One Soldier's War In Chechnya

by Arkady Babchenko

  The yelling on the parade ground stops and the officers go back to the command post. The only sound now is the moaning of the gunners. The one who was shot at wheezes heavily and coughs as he tries to force some air into his chest.

  ‘I’m sick of their whining,’ says the platoon commander from his sleeping bag. ‘Hey, shitheads, if you don’t settle down I’ll come and stuff socks in your gobs,’ he shouts.

  It goes quiet on the square and the platoon commander falls asleep. I pour some water in a flask and go outside. Arkasha tosses a pack of cigarettes after me.

  ‘Give them a smoke.’

  I light two and poke them between their tattered lips. They smoke in silence, no-one speaks. What is there to say?

  An illumination flare rises in the sky over the police post near the grain elevator, then a red signal flare. A firefight starts. Short, chattering bursts of rifle fire echo across the steppe and then a machine-gun opens up on the roof of the elevator. Our 8th company is holed up on the 22nd floor, and from there they can cover half the town. The fighters have no hope of dislodging the police after one of our guys, Khodakovsky, mined the stairs for them.

  The machine-gunner has spotted some fighters and looses off short, targeted bursts. After a while the exchange peters out and the police troops send up a green flare to give the all-clear.

  The cigarettes burn down. I stub them out and give the gunners a drink of water. They gulp it greedily. I remember that we still have some rusks in our rations - now they’ll have to suck them like babies as they probably have no teeth left. The battalion sleeps.

  At the morning parade the two gunners are beaten again, but not as viciously as yesterday. They no longer squirm and just hang there, moaning quietly. Afterwards the armaments officer unties the ropes and they fall to the ground like sacks of flour. They can’t stand or lift their swollen arms. Their hands have gone black and their fingers are twisted. The Kombat kicks them a few more times, then takes their military ID cards and tears them into shreds.

  ‘If I catch one more son of a bitch with cartridges, I’ll shoot him without trial. That means every last one of you, old and new. Is that clear?’

  No-one replies.

  ‘Throw this shit out of the gate,’ he orders, nodding to the two prostrate forms. ‘Don’t give them money or travel documents - they don’t deserve it. They can find their own way home. I don’t need shit like that in the battalion.’

  The gunners are carried out and dumped on the street. They turn their heads and look up at us as the gates close behind them. They have no idea where to go or what to do. There’s no way they’ll make it to Mozdok. The fighters will probably get them right here in Argun. If I were them I’d try to reach the police block post and ask the guys there to put them on a convoy to Khankala.

  The police troops won’t refuse since our guys helped them last night. But even then they’ll be unable to fly out of Khankala and they’ll be left to wander around until they get taken prisoner. We stand in silence. The Kombat turns and goes back to the command post.

  The gunners sit at the gates like abandoned dogs until night falls. At dawn I take up my lookout shift in the admin block and the first thing I do is glance onto the street. They’re gone.

  One morning the battalion gets a visit from the top brass. We’ve just got up and are washing ourselves from hollow support blocks, knee-high piers for propping up the metal walls of the unfinished meat-packing shop. Each one holds about five litres of greenish water from melted snow, no good for drinking but fine for a rinse.

  A captured Mitsubishi off-roader drives in followed by two armoured personnel carriers loaded with humanitarian aid packages. It belongs to Colonel Verter, the regiment commander.

  Colonel Verter steps down from the silver jeep and the battalion is hastily ordered to fall in as if the alarm had been sounded. We come running, still dressing.

  ‘I wonder what’s up?’ says Pincha, leaning on Garik as he wraps a puttee around his leg. The cloth is black with filth and stinks to hell. Even though we’re used to all manner of stench we wrinkle our noses, unable to fathom how he managed to foul his puttees so badly. We’ve only recently had a steam bath and since then all we’ve done is sunbathe half-naked. Then again, Pincha always walks around in several layers of clothing and boots and his feet are usually so dirty you could plant potatoes between his toes. Arkasha tells him he should scrape off the dirt from his feet for blacking his boots and just sell his polish. That always amuses us.

  It’s forty-five minutes before morning parade and no-one knows why we have been fallen in. We stand for a while, guessing what might have happened, then a rumour spreads along the ranks that the regiment commander has brought medals and will decorate those who have distinguished themselves.

  Medals are good news and we brighten visibly. We don’t say as much but we all hope to get one and return to our homes in full splendour. We didn’t give a damn about this in Grozny or up in the mountains where the only thing we wanted was to survive. But now peace is within reach and we want to go back to Civvy Street as heroes.

  I nudge Lyokha and wink. He’ll certainly be hanging a ‘For Bravery’ gong on his chest today having been twice commended by the platoon commander before we even left Grozny. He grins back.

  They carry a table covered with a red cloth to the centre of the parade ground and arrange lots of little boxes and award certificates on it. The medals cover almost half the surface, enough, it seems, for all of us to get one.

  It starts to drizzle. A few drops spatter on the covers of the booklets and smudge them. Two soldiers pick up the table and move it up to the wall for shelter, placing it next to the torture rack. We are to be decorated with a gallows as a backdrop!

  Pincha thinks our first award ceremony might have offered a little more pomp and circumstance and that the colonel could have arranged a military band.

  ‘I’ve seen medal presentations on TV and there’s always a band playing a brass fanfare,’ he says. ‘Otherwise there’s no sense in awarding the medals. The whole point is that you’re presented them to a fanfare.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I scoff. ‘And maybe you’d also like the president to kiss your butt while they give it to you?’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ says Pincha, with a thoughtful look in his eyes. ‘I reckon every last one here should be able to pin a medal on his chest. Ever been in Chechnya? Well then, dear private, please accept this “Merit in Battle” medal. Were you there during the storming of Grozny? Then have “For Bravery” too. What, you even served in the mountains? Then you must also have the “Order of Courage”.’

  ‘You know they only give “Courage” to those who are wounded or killed. The most you can hope for is “Merit in Battle - First Class”.’

  ‘Well, that’s not bad either,’ Pincha concedes. ‘But in that case I expect a fanfare with it.’

  ‘Do you know how many regiments there are just in our army group?’ Garik asks. ‘No band could attend all those medal presentations. And how do you know they even have a band?’ We then argue whether the army group has a full military band. Pincha and Fixa are adamant that such a large formation must have one, or at the very least a small company of musicians. How else could they have celebrated the 23rd of February, Defenders of the Fatherland Day in Khankala? There was bound to have been a parade of some kind and you don’t have a parade without a brass band.

  Garik and Lyokha don’t think there is a band in Chechnya. But either way, everyone agrees with Pincha that some extra sense of occasion is appropriate today.

  Still the question arises: If there’s no band, how do they give generals a proper send off if one of them gets killed?

  ‘Generals don’t get killed,’ says Oleg. ‘Have you ever heard of even one of them dying here? No, they all sit tight in Moscow.’ ‘What about General Shamanov?’ objects Pincha. ‘He’s down here and drives around the front line. He could easily get blown up on a mine. And Bulgakov, he was up in the mountains with u
s, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Shaman won’t get blown up,’ I chip in. ‘I’ve seen how he travels. He has two armoured personnel carriers riding with him and two choppers buzzing round overhead all the time. And even though he only rides in a jeep you can be sure the sappers have swept the road ahead. No, Pincha, it’s not so easy to blow up an army group commander. Colonels, sure, they get whacked. I’ve seen a dead colonel with my own eyes and even heard about colonels being taken prisoner. But generals are another matter.’

  ‘But they come down from Moscow for inspections here, don’t they?’ persists Lyokha. ‘Some generals or other from GHQ. fly in and bunches of them get flown around in choppers. They could easily get shot down in the mountains.’

  ‘I somehow don’t recall a single inspection by generals in the mountains,’ I say. ‘Seems to me they just come down in order to collect their war-zone per diem, and even then they go no farther than Khankala or Severny - they count as forward positions too.’

  ‘How is Khankala a forward position?’ asks Pincha, confused. ‘It’s well in the rear.’

  ‘It might be the rear for you, but in the generals’ expense claims it’s the front line all right. Each day they spend there counts as two, and then they get the presidential bonus of fifteen hundred roubles a day in wartime, plus extra leave. Three trips to Chechnya and they get another “Courage” for their chest.’

  ‘I stopped in Severny on my way back from hospital,’ Lyokha tells us. ‘It’s great there now, not like a couple of months ago. Nice and peaceful, green grass, white-painted kerbs, straight roads. They hooked it up to the electricity recently and now Severny lights up like a Christmas tree in the evening. They even have women there, officers get posted there with their wives. Just imagine, in the evening couples wander round the lanes under street lights, just like back home. The soldiers there don’t carry weapons with them and they get hot food three times a day and a steam bath once a week. They don’t even have lice - I asked while I was there. They built a modern barracks there, you know, just like in the American movies. They even have porcelain toilets with seats, white ones - I kid you not! I went specially to use them. And lads, you won’t believe me, but they even have a hotel for those inspections we’ve just been talking about. Televisions with five channels, hot water, showers, double-glazed windows...’

  We listen, mouths gaping, spellbound by his description of the Severny base and airport on Grozny’s outskirts as if we were hearing a fairy tale. White porcelain toilets, mess halls, double glazing. It seems fantastic that Grozny can have a hotel. We saw this city when it was dead, when the only residents were rabid dogs that fed on corpses in cellars. And now it has a hotel - that surely can’t be true?

  Severny is only a stone’s throw from Grozny’s Minutka Square, where the heaviest fighting took place, and from that cross-shaped hospital where we lost masses of guys. This is a city of death, and as far as we are concerned there should never be any luxury there so that what happened is never forgotten. Otherwise this whole war amounts to nothing but a cynical slaughter of thousands of people. It’s not right to build new life on their bones.

  We’ve just returned from the mountains where our battalion suffered a fifty-per-cent loss - you couldn’t even raise your head without being shot at. Up there they are still killing and shooting down helicopters, while in Grozny our commanders are apparently taking hot showers and watching TV. We are willing to believe in white porcelain toilets, but a hotel for the generals is going too far.

  ‘You’re making it up,’ says Murky. ‘It can’t be true.’

  ‘Oh yes it can, I saw it myself.’

  ‘Saw it yourself, did you? You, the same person who tells us that herds of generals prance around in the mountains like antelopes? Well, that at least can’t be true - they’d never leave the hotel.’

  ‘I still want to know what happens when they bump off a general,’ Pincha says, returning to the topic. Lyokha’s account has made no impression on him - he took it all for a fairy tale and nothing else.

  ‘If a general dies, do they pay his widow an allowance or not? And how do they pay it? Do they bring it round to her house, or does she stand in line with the rest of us in a cashier’s office at the base and write letters to the newspapers saying “Please help me, my husband was killed and the state has forgotten me”? There were lots of women like that back at my regiment, struggling through all the red tape after their men got killed.’

  Pincha’s right. When we signed our contract to serve in Chechnya we saw women like this too. We got an advance before we moved out, and we waited for the money in the same line as they did. Out of respect for the mothers who gave up their most precious possessions for their country - the lives of their sons - we always let them go ahead of us in this queue for the state’s attention. They waited there to receive some elementary compassion and sympathy and yet they got nothing in return, not even money for a funeral.

  These women got brushed off everywhere by the bureaucrats. Now the mothers of Fly and Yakovlev and the others are probably also fighting their way through red tape to get some basic rights.

  ‘Of course they don’t stand in the same queue. You can be sure a general’s widow gets her payments in full and straight away,’ says Fixa.

  ‘After all, we’re talking about a general, not some worthless Pincha, the like of which they can heap up by the hundred every day and not care. But we don’t have that many generals. They have to be bred, trained in the academy, educated. I dare say the president himself knows them all by name. Yes, I bet he does.’ Fixa pauses to consider his latest revelation. ‘Hmm, I wonder what it’s like when the president shakes your hand...’

  Arkasha finally puts an end to the discussion.

  ‘It doesn’t matter if you are a general or a colonel,’ he says. ‘What’s important is the position you hold. To be the widow of the chief of the military accommodation authorities or the widow of a general in command of some military district deep in Siberia are completely different things, even though the district commander is higher in rank. And like hell does the president know them all by name - we have countless generals. Up at the defence ministry they wander round like orderlies and clean the latrines - since there are no ordinary soldiers there, the generals have to get on their knees with rags and mess up their dress trousers. I heard this from a colonel who asked us to help file a complaint on his behalf. A general beat him up and broke his tooth so he grassed on him, told them how the general was using stolen materials to build himself a house and had soldiers sweating away for him on the building site. They have their own system of hazing in the ranks, you can rest assured.’

  I don’t believe him - it seems unlikely that they have violent hazing even in the ministry. Then again, why not? Generals are not made from pastry, they were once lieutenants themselves A couple more wars like this and our Kombat will become a general too; he’ll get promoted and cudgel us all from up there instead. And what’s so special about it?

  At last Regimental Commander Verter comes out onto the parade ground accompanied by the Kombat. We fall silent.

  ‘Greetings, comrades!’ he shouts, as if addressing a parade on Red Square and not some depleted battalion in Argun.

  ‘Greetings, sir,’ we reply half-heartedly.

  ‘At ease,’ he tells us, even though it hadn’t occurred to anyone to stand to attention.

  The colonel talks to us about drunkenness. He calls us bastards and pissheads and threatens to string us all up by our feet from the rack so ingeniously devised by our Kombat. He fully approves of this innovation and will advise commanders of other battalions to draw from our experience. And just let any soldiers dare complain to him about non-regulation treatment - he intends to fight drunkenness and theft in the ranks!

  After this he goes on at length about the duty we have fulfilled in the mountains and how the Motherland will not forget its fallen heroes, and such nonsense. He strides up and down on stiff legs, his beer belly thrust forward, an
d tells us what fine fellows we are.

  ‘Calls us crap, then sucks up to us,’ Murky comments.

  ‘You know what?’ says Arkasha, narrowing his eyes. ‘He’s on his way up. He’s just been appointed deputy division commander and that means he’ll be a general. And for a successful anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya, Colonel Verter has been put forward for the “Hero of Russia” medal. A guy I know at GHQ saw the letter of recommendation.’

  ‘No way!’ exclaims Oleg. ‘He’s a coward! He’s only been to the front once. He got half the battalion killed for some lousy hillock and he still didn’t manage to take it. His sort should be shot - no way can he become a general and get the “Hero of Russia” on top.’

  ‘Sure he can. It may be a lousy hillock to you but in his reports it’s a strategically important height, defended by superior enemy forces. And we didn’t throw ourselves at them head-on for three days, we executed a tactical manoeuvre as a result of which the enemy were forced to abandon their positions. It’s all a matter of presentation. Don’t be so naive. The war isn’t fought here, but in Moscow, and what they say goes. Don’t you agree that you’re a hero? I suppose you’ll refuse a medal now?’

  No, no-one intends to turn down any medals. If each of us helps heave a handful of colonels and generals up the career ladder, then let them give us something for our trouble in return.

  ‘I wonder what Verter will do with his Mitsubishi after the war?’ Pincha says.

  ‘Don’t worry your pretty head about it, he’s not going to give it to you,’ replies Arkasha.

  ‘Now that would be a fine thing. I wonder how he’ll get it out of here? On a transport plane probably.’

  After the colonel’s address the awards begin. He stands at the table below the rack and in a wooden voice starts to read out the decoration order of the army group commander.

  We wait impatiently. Who will be first? Who does the Motherland see as the best and most worthy among us? Maybe Khodakovsky - he never got a scratch but was one of the first to reach Minutka Square during the assault on Grozny. And he fought like a true warrior in the mountains. Or Emil, our