One Soldier's War In Chechnya

by Arkady Babchenko

  But there was none. My body no longer responded to me; it did not want to crawl into hiding but instead became huge, filling the field, presenting a target that couldn’t be missed. I would now be killed.

  I shouldn’t have come to Chechnya. I shouldn’t have come.

  Oh my God, just make it so that I’m no longer in this hellhole Chechnya, whisk me home so that the shell finds only an empty space. I swear I’ll beg forgiveness from all those I wrong or failed in this life, that I’ll love the whole world from now on and donate all my army wages to Chechen orphans, whatever it takes, just get me out of here. And dear God, do it right now, because here comes another.

  This time it was certain death and there was nothing I could do in those rapidly contracting fragments of the only second that remained - the shell would hit much faster than I could think to race into the ditch with Igor, who had made it, faster than it took me even to move a finger - here it comes now -

  I leapt up with a throaty scream of defiance and fear, eyes bulging and seeing nothing but the ditch I was dashing for, slipping on the wet grass, tumbling hand and foot before I flew face down in a cowpat.

  The shell dropped way beyond us and blew up on the other side of the pasture. No-one moved.

  Igor and I started to shift and shake off the mud. I pulled my face out of the pat, looked around through one crazed eye and mumbled, ‘Got away with it.’

  My head was still vacant. All I could hear ringing in my ears was the whistle of the shell, my shell, short, sharp and piercing, flying towards me again and again out of the village, coming right at me. I automatically cleaned the fresh, liquid mess from my hands, and I felt no trace of disgust; I was ready to dive straight back into shit if the need arose.

  Beside us the infantry platoon commander was brushing himself off just as dismally. Standing at his full height he slowly picked off blades of grass from his trousers, one by one, and dropped them on the ground. Then he held one of them in his hand, twirled it in his fingers and said thoughtfully: ‘It’s actually my birthday today.’

  I looked at him in silence for a few seconds, and then suddenly I began to laugh.

  At first I tremored quietly, trying to contain it, but then I gave in and started to roar, louder all the time. Hysterical notes crept in, and with my head thrown back I flopped down on my knees facing the low, clouded sky, threw my arms out and howled, purging my fear with laughter, the smothering fear of a bombardment, when everything is out of your hands and you have no way of protecting yourself or saving your life, and you just lie there face down on the ground, praying that you’ll get away with it this time too. It’s not the rousing fear you feel in battle, but a lifeless fear, as cold as the grass you are pressing yourself into.

  Igor crouched down beside me and lit up. He looked at me without saying anything for a while, then poked me in the shoulder.

  ‘Hey, homeboy, what’s up with you?’ Fatigue weighed heavy in his voice, making it dry and hoarse. He too had been scared, and fear ravages you, sucks the energy out of you and makes it hard even to speak.

  I couldn’t answer him; I carried on heaving with laughter, unable to stop. Then after I’d caught my breath, I managed to say something, punctuating my words with more chuckles.

  ‘Birthday! Exactly! Don’t worry, I’m OK, my head’s still on my shoulders. You know what?’ I said, wiping my tears and feeling the cow dung smear across my face. ‘I just remembered. Today is the fifth of January... the fifth... of January,’ I said, still snorting.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Well, it’s my Olga’s birthday today too, see?’ I said. ‘Today’s the fifth of January, they’ve just celebrated New Year back home - belated Happy New Year to you, by the way - and now they’re sitting round a table celebrating, all dressed up smart, drinking wine and eating tasty food. All they do is party and they have no idea what a bombardment is like. And people are giving my girl flowers... They’ve got flowers there, imagine! Flowers! And here I am, covered in crap, with lice scuttling round my nuts, it’s a scream all right!’ and I burst into laughter again, falling onto my back and rolling from side to side.

  The thought of flowers staggered me. I could clearly picture Olga sitting at the table covered with a white cloth, with a glass of fine white wine - she loves dry white wine and doesn’t drink cheap plonk - surrounded by enormous, beautiful bouquets. She has a big smile on her face as she listens to her friends’ birthday wishes for her. The room is full of bright light and the guests are wearing ties, making merry and dancing; their day’s work is over and they are free of problems, they don’t have to think about finding food and warmth, and instead they choose flowers for a girl. In that world there is time to work and time to have fun. And a person gets food and warmth right there in the maternity ward, along with their birth certificate.

  It was only here that people got killed regardless of the time of day.

  Sitting in that trench it seemed to me that there was war everywhere, that everyone was out to kill everyone else, that human grief permeated every corner of the world, right to the door of my own home, that there was no way it could be otherwise.

  And yet it turns out that there is a place where people give flowers.

  And that is so strange, so stupid and so funny.

  Olga, Olga! What happened to our lives, what happened to the world, how did I come to be here now? Why must I now kiss a rifle instead of you, and bury my face in crap instead of in your hair? Why?

  After all, these constantly drunk, unwashed contract soldiers, smeared in muck, are not the worst people in the world. We have atoned for a hundred years of sin in that marsh. So how come this is all we get for our pains? I just couldn’t get my head round it all.

  My darling, may everything be well with you. May you never in your life know what I’ve known here. May you always have a celebration, a sea of flowers, and wine and laughter. But I know that you are thinking about me now, and your face is sad.

  Forgive me for this. You are the brightest; you are worthy of the very best.

  Let me be the one who has to die in a marsh. Lord, how we are different! Only a two-hour flight separates us, but what completely dissimilar lives we lead, we who are two identical halves! And how hard it will be to connect our lives again.

  Igor took the last drag on his cigarette and ground it out. He became pensive, I could tell he was thinking of pretty dresses, perfume, wine and dancing. Then he looked at me, at my ragged jacket and filthy face, and grinned: ‘Bloody right, Happy New Year.’

  I didn’t manage to eat that day. As soon as we returned to the battalion, I jumped down from the vehicle and headed for my tent, where I came face to face with the platoon commander as he was on his way out. He quickly greeted me and asked about the fight, and then he gave me a new assignment - to go as radioman with the fat lieutenant-psychologist.

  The psychologist used to be a platoon commander in charge of repairs, or maybe he was just twiddling his thumbs in the rear somewhere, because basically he was no good for anything. But later, when they sent the regiment to Chechnya, it turned out that according to regulations each battalion had to have a psychologist. If any soldier starts losing his head at all the killing, he can come and bleat about his psychological incompatibility with the war and the army in general. And theoretically the kind psychologist would put his arm round the weary soldier, bemoan his lot with him, calm him with sedatives and send him to a Crimean sanatorium for rehabilitation. But all we got were clots like the fat lieutenant who served no purpose anywhere else. As it happens, no-one ever came to him for help, because the only thing he could do to set a crazed head back in place was administer a hard punch on the jaw. And his fists were plenty big enough for that. So no-one ever sought comfort from these psychologists. But this one was an energetic fellow who would get bored if he had nothing to do, so he would run all sorts of errands.

  This time they gave the psychologist the following task: Get to Alkhan-Yurt, find the battalion water-tanker wh
ich has been ambushed and burnt out by the Chechens, and tow it back to the repair company. And also find out what happened to the driver and the escort soldier - see if they are alive, and if not, find their bodies and bring them back.

  Three of us went; the psychologist and I, and Sergei, the driver of the tracked carrier we were in.

  It wasn’t very comfortable riding on the carrier. Although it was quite a bit wider than a wheeled carrier and completely flat, it jolted sharply when the tracks made turns, and I felt like a pancake sliding and jumping in a greasy frying pan as I tried to grab onto the fittings on its armour.

  And here I was once again, travelling through this dismal field in the rain, to the sound of the tracks churning up the muck and with mud flying up into my face and landing on top of the vehicle. My jacket was still damp, for the nth month in a row, and my boots were sopping wet again. And for God knows how many months now my things had been filthy. And it was cold - God, how I was sick of this eternal, bastardly cold; if I could spend just one day in the warmth, to warm through my bones. And I was hungry.

  We huddled together in our turned-up collars and smoked. There was that turning again, the Federal Highway and the sign ‘RUSSIANS ARE PIGS.’ How sick I was of all this - I just wanted to go home!

  This time we didn’t turn towards the silos but in the other direction, to the left. We stayed on the highway and turned off to Alkhan-Yurt, and then crept along another five hundred metres, keeping close to the houses until we reached a mosque. It was newly built but already shot to pieces. This was where the zone of destruction began. Not one house was intact; most had just two or three walls and a pile of debris in the middle, or just one wall, like a person blown inside out by an explosion, with strips of wallpaper trailing outside in the wind.

  We were stopped by some interior ministry troops at the mosque; they were clustered in the building’s empty loading bay, pressed against the inside of the fence. No-one could get any further. Round the corner, Chechens held the rest of the village and they had dug in in large numbers. All day long the whole area had boiled with shelling. The explosions came one after the other, the charges falling as constantly as the incessant cold rain. Somewhere further on, nearer the river, there was uninterrupted shooting, and the chatter of automatics rose above the general barrage.

  There was no life in the village; the streets were deserted and the locals were nowhere to be seen. The houses stood dead. Only the interior troops huddled beside the fence and crawled along the ditches. Occasionally, after peering cautiously round the corner, they would run across the open ground.

  The psychologist and I immediately fell into the rules of the game. Lying on our stomachs, we flattened ourselves to the carrier. Hanging slightly off the side, the psychologist shouted at the interior troops:

  ‘Hey, lads! Somewhere here they burnt out our water tanker. Have you seen it?’

  Yes,’ answered one small soldier who was dwarfed by his flak jacket, ‘There it is, we towed it out’, and he pointed down the street.

  We looked to where he was pointing. Beyond the bend, in the no-man’s land, stood a huge pile of rusty, charred metal. The psychologist turned to the soldier in bewilderment:

  ‘No, not that one, ours was new.’

  The soldier looked at him as if he was an idiot. The psychologist suddenly realized that he had said something stupid and flushed with embarrassment. It had been new, then it got old, something that happens fast in war. It just takes a while to sink in sometimes. Same with a person: one minute he’s alive, the next he’s dead.

  ‘Listen, can we tow it, what do you reckon?’ he asked the soldier.

  ‘Yes. I told you we towed it. We just dumped it there. What do you want it for? You’ll never repair it.’

  ‘We have to recover it so we can write it off as lost in battle. Do you know where the driver is?’

  ‘Gone back to the regiment. He was wounded, so was the other guy with him. They left together.’

  ‘I see.’ The psychologist turned away from the soldier and stuck his head into the driver’s hatch. ‘Sergei, head over that way, do you see it over there?’

  The carrier’s tracks crackled on brick debris strewn on the asphalt as it slowly drove over to the wrecked tanker and turned round to back up. Sergei began to reverse with the psychologist guiding him, kneeling to get a better view. Still lying on top, I took off the radio to get ready. When the psychologist waved his arm and Sergei stood up in the hatch, I would have to jump down and hook a chain onto the tanker.

  Interior troops lay in a ditch that ran past us to the left, watching our manoeuvring with detachment. Beyond the ditch stretched a field sown with maize, and a lone farmer’s house stood in the middle of it. Tracer rounds flew out of the house every four or five seconds in the direction of Alkhan-Yurt, the red dashes etched against the woods in the evening light. The streams of fire crossed the road about fifty metres ahead of them and flew in a mass beyond the river, vanishing among the house roofs and the plumes from the explosions.

  I suddenly realized that we were right in the thick of the fighting. That patch we had occupied in the marsh was only the frilly edge of the pie, while this place was right in the middle, with all the berries.

  A Chechen sniper was firing from the farmer’s house without trying to conceal himself. Interior troops were moving about in packs here, while somewhere else the Chechens were doing the same. They were being buffeted by the explosions, but our guys were over there too. You couldn’t see them from where we were, but the Chechen sniper in the house could, and he was firing at them. And the troops here could see the sniper but no-one bothered with him. They had been lying in their ditch for so long, with so much fire pouring overhead, that no-one gave a damn about a lone sniper. Nor did I, or Sergei, or the psychologist. We weren’t supposed to be fighting here; we’d only come to pick up our water tanker, which had apparently been shot up from that very house where the sniper was holed up now. The Chechen could see us too, but he wasn’t firing at us, evidently concentrating on a more attractive target. His tracer fire disappeared over the river towards a spot visible only to him. And in that spot our guys saw only the sniper, who had become the most important and fearful thing on earth for them, and they desperately wanted someone here to kill him. But no-one touched him, because to kill him or dig him out of the house would be difficult - all they could do is keep him pinned down for a while, but then there would be a firefight when he started shooting back, and he’d kill someone for sure. And no-one wanted that. But he wasn’t shooting at us yet so there was no need to bother him unnecessarily.

  Meanwhile, the war was raging all around and as usual, nothing made much sense. Everyone was doing their thing -the sniper was popping off rounds, the interior troops were fighting across the village, shells were exploding, bullets were flying, the psychologist and I were towing a wreck, and the wounded driver and the other guy were walking home somewhere, like schoolboys after lessons. Everyone was stewing in this war, and now that there was a brief lull no-one wanted to shatter it. Everything just ticked along like normal; it was humdrum even.

  God only knows what lay in store and what was going on in the sniper’s head, so we did well to take care.

  ‘Comrade Lieutenant, you should get down, the sniper’s pretty active over there,’ I warned the psychologist.

  The lieutenant looked at the house, followed the tracer with his eyes, lay down on the armour and waved his arm.

  ‘OK, stop!’ And looking at me, he shouted ‘Hook up!’

  The interior soldier had been right, there was nothing left of the tanker: the bare hubs of the wheels, their rims sprouting wires from the burnt tires; the gaping mouth of the half-open, bullet-scarred bonnet; the riddled, mangled cabin. It had been fired on at close range by several weapons and God knows how the driver and the other guy had survived. One of them had left dried blood on the metal cabin step.

  I hooked on the tow cable, waved to the psychologist and jumped onto the ca
rrier. Sergei hit the gas and the tanker dragged itself back home behind us, its twisted, charred metal groaning as it went.

  For us the war was over for the day, and we left.

  Behind us tracer fire kept on zipping over the river, the interior troops remained in their ditches and Alkhan-Yurt heaved with explosions. It was still raining.

  The mortar dangled out of the side of the army car, bouncing as we went over ruts. The blind, hooded eye of its barrel stared into the sky, and I felt the urge to spit into this blind eye.

  I sat smoking on the low bench in the car, propping myself up on the side with one leg. My head was empty of thoughts. Everything that took place around me - the foggy grey morning, the drizzle, the same damned field day after day, the track, the same highway, Alkhan-Yurt - drifted past my consciousness without lingering in it.

  I was driving to Alkhan-Yurt once again, this time with a mortar battery. We were on our way with two army cars with two crews to reinforce the infantry, heading back into the gloom where we had yesterday emerged from battle and where I had drunk greenish water with small fry in it, and laughed myself silly as I remembered the birthday.

  Again we turned off the highway, through the massive puddle, past the anti-tank platoon’s house and the site hut, where Korobok had been stripped to the waist and shaving in a piece of mirror propped on a plank. I wanted to say hello to Vasya, but there was no sign of him. Maybe I could have picked up those trousers.

  The cars stopped when we reached the forward positions of the 7th. The mortar crews poured out of the back and like ants they secured the bedplate, uncovered the mortars and positioned them. They did it all so swiftly and smoothly, without needing to be ordered, that I was surprised - I had never seen such coordination. The battery commander had done a good job on them, I thought to myself - the mortar men were already half set up before I’d even sucked the last nicotine from my cigarette.