dialects and he was immediately sent to the commanding officer. The officer
asked him two questions, the traditional two:
`Do you drink vodka? What about sport?'
`Vodka, yes, sport no.'
He gave completely the wrong answers. But in battle conditions a man
speaking the language of the enemy is particularly valued. They take him on
in spite of everything, and take very good care of him, because on his
ability to speak and understand what is said may depend the life of the
group or of many groups. And on the way the groups carry out their mission
may depend the lives of thousands and in some cases millions of people. The
one drawback to being an interpreter is that interpreters are never forgiven
for making a mistake. But the drawback is the same for him as it is for
everyone else in the unit.
___
No soldier should be afraid of fire. Throughout the Soviet Army, in
every branch of the forces, very close attention is paid to a soldier's or
sailor's psychological readiness to come up against fire. In the Navy old
submarines are grounded, and several sailors are shut in a compartment in
which a fire is started. In the tank forces men are shut into an old tank
and a fire is lit inside or outside and sometimes both at once.
The spetsnaz soldier comes up against fire more often than any other
soldier. For that reason it is constantly present in his battle training
from the first to the last day. At least once a day he sees fire that is
clearly threatening his life. He is forced to jump over wide ditches with
fires raging in them. He has to race through burning rooms and across
burning bridges. He rides a motorcycle between flaming walls. Fire can break
out next to him at any moment -- when he is eating or sleeping. When he is
making a parachute jump to test the accuracy of his fall a tremendous flame
may flare up suddenly beneath him.
The spetsnaz soldier is taught to deal with fire and to protect himself
and his comrades by every means -- rolling along the ground to stop his
clothes burning, smothering the flames with earth, branches or a
groundsheet. In learning to deal with fire the most important thing is not
so much for him to get to know ways of protecting himself (though this is
important) as to make him realise that fire is a constant companion of life
which is always at his side.
Another very important element of spetsnaz training is to teach a
soldier not to be afraid of blood and to be able to kill. This is more
important and more difficult for spetsnaz than for the infantry, for
example. The infantry man kills his enemy mainly at a distance of more than
a hundred metres and often at a distance of 300 or 400 metres or more. The
infantryman does not see the expression on the face of his enemy. His job is
simply to take aim correctly, hold his breath and press the trigger
smoothly. The infantryman fires at plywood targets in peacetime, and in
wartime at people who look at a distance very much like plywood targets. The
blood which an infantryman sees is mainly the blood of his dead comrade or
his own, and it gives rise to anger and a thirst for revenge. After that the
infantryman fires at his enemy without feeling any twinges of conscience.
The training of a spetsnaz soldier is much more complicated. He often
has to kill the enemy at close quarters, looking him straight in the face.
He sees blood, but it is not the blood of his comrades; it is often the
blood of a completely innocent man. The officers commanding spetsnaz have to
be sure that every spetsnaz soldier will do his duty in a critical
situation.
Like fire, blood is a constant attribute of the battle training of a
soldier. It used to be thought that a soldier could be accustomed to the
sight of blood gradually -- first a little blood and then more day by day.
But experts have thrown out this view. The spetsnaz soldier's first
encounter with blood should be, they argue, quite unexpected and in copious
quantities. In the course of his career as a fighting man there will be a
whole lot of monstrous things which will spring up in front of him without
any warning at all. So he should get used to being unsurprised at anything
and afraid of nothing.
A group of young spetsnaz soldiers are hauled out of bed at night
because of an emergency, and sent in pursuit of a `spy'. The worse the
weather the better. Best of all when there is torrential rain, a gusty wind,
mud and slush. Many kilometres of obstacles -- broken-down stairs, holes in
walls, ropes across holes and ditches. The platoon of young soldiers are
completely out of breath, their hearts beating fast. Their feet slip, their
hands are scratched and bruised. Forward! Everyone is bad-tempered -- the
officers and especially the men. The soldier can give vent to his anger only
by punching some weaker fellow-sufferer in the face and maybe getting a kick
in the ribs in reply. The area is dotted with ruined houses, everything is
smashed, ripped apart, and there's broken glass everywhere. Everything is
wet and slippery, and there are never-ending obstacles with searchlights
trained on them. But they don't help: they only hinder, blinding the men as
they scramble over. Now they come to a dark cellar, with the doors ripped
off the hinges. Everybody down. Along the corridor. Then there's water
ahead. The whole group running at full tilt without slowing down rushes
straight into some sticky liquid. A blinding light flashes on. It's not
water they are in -- it's blood. Blood up to the knees, the waist, the
chest. On the walls and the ceiling are chunks of rotten flesh, piles of
bleeding entrails. The steps are slippery from slimy bits of brain.
Undecided, the young soldiers jam the corridor. Then somebody in the
darkness lets a huge dog off its chain. There is only one way out -- through
the blood. Only forwards, where there is a wide passageway and a staircase
upwards.
Where on earth could they get so much blood? From the slaughter-house,
of course. It is not so difficult to make the tank of blood. It can be
narrow and not very deep, but it must be twisting and there must be a very
low ceiling over it. The building in which the tank of blood is arranged can
be quite small, but piles of rotten boards, beams and concrete slabs must be
tipped into it. Even in very limited space it is possible to create the
impression that you are in an endless labyrinth overflowing with blood. The
most important thing is to have plenty of twists and turns, holes, gaps,
dead ends and doors. If you don't have enough blood you can simply use
animal entrails mixed with blood. The bottom of the tank must not be even:
you must give the learner the possibility of tripping over and going under.
But most important is that the first training session should take place with
a group of really young soldiers who have joined spetsnaz but are still
isolated and have had no opportunity of meeting older soldiers and being
warned what to expect. And there's something else: the tank of blood must
not be the final obstacle that night. The greatest mistake i
s to drive the
men through the tank and then bring the exercise to an end, leaving them to
clean themselves up and go to bed. In that case the blood will only appear
to them as a terrible dream. Keep driving them on over more and more
obstacles.
Exhausting training exercises must be repeated and repeated again,
never stopping to rest. Carry on with the exercise throughout the morning,
throughout the day. Without food and without drink. In that way the men
acquire the habit of not being taken aback by any surprises. Blood on their
hands and on their uniforms, blood in their boots -- it all becomes
something familiar. On the same day there must also be a lot of gunfire,
labyrinths with bones, and dogs, dogs and more dogs. The tank of blood must
be remembered by the men as something quite ordinary in a whole series of
painful experiences.
In the next training session there is no need to use a lot of blood,
but it must be constantly present. The men have to crawl beneath some barbed
wire. Why not throw some sheep's innards on to the ground and the wire? Let
them crawl over that and not just along the ground. A soldier is firing from
his sub-machine-gun on the firing range. Why not surround his firing
position with chunks of rotting meat which is in any case no good for
eating? A soldier makes a parachute jump to test the accuracy of his drop.
Why not put on his landing spot, face down, a big puppet in spetsnaz uniform
with a torn, twisted parachute spattered with pig's blood? These are all
standard tricks in spetsnaz, simple and effective. To increase the effect
the instructors are constantly creating situations in which the men are
obliged to get blood on their hands. For example, a soldier has to overcome
an obstacle by scrambling up a wall. When he reaches up to grab the ridge at
the top of the wall he finds it slippery and sticky from blood. He has a
choice -- either to drop down and break his legs (and maybe his neck) or to
hang on tighter with both hands, rest his chin on the filthy sill, shift his
grip, pull himself up and jump in through the window. A spetsnaz soldier
does not fall. He pulls himself up and, with blood all over him, swearing
hoarsely, he carries on his way, onwards, ever onwards.
Later in the programme come half-joking exercises such as: catch a
pregnant cat, open its belly with a razor blade and count how many kittens
it has. This is not such an easy exercise as might appear at first. The
soldier has no gloves, the cat scratches and he has no one to help him. As
an instrument he is allowed to use only a blunt, broken razor blade or
razor, and he can easily cut his own fingers.
The process of familiarising spetsnaz men with the sight and the
reality of blood is not in the least intended to make them into sadists. It
is simply that blood is a liquid with which they are going to have to work
in wartime. A spetsnaz soldier may not be scared of the red liquid. A
surgeon works continually with blood and so does the butcher. What would
happen if a surgeon or a butcher were suddenly to be afraid of the sight of
blood?
___
Every Soviet soldier, wherever he may be serving, must be able to run,
to shoot accurately, to keep his weapon clean and in good working order, and
carry out the orders of his superiors precisely and quickly and without
asking unnecessary questions. If one studies the battle training of Soviet
troops one notices that there are common standards for all branches of
troops operating in any conditions. This gives the impression that training
in the Soviet Army is the same whatever the conditions. This is not quite
true. Many of the demands placed on officers and men are standard throughout
the Army. Nevertheless, each Soviet military district and each group of
forces operates in conditions unique to itself. Troops of the Leningrad
military district have to operate in very severe northern conditions, and
their training takes place in forests, marshes and the tundra of an arctic
climate. Troops of the Transcaucasian military district have to operate in
high mountains, while those of the Carpathian and Ural military districts
have to operate in medium-high mountains. Even so, the Carpathian district
has a mild European climate, while that of the Ural district is wildly
different: harsh, with a very hot summer and a very cold winter.
Every military district and group of forces has a commanding officer, a
chief of staff and a head of Intelligence who answer with their heads for
the battle-readiness of the troops under their command. But every district
and group faces a specific enemy, and its own particular (though absolutely
secret) task to perform in the event of war, and its own individual role in
the plans of the General Staff.
One reason that training takes place in situ is that every Soviet
frontier district and group of forces has, as a rule, the same natural
conditions as the territories in which it will have to fight. Conditions in
Karelia differ very little from those in Norway, Sweden and Finland. If
troops from the Carpathian military district cross the frontier, they find
themselves in a country of high rugged mountains identical to that in which
they are permanently stationed. And, if the Soviet troops in Germany cross
the frontier, even if there are small differences of terrain and climate,
they are at any rate still in Germany.
Spetsnaz is concentrated at this level of fronts and armies. To make
sure that spetsnaz training is carried out in conditions as close as
possible to those in which the troops will have to operate the spetsnaz
brigades now have special training centres. For example, the natural
conditions in the Baltic military district are very similar to those in
Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, northern Germany and France. The
mountainous Altai is strikingly similar to Scotland. In the Carpathians
there are places very similar to the French Alps. If troops have to be
trained for operations in Alaska and Canada, Siberia is ideal for the
purpose, while for operating in Australia spetsnaz units have to be trained
in Kazakhstan. The spetsnaz brigades have their own training centres, but a
brigade (or any other spetsnaz unit) can be ordered at any moment to operate
in an unfamiliar training centre belonging to another brigade. For example,
during the `Dvina' manoeuvres spetsnaz units from the Leningrad, Moscow and
North Caucasus military districts were transferred to Belorussia to operate
there in unfamiliar conditions. The difference in conditions was especially
great for the units transferred from the northern Caucasus.
These transfers are restricted mainly to troops of the internal
military districts. It is reckoned that troops which are already located in
Germany, Czechoslovakia and the Transcaucasian military districts will
remain there in any circumstances, and it is better to train them thoroughly
for operations in those conditions without wasting effort on training for
every kind of condition. `Universal' training is needed by the troops of the
internal districts -- the Siberi
an, Ural, Volga, Moscow and a few others
which in the event of war will be switched to crisis points. Courses are
also provided for the professional athletes. Every one of these is
continually taking part in contests and travelling round the whole country
from Vladivostok to Tashkent and Tbilisi to Archangelsk. Such trips in
themselves play a tremendous part in training. The professional athlete
becomes psychologically prepared to operate in any climate and any
circumstances. Trips abroad, especially trips to those countries in which he
will have to operate in the event of war, are of even greater assistance in
removing psychological barriers and making the athlete ready for action in
any conditions.
___
Spetsnaz units are often involved in manoeuvres at different levels and
with different kinds of participants. Their principal `enemies' on
manoeuvres are the MVD troops, the militia, the frontier troops of the KGB,
the government communications network of the KGB and the ordinary units of
the armed forces.
In time of war KGB and MVD troops would be expected to operate against
national liberation movements within the Soviet Union, of which the most
dangerous is perceived to be the Russian movement against the USSR. (In the
last war it was the Russians who created the most powerful anti-Communist
army -- the ROA). The Ukrainian resistance movement is also considered to be
very dangerous. Partisan operations would inevitably break out in the Baltic
states and the Caucasus, among others. KGB and MVD troops, which are not
controlled by the Ministry of Defence, are equipped with helicopters, naval
vessels, tanks, artillery and armoured personnel carriers, and exercises in
which they operate against spetsnaz are of exceptional value to them. But
the heads of the GRU are keen on joint manoeuvres for their own reasons. If
spetsnaz has years' experience of operating against such powerful opponents
as the KGB and MVD, its performance against less powerful opponents can only
be enhanced.
In the course of manoeuvres the KGB and the MVD (along with the Soviet
military units which have to defend themselves) use against spetsnaz the
whole gamut of possible means of defence, from total control of radio
communication to electronic sensors, from hunter aircraft provided with the
Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces Page 17
