounded, without any drop of help, we learned how to make bricks from dirt, how to build houses with these bricks, how to steal wood necessary for a construction, and how to create the cozy clay town from literally a bare space of nothing.

The construction was such a tedious, dirty and monotonous job that we deeply and passionately hated. We were eager for any combat operations not because we wanted to show off our courage or bravery, but simply to break up this monotonous boredom of laboring works from which we, anyway, often slacked off.

Besides, during combat operations it was always possible to get, or more precisely to grab from civilians, fresh food or something nice and tasty. The taste of the daily portion of porridge given to us, was stuck in our throat.

– Well! F… this building! – Vitek spitted out his half-smoked cigarette and unenthusiastically suggested, – How about we make at least fifty bricks more before lunch?

There was no desire to continue to do the work and plus the F–word immediately directed us to a new theme of our conversation.

– Well, Vitek, whilst your army superiors put you in different poses of slavery here, someone at home put your wife in the right position, – we started a favorite topic of soldiers’ entertainment and began to tease our mate.

I want to tell you that soldiers’ talk about women, in particular, and love, in general, were rather shallow. But to call them dirty-mouthed will also not be correct. Perhaps, a use of medical terms will be more appropriate, but I do not know which ones. You see, in the army, as in no other place, males do lie so much about women in their stories. (Well, maybe a similar sort of fantasy you can listen to on fishing and hunting tours). So, if to take into a consideration that many of us had not lost virginity in a sexual sense yet, then it will be understandable, why we lied. We dreamt up and clumsily fantasized about women and love. It was a paradox of war: we could kill a life, but we did not know how to create a new one.

– Here we go again! – Vitek weakly waved his hand.

Married soldiers amongst the conscripts were the minority and they were constantly teased by their fellow soldiers. No single day could pass without teasing these mates, in one form or another, on a subject of marital fidelity of their second half. Even a helmet of a married solder could be drilled for the horns, because according to the Russian proverb, they will grow after a wife committed adultery.

But Vitek was the real paratrooper: he never gave into any difficulties. Very quickly he learn a peculiar way how to defeat the teasers. Taking out from his pocket the photo of his wife, dressed in a bathing suit, he usually was saying: ” If you, my dear friend, cannot do without a woman, you can jerk yourself. This photo will help you”.

Immediately, the dirty mouths did shut up… until the next time.

Vitek received regularly letters from his wife, but what was written in them he did not share with us.

At the time of my story, I remember well, Vitek’s famous counter attack for halting teasers did not occur on this occasion, because a brigade headquarter messenger rushed to us and interrupted with news.

– Vitek! You are summoned up to the quarters, – after delivering this order, the messenger ran away.

Being called to the brigade headquarters meant only one thing – a soldier was in trouble. Immediately Vitek recalled how recently a staff officer caught him with a bottle of vodka and demanded he surrender the bottle. Vitek vividly recalled how he sent this officer very far and deep in the area of a female reproductive organ driven by an unstoppable desire to get more vodka. Of course, after this swearing, Vitek took off without identifying himself, but who knows… maybe his name was identified?

– So he found me, bastard, – Vitek started swearing, – now he will eat my brains alive….

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