‘Please,’ Loop implores.
‘Soon, soon,’ the sergeant-major says evasively. He’s in no hurry, and each time we ask he promises that we will be sent the next day. But I sense that he is doing all he can to keep us here a little longer.
‘Write your reports,’ he says.
We write:
To Colonel Polupanov, Commander of the 429th Regiment from Radio Company Private A. A. Babchenko.
REPORT
I hereby request to be sent to the area of combat operations in the republic of Chechnya on government assignment.
We have no paper so we tear out pages of last year’s ‘Logbook for the receipt and issue of weapons’.
On the other side of my report is written that on 15 January 1995, Private Yashibov received an AK-47 rifle, 400 cartridges and 6 RGD-5 hand grenades.
They assign us to a new detail. From now on we do telephone duty at the communications exchange. The exchange is called Accoroid, but no-one knows what the word is supposed to mean. We have the simple task of connecting callers. For example, the phone rings, I pick up and say ‘Accoroid’. ‘Accoroid?’ they ask. ‘Put me through to the regiment commander.’ And I do, and that’s all there is to it.
Every day information passes through Accoroid saying that the Chechens are about to take Mozdok by storm. Every day we receive warnings from HQ. to step up patrols and post armed guards by the barracks. The precautions are not in vain - there were cases when whole barracks full of soldiers were slaughtered in their sleep.
And today they are also telling the regimental commander that Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev seized two Grad missile systems and is advancing on Mozdok. On previous occasions when I got these sorts of messages I wanted to run somewhere and do something, get ready for battle, take up defensive positions or something. It’s unbearable to sit at the switchboard just waiting for Basayev to ride onto the parade ground with two Grads. Now I’m used to it, but that doesn’t mean for a moment that I’m not afraid. For us the war is concentrated in this little box that constantly emits messages about death, shot-down helicopters and destroyed convoys. Somewhere the Chechens are attacking, somewhere else a regiment is under fire, or a block post unit has been butchered in Grozny. Somehow there doesn’t seem to be any news about our successes and we are starting to get the impression that we are losing on all fronts. We believe the Chechens are strong - we can’t afford not to believe it. There’s the runway outside the window with helicopters landing on it non-stop. We will all die in this war.
At night we lock ourselves into the barracks and sleep with our weapons. Apart from our orderlies on guard duty, there is always someone on duty downstairs near the entrance.
They introduce a password system in the regiment and you can open fire on anyone who doesn’t know it. Our barracks block is the closest to the steppe and if it kicks off, we’ll take the brunt of it.
There aren’t many of us and we can’t mount a full guard. The orderlies block the door with a bed and sleep with their weapons there in the corridor. At night each barracks turns into a separate block post and has a separate existence. When there is a knock at the door we rush towards it with our weapons. And even if it’s the duty officer for the regiment, and that doesn’t happen often, we check him out thoroughly, get the password, his surname and rank, or we get him to tell us the commander’s telephone number, which of course we radiomen know. One of us shouts the questions through the door, two of us stand on either side, ready to open fire. Once we are sure it’s our officer we make him go down one flight of stairs, open the door and then let him in at gunpoint. You can never be sure that he isn’t being held at the barrel of a Fly rocket launcher by bearded people with green sashes round their heads.
Even Chuk is no exception. Once Zyuzik let him in straight away without asking the password after he recognized his voice, and Chuk gave him a battering for it. But we don’t check him all that thoroughly either.
There is shooting every night in the regiment. Sometimes it’s some drunken officers playing the fool, and other times it’s out in the steppes by the block post on the bridge over the canal. Who’s shooting at who, we don’t know. Sometimes fire opens up from there, then they comb the steppe half the night, sending tracer rounds flying low over the ground into the darkness.
There is a vacuum of power in Chechnya, and another in Mozdok. Everyone is trying to grab a slice of this pie called war. They couldn’t care less about Russian boys whimpering as the Chechen rebels cut their throats at captured block posts when there are such enormous amounts of money being divided up. Everybody, everybody is ready to kill us as long as they get a bigger slice, both the Chechens and our own people. We can expect help from no-one, we are on our own here, strewn under the feet of the big guys as they split the proceeds, and even our Mothers clutch at their legs, imploring, ‘Save them, help them, don’t kill them, pity the poor mites.’
‘Pipe down woman, your son will die a hero!’
Bastards.
I am sitting in the armoury, counting the weapons and comparing the tally with the entry in the book. There’s no-one else in the barracks - I’m alone. It’s evening now, and everyone is out and about somewhere. Loop went off to the runway this morning; now he goes there every day and asks to be taken on one of the flights. He doesn’t care where to, as long as it’s far away from here. But no-one takes him. Zyuzik is skulking around somewhere. The last time he appeared was when the sergeant-major booted him out of the closet under the stairs, where he had spent almost two days sleeping. Osipov has gone to get some grub from the pilots’ canteen, and Savchenko and Minayev are nowhere to be seen. The recon are almost all in Mozdok, where they have some kind of business going with the locals and often stay in town overnight. So I am left to my own devices.
To my surprise I don’t want to sleep and I lock myself into the armoury. The only key is with me, so I am in no danger if the recon reappear in the barracks in a filthy mood. Of course, if they wanted to they could smoke me out of here with flares or thunder-flashes, but that’s only in the extreme.
It’s night and the barracks are empty and silent. You can’t even hear any fighter bombers. I have no fear now as I hunch over a newspaper and write. I imagine that I am a writer working in my own study while my children are playing on the other side of the wall, my wife is drinking tea and the dog is playing with a toy, and all I have to do is come out of the armoury and I will find myself in a fairy tale.
A loud bang interrupts my daydream, and right after it the howl of a descending mortar round. I throw myself to one side with the book, sweeping rifle bolts and grenades from the table and freeze between some shell crates, screwed up like a foetus.
The mortar round screams and whistles like the devil as it heads straight towards me, loud and terrifying. My back seems to swell to a huge size as if to present a target that cannot be missed.
The Chechens are in Mozdok, I manage to think to myself.
The round flies for an eternity, probably all of half a second, but there is no explosion. But then everything is lit up outside the window with a poisonous chemical light. A pleasant tremble of relaxation passes through my legs and my whole body breaks out in sweat. It’s only a signal flare. Sometimes they are fitted with a siren that, when activated, shrieks with a whistling sound like a falling mortar round.
The flares howl down one after the other, red, white and green, illuminating the armoury through the window with an uneven flickering light. I lay between the crates, clutching the book in my hands, my body aching as if from hard physical toil, and I am loathe to move my arms or legs, as if I have been hauling stones all night. Fear is very exhausting.
Said returns from hospital. He got shot through the shin during the storming of Bamut and spent two months in the sickbay, and then had a long period of leave that he had awarded himself. Now he has arrived to quit.
His eyes are misty, his hair uncut and dirty, and he is wearing some sort of ragged Afghan cap and army boo
ts with greasy trailing laces. But he has authority here. Said is a thief; he has several burglaries to his name and people do what he says.
He hated me from the moment he met me. I don’t know about love but hate at first sight definitely exists. He doesn’t extort money from me. I have money after selling those stolen car stereos, about half a million roubles stashed away in the closet under the stairs. I’m a resourceful soldier after all, and if Said wants money I can hand it right over and he won’t beat me. But that’s not what he’s after. He wants me to bring him bananas. He knows I won’t be able to get any right now, during the night, so he gives me two hours to come up with some.
I have no intention of even leaving the barracks. I return to our quarters and go to bed. I’ve got two hours at least. In two hours on the dot I am woken - out of some kind of thief’s honour he has stuck to his word.
‘Get up, you’re wanted,’ says Smiler.
I go to the storeroom. Said is sitting with his injured leg on the table, and one of the recon is massaging his injured shin.
‘You called for me, Said?’ I ask.
‘To some people I’m Said, to others I’m Oleg Alexandrovich,’ he answers.
‘You called for me, Oleg?’ I say again.
‘Say Oleg Alexandrovich.’
I say nothing and look at the floor. He can kill me right here, but there’s no way I’m going to do him the honour of calling him Oleg Alexandrovich.
‘Well, what have you got to say?’
‘You called for me, Oleg?’ I said.
He smirks.
‘Did you get any?’
‘No,’ I reply.
The usual foreplay begins.
We could skip this bit really, but Said is enjoying his power and I don’t get hit in the face.
‘Why?’ Said says with surprising calm.
‘I don’t know where to get bananas, Oleg.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know... ’
‘What?’ he says, finally letting rip. ‘What, you don’t want to look for what I told you to find? Useless prick! You’ll go and look, got it?’
He starts to hit me viciously. If the others beat me because that’s the way it is, Said beats me out of sheer hatred. He enjoys it, gets a real pleasure from it. A stinking nobody on civvy street, he is top dog and master of souls here.
Said is weak, and his punches are not as hard as Boxer’s or Timokha’s, but he’s stubborn and vicious and he hits me a long time, for several hours. He does it in bouts; he batters me, then sits down and rests while forcing me to do press-ups. As I do, he kicks me in the back of the head with his heel, and sometimes smacks my teeth from below with his boot. He doesn’t do this so often, evidently the hole in his shin hasn’t fully healed over and is bothering him, but he lays into the back of my head with vigour in an effort to bust up my face on the floorboards. Eventually he manages, and I fall and lie there on the filthy boards, blood running from my split lips.
Said lifts me up and starts to hit me again, using his palm on my broken lips, aiming all the time for the same place, because he knows that will be more painful. I jolt heavily from every blow and moan. I am tiring now as I press myself up and shield myself with my arms, tensing my muscles so that the kicks don’t go deep into my body I have lost count of the blows and it seems Said has been beating me from the moment I was born, and this was all I have ever known. For heaven’s sake, I’ll get you your lousy bananas! But Said no longer cares about bananas. He is joined by a few more of the recon and they surround me and smash me in the back with their elbows. I stand doubled up, shielding my stomach with my arms, but they don’t let me fall over so they can also kick me from below with their knees.
They shove me into the latrines, where a thickset Tartar called Ilyas hops and kicks me in the chest. I fly backwards and smash the window with my shoulders, sending shards of glass cascading over me, over my head and stomach. I manage to grab the frame and stop myself from falling right through. I didn’t even cut myself. Once again they knock me from my feet and I crash to the floor. This time I don’t get up, I just lie there amongst the broken glass and all I can do is try to cover my kidneys and groin. Finally the recon take a breather and have a smoke.
Said flicks his ash straight onto me, trying to get me in the face with the burning tobacco grains.
‘Listen lads, let’s take him down a few more pegs - let’s screw him,’ he suggests. Beside my face there is a large, jagged piece of glass. I grab it through my sleeve and it sits snugly in my palm like a knife, a long fat blade, tapering at the end.
I get up from the floor, clutching the shard. Shame I don’t have the keys to the armoury...
Blood drips onto the shard from my split lip. I stare right at Said, Ilyas and the rest of them, I stand in front of them holding a blood-smeared piece of glass, watching them smoke. Said doesn’t flick any ash on me now.
‘OK,’ says one of the recon, ‘leave him, let’s go. We haven’t got any antiseptic anyway...’
They leave. The cicadas trill in the expanses of the steppe outside the broken window. Fighter bombers take off from the runway and head for Chechnya. A single lamp shines on the empty parade ground. There isn’t a soul around, not a single officer or soldier.
The swarthy major was right. I am alone in this regiment.
*
That night they rough me up even worse, wreaking vengeance for that flash of resistance in the latrine, and the whole recon company piles on top of me to administer the beating, not even letting me get out of bed. This isn’t even a beating - they are grinding me down to nothingness, like scum, and I am supposed to act accordingly, not try to wriggle out of it. They throw a blanket over me and force me from the bed, drag me into the corridor and beat me there. It carries on in the storeroom, where they lift me up by the arms and pin me to the wall so I don’t fall. I start to lose consciousness. Someone delivers a fearsome punch to my right side and something bursts, piercing my very core with a burning pain. I gasp hoarsely and fall to my knees, and they carrying on kicking me. I pass out.
The recon have gone. I am lying in the corner of the storeroom on a pile of jackets and the walls and the ceiling are spattered with my blood. There’s a tooth on the floor. I pick it up and try to push it back into the gum. In the end I throw it out of the window. I lie motionless for a while.
The pain is so bad I can’t breathe; every muscle feels mangled and my chest and sides have become one huge bruise.
After a while I manage to pull myself up and along the wall to the door. I lock it and collapse again on the pile of jackets where I remain until almost morning.
When dawn breaks I take a razor and start to scrape the blood off the walls. I can hardly breathe and I can’t bend over. Something in my right side has swollen up and is pulsating. But I have to clean the blood off and I scratch away with the razor on the wallpaper. It takes me a long time to scrape away the brown drops, and I’m not too careful as I work, tearing away the wallpaper. ‘Radiomen!’ yell the drunken recon, their feet pounding on the floor. If they remember that I’m in the storeroom they will smash down the door, drag me out and finish me off.
I start to sort out the jackets and hang them in the cupboard. The sergeant-major is coming soon and everything has to be in order.
I find a letter in the pocket of one of them. It’s to a guy called Komar, written by a girl. I unfold it and read.
My darling Vanya, sunshine, my beloved sweetheart, just be sure to come back, come back alive, I beg you, survive this war. I will have you however you come back, even if you lose your arms or legs. I can look after you, you know that, I’m strong, just please survive! I love you so much Vanya, it’s so hard without you. Vanya, Vanya, my darling, my sunshine, just don’t die. Stay alive, Vanya, please survive.
I fold up the letter and start to bawl. The dawn light is shining through the window, and I sit on the pile of jackets and howl from my battered lungs. Blood seeps from my ravaged lips. I’m in pain a
nd I rock backwards and forwards, the letter clenched in my hand, bawling my head off.
That morning Sergeant-Major Savchenko takes one look at my swollen face and without saying a word goes into the store room to the recon. Said is sitting in the armchair, his leg up on the table like before. The sergeant-major pins him to the armchair with his knee and beats him with his fist from top to bottom, smashing his head back into the seat with all his fury, and now it’s Said’s blood spattering onto the walls.
Savchenko beats him long and hard, and Said whines with pain. Then he throws him onto the floor and starts kicking him. Said crawls out of the storeroom on all fours with the sergeant-major kicking him from behind as he goes, before he finally throws him down the stairs.
I listen to the sounds of the beating in the storeroom without even raising my head. I’m glad that Savchenko is beating Said, or rather I’m overjoyed. My liver, jaw, teeth, every part of me rejoices as I hear how this piece of shit squirms and begs Savchenko, ‘Please, Sergeant-Major, don’t, please, I am already injured.’ And the sergeant-major hits him and hisses through his teeth: ‘I’m not just ‘Sergeant-Major” but a senior warrant officer, you fucker, understand? A senior warrant officer.’
I am elated but at the same time I know that I am now in total shit. When the sergeant-major leaves, Said will come back and put a bullet in me.
Savchenko also realizes this and he spends the night here. He takes the armoury keys from the duty officer and sleeps in the barracks. We carry two beds out of the storeroom and put them side by side at the entrance, behind the wall, so no-one can come and fire a burst through the door, and then we fall asleep. For the first time I sleep soundly the whole night without waking. I don’t dream anything and only open my eyes when the sergeant-major touches my shoulder.
One Soldier's War In Chechnya Page 10
