Zinky Boys (19 page)

That was typical of camp life. It took just one year to turn me from a normal, healthy lad into a dystrophic who couldn't walk through the ward without the help of a nurse. I eventually went back to my unit and got beaten up again, until one day my leg was broken and I had to have an operation. The battalion commander came to see me in hospital.

‘Who did this?' he asked.

It had happened at night but I knew perfectly well who'd done it. But I wasn't going to grass. You just didn't grass — that was the iron law of camp life.

‘Why keep quiet? Give me his name and I'll have the bastard court-martialled.'

I kept quiet. The authorities were powerless against the unwritten rules of army life, which were literally life and death to us. If you tried to fight against them you always lost in the end. Near the end of my two years I even tried to beat up someone myself. I didn't manage it, though. The ‘rule of the grandads' doesn't depend on individuals — it's a product of the herd instinct. First you get beaten up, then you beat up others. I had to hide the fact that I couldn't do it from my fellow
dembels.
I would have been despised by them as well as by the victims.

When you get home for demob you have to report to the local recruiting office. A coffin was brought in while I was there — our 1st lieutenant, by sheer chance. ‘He died in the execution of his international duty,' I read on the little brass plate, and remembered how he used to stumble along the corridor, blind drunk, and smash the sentry's jaw in. It happened regularly once a week. If you didn't keep out of the way you'd end up spitting your teeth out. There's not much humanity in a human being — that's what war taught me. If a man's hungry, or ill, he'll be cruel — and that's just about all humanity amounts to.

I only went to the cemetery once. ‘He died a hero.' ‘He displayed courage and valour.' ‘He fulfilled his military duty.' That's
what the gravestones said. There were heroes, of course there were, in the particular sense in which the word is used in war; like when a man throws himself over his friend to protect him, or carries his wounded commander to safety. But I know that one of those heroes in that cemetery deliberately overdosed, and another was shot dead by a sentry who caught him breaking into the food store (we'd all climbed in there at some time or other … I longed for biscuits and condensed milk). Forget what I said about the cemetery, please, tear it up. No one can say what's true about them and what isn't, now. Let the living have their medals and the dead their legends — keep everyone happy!

The war and life back home have one thing in common: neither are anything like the way they're described in books! I've created a world of my own for myself, thank God, a world of books and music which has cut me off from all that and been my salvation. It was only here at home that I began to sort out who I really was and what had happened to me. I prefer to sort it out alone. I don't like going to the Afgantsi clubs, and I can't see myself going to schools to give speeches about war, and telling the kids how I was turned from an immature boy into a killer, no, not even a killer, into a machine that just needed food and sleep and nothing else. I hate those Afgantsi. Their clubs are just like the army itself, and they have the same army mentality. ‘We don't like the heavy metal fans, do we, lads? OK, let's go and smash their teeth in!' That's a part of my life I want to leave behind for ever. Our society is a very cruel one, which is a fact I never noticed before.

When I was in hospital over there we stole some Phenazipam — it's used to treat mental breakdown and the dose is one or two tablets per day. One night a couple of the boys took 30 between them, and at three in the morning went to the kitchen to wash the dishes (which were all clean). A few others and I sat there grimly, playing cards. Someone else pissed on his pillow. A totally absurd scene, until a nurse rushed out in horror and called the guards.

That's how I mainly remember the war — as totally absurd.

A Mother

I had twins, two boys, but only Kolya survived. He was on the ‘Special Care' register of the Maternity Institute until he was eighteen, when his call-up papers arrived. Was it necessary to send boys like him to Afghanistan? My neighbour kept getting at me — and perhaps she was right. ‘Couldn't you scrape a couple of thousand roubles together and bribe someone?' We knew a woman who did exactly that, and kept her son out. And my son had to go instead. I didn't realise that I could save my son with money. I'd thought the best gift I could give him was a decent upbringing.

I went to visit him for the oath-taking ceremony. I could see he wasn't ready for war. He was quite lost. I'd always been honest with him.

‘You're not ready, Kolya. I'm going to appeal … '

‘Don't appeal, Mum, and don't let them humiliate you. Do you really think it bothers them if I'm “not ready”. They don't give a damn!'

All the same I made an appointment with the battalion commander.

‘He's my only son. If something happened to him I couldn't go on living. And he's not ready, I can see he's not ready.'

He was sympathetic. ‘Go back to your local recruiting office. If you can get them to send me an official request I'll have him transferred back home.'

I took a night flight home and got to the enlistment office at nine o'clock. Our Military Commissar is Comrade Goryachev. He was sitting there talking to someone on the phone.

‘What d'you want?'

I told him. The phone rang and he picked up the receiver, looked at me and said, ‘I won't do it.'

I begged him. I went on my knees. I was prepared to kiss his hand. ‘He's my only child.' He didn't even get up from his desk. ‘Please, at least write his name down!' I begged as I left. I still hoped he might reconsider, if he didn't have a heart of stone.

Four months went by. They were put through an accelerated
intensive three-month training course and suddenly I got a letter from my son in Afghanistan. Just four months … A single summer.

One morning I left the flat to go to work. They met me as I was going down the stairs. Three soldiers and a woman. The men were in front, carrying their caps in their left hands. Somehow I knew that this was a sign of mourning. I turned round and ran upstairs. They realised I must be the mother so they followed me upstairs. I went down in the lift — I wanted to rush into the street and run away, escape, put my hands over my ears and block everything out. By the time I reached the ground floor — the lift had stopped to let people get in — they were standing there waiting for me. I pressed the button and went up again … I got to my floor and ran to the flat, but in my shock forgot to slam the door shut. I heard them coming in. I hid in the bedroom, they came after me, with their caps in their left hands.

One of them was Goryachev, the Military Commissar. With what little strength I had left I threw myself at him like a cat.

‘You are dripping with my son's blood!' I screamed. ‘You are dripping with my son's blood!'

He said nothing. I tried to hit him. I can't remember what happened after that.

It was over a year before I felt I could face people again. Before that I was totally alone. I blamed everyone for my son's death — my friend who worked in the bakery, a taxi-driver I'd never seen before in my life, Commissar Goryachev. I realise that was wrong. Then I wanted to be with the only people who could know what I was going through.

We got to know each other at the cemetery, by the gravesides. You'll see one mother hurrying from the bus in the evening after work; another already sitting by her gravestone, crying; a third painting the railing round her son's grave. We talk about only one thing — our children, as if they were still alive. I know some of their stories off by heart.

‘I went out on to the balcony, looked down and saw two officers and a doctor. Back in the flat I looked through the peep-hole to see where they were going. They stopped in our hallway and
turned right. Was it to the neighbours? They had a son in the army, too. The bell … I open the door:

‘“Has my son been killed?”

‘“Be brave, Mother … ” “Mother”, they called me.'

‘It wasn't like that for me. They just said: “The coffin's outside, Mother. Where shall we put it?” My husband and I were getting ready to go to work, the eggs were frying, the kettle was boiling … '

‘Mine was called up, had his hair shaved off … and five months later they brought him back in a coffin.'

‘Mine too … '

‘Mine — nine months … '

‘“Is there anything in there?” I asked the soldier accompanying the coffin.

‘I saw him being laid in the coffin. He is there.' I stared at him and he lowered his eyes. ‘Something's in there … '

‘Did it smell? Ours did … '

‘And ours. We even had little white worms dropping on to the floor … '

‘Mine smelt only of fresh timber.'

‘If the helicopter is blown up they collect the pieces. They find an arm, or a leg, and identify them by the watch, or the socks … ' ‘Our coffin had to wait outside for an hour. Our son was six foot six tall, he was a para. It was like a sarcophagus, a wooden coffin inside a zinc one. It took six men to get it up the stairs … ' ‘It took them eighteen days to bring mine home. They wait until the plane is full, the black tulip … They flew to the Urals first, then to Leningrad, and only then to Minsk … '

‘They didn't send back a single one of his belongings … If only we had something to remember him by … He smoked — if only we had his lighter … '

‘I'm glad they don't open the coffins, so that we don't see what has happened to our sons. I'll always remember him alive and in one piece … '

How can we survive? We won't live long with this pain and these wounds in our hearts.

‘We're going to give you a new flat,' I was promised by the local authority. ‘You can choose any empty flat in the area.'

I found one in the city centre, built of proper brick, not prefab concrete, with a nice modern layout. I went back to the town hall with the address.

‘Are you out of your mind? That block's strictly for Central Committee members.'

‘Is my son's blood that much cheaper than theirs?'

The local Party secretary at the institute where I work is a good man, and honest. I don't know how he managed to get access to the Central Committee on my behalf. All he said to me was this: ‘You should have heard how they spoke to me. “All right, she's grief-stricken — but what's wrong with you?” That's what they asked me. I was almost thrown out of the Party.'

Perhaps I should have gone myself to get an answer from them?

‘I'm going to the grave today. My son is there, with his friends, and mine.'

Private, Tank-Crew

There's something wrong with my memory and I may have to drop out of my second year at college. Words and faces, even my own feelings, seem to escape me. All that's left are fragments, bits and pieces, as if there's something missing inside …

I remember these words from the military oath:

‘I stand ready to defend my Motherland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, when ordered to do so by the Soviet Government, and, as a soldier of the armed forces of the USSR, I swear to defend it with courage, skill, dignity and honour, not sparing my blood and even my life for the achievement of total victory over our foes … '

From my first days in Afghan …

I thought I was in paradise. For the first time I saw oranges growing on trees. I hadn't yet seen mines hanging like oranges from those same trees (the tank-aerial touches the trip-wire and triggers the bomb). When the ‘Afghan wind' blows, your porridge is full of sand, the sun is blotted out and it gets so dark you can't
see your hand in front of your face. A few hours later the sun comes out and you see the mountains again. Not a sign of war. Then — a burst of machine-gun fire, a mortar attack, the crack of a sniper's bullet, and two of your mates are dead. Sun, mountains, and the gleam of a snake in the sand.

You can't imagine what death is like even with the bullets whistling overhead. A body lies in the dust and you call out to it, because you can't take in what's happened, although a voice inside you says, ‘That's what death is.' I was wounded in the leg, but not as badly as I thought. ‘I seem to be injured,' I thought. I felt surprised but calm. My leg was hurting, but I couldn't quite believe that this had happened to me personally. I was still a new boy — I wanted a chance to fight and go home a hero.

Someone cut away the top of my boot and applied a tourniquet to my vein, which was severed. I was in pain but it would have been cowardly to show it so I kept quiet. Running from tank to tank means crossing an open space up to a hundred metres wide. There were shells flying about and rocks flying in all directions but I wasn't about to admit I couldn't run and crawl with the rest of them … I'd've looked like a coward. I crossed myself and ran, covered with blood. The battle lasted for another hour or more. We'd started out at 4 a.m., fighting didn't stop until 4 p.m., when we had something to eat. I remember my bloody hands tearing at the white bread. Later I found out that my friend had died in hospital from a bullet in the head. I kept waiting for his name to be mentioned at evening roll-call: ‘Igor Dashko was killed while fulfilling his international duty.' He was a quiet boy and no ‘Hero of the Soviet Union', but all the same, he shouldn't have been forgotten so immediately and completely, and just wiped off the lists …

Who was I talking about? Oh yes, Igor Dashko … I saw him laid out in his coffin. I wasn't even sad any more, but I looked at him for a long while so I wouldn't forget …

From my time back home:

We flew to Tashkent and went to the station, but couldn't buy tickets. That evening four of us slipped 50 roubles each to two conductors, who — lo and behold — found us seats in their train. They got 100 roubles each, nice work if you can get it, but we
didn't care. We were laughing like madmen and thinking, ‘We're alive, we're alive!!'