When we reached the position, we realised it was an inferno. The paras were agitated and running all over the place, by that point not even covering themselves. Our task was to liberate a house; they had tried to attack it twice, unsuccessfully, and were now waiting for support from us and the tank. We all advanced together, breaking through the enemy defence.
We had been able to push back the enemy’s defence almost twenty kilometres. Command was happy because usually only five kilometres at most would get liberated in a day, whereas we had been really fast. But every time we concluded one operation, our assistance was needed elsewhere. They ordered us to take out snipers positioned in various buildings, to launch assaults on buildings, help surround enemy-controlled areas, sabotage their equipment… We were exhausted. The paratroopers took turns, whereas we saboteurs hadn’t slept for three days. I felt so tired that I didn’t have any strength left to eat.
After a short skirmish on a narrow road – where we had destroyed a nursery school, our tanks razing the playground completely – we found ourselves who knows how running through the rooms of a destroyed building, shooting the enemy from such a close range that we could almost reach out and touch them.
I ended up on the top floor with Shoe, to try to eliminate the last big gun. We launched two hand grenades.
In the dust coming down from the ceiling we couldn’t see anything, and we ran right into four enemies who, like us, were circling around like blind kittens in the grey, dirty cloud which smelled like rubble and burnt explosives.
There in Chechnya I had never shot anyone from such a close range.
Meanwhile on the second floor our captain had taken a prisoner and downed eight enemies, all by himself.
When I came out with Shoe I was completely dazed. Captain Nosov was asking Moscow to keep an eye on the Arab prisoner while he, Spoon and Zenith went to check on the basement.
I sat down on the stairs next to Moscow, across from the terrified prisoner, who kept on trying to communicate something to us. Moscow wasn’t listening to him; he was sleepy and worn out, as we all were. As soon as the captain turned his back, Moscow pulled out his gun, an Austrian Glock, one of his ‘trophies’, and with a derisive scowl shot the prisoner in the head and the chest.
The captain turned around and without saying a word looked at him with pity.
Moscow went and sat down next to the dead man and closed his eyes, succumbing to a wave of exhaustion.
Looking at all of us as if he were actually meeting us for the first time, the captain said:
‘This is too much, boys. Everyone to the carrier, to rest behind the line.’
In single file, like zombies, we headed for our cars. My head felt so heavy that I was convinced if I stopped at all it would explode.
We went behind the line, into the area guarded and defended by our infantry. We fell asleep instantly – I didn’t even have the chance to finish taking off my coat and side bags before I fell into oblivion, like a dead man.
It wouldn’t seem so, but the scariest time of all in war is when you’re resting. In those moments you become aware of all the horrors of the situation you’ve found yourself in. While you don’t even have the time to think during operations and just worry about the essential actions needed to carry out an order, everything that would have an impact on your spirit – impressions, doubts, feelings of guilt – comes to the surface when you stop to rest. Then you can’t help but despair, because you’d like to rest and forget the war for a few hours, but you know it’s not possible. You spend a lot of time half-awake and half-asleep, reliving what you’ve just gone through and thus fuelling your tiredness even more.
The only time when you can really rest is when you simply pass out, as if someone had pulled your plug all of a sudden. That’s how I felt then.
… A little later, Moscow woke me up by tapping my chest with the butt of his Kalashnikov.
Slowly and reluctantly I opened my eyes and looked around. I struggled to remember where I was. I couldn’t put anything into focus.
Moscow’s face looked tired. He was chewing on a piece of bread. It was dark outside, impossible to tell the time. I checked my watch, but I couldn’t even see the numbers; it was like everything was shrouded in fog.
‘What’s going on, how long did we sleep?’ I asked Moscow.
‘We didn’t sleep for shit, brother… And it doesn’t look like we’ll be going back to sleep any time soon.’
I put my face in my hands, trying to muster the strength to get up and start thinking. I needed to sleep, I felt utterly exhausted. My clothes were dirty and damp, my jacket smelled like sweat and dirt. I was a wreck.
Moscow went to wake the others:
‘Come on, guys, we’re leaving now… They need us.’
They were all in despair – they didn’t want to get up. But griping and cursing, they got to their feet.
Captain Nosov was going around with the handset to his ear and an infantryman with the field radio in a backpack was running after him like a little dog. The captain was getting angry, he kept repeating to who knows who, on the radio, that we had got rest for the first time in three days, that we were beat. All to no avail, because after a while Nosov said, in a tone that recalled the sound of tap shoes:
‘Yes, Comrade Colonel! I confirm, order received!’
So they were sending us to the front lines again.
I didn’t even want to think about it.
I went to the metal vat filled with water. I plunged my hands in; the water was nice and cool; it gave me a light shiver. So I dunked my whole head underwater, and lingered for a moment, holding my breath.
I opened my eyes inside the vat and saw complete darkness. Startled, I pulled my head out immediately and gasped for breath.
The darkness I saw in the vat gave me a bad feeling, it seemed as if death might be like that – dark and airless.
I stood over the vat, and watched the reflection of my face and of my life up to that point dancing on the water. But I stepped back immediately – I didn’t want the water to become still, too much like a mirror. According to an old Siberian tradition, looking in the mirror before facing a risk brings bad luck.
And from what I understood from the bits of the radio conversation between Nosov and some unknown colonel, we would be facing many a risk indeed…
We all sat in a circle, next to the car, as we always did before leaving for a mission. Moscow explained the situation: during the night a group of enemies had broken through the ring we had around the city, and some of our infantry were trapped in a building surrounded by Arabs… We had to free them; the attack was set for six in the morning. Only two hours away.
I chewed on a piece of buttered bread, trying to reestablish contact with reality. Moscow was talking; I was taking little sips of boiling hot soup from a cup made out of an old tin. I was slowly waking up.
Fifteen minutes later we were in the car, once again headed for the line of fire.
During the trip Nosov gave us his take:
‘First our command makes a mistake by leaving a weak spot in the ring around the city. Then the Arabs come in and make trouble, and even if they don’t manage to advance or to do anything serious they take our soldiers hostage… Our nearby troops can’t make it in time, and now it’s up to us to break through their defence for the second time. And if we don’t attack now, our men will die for sure… It’s a farce, the colonels in command know very well that prisoners get killed, but it’s in their interest to look like they tried to save them…’
To tell the truth, at that moment I understood absolutely nothing about the situation, I was just trying to rest as much as possible so that I wouldn’t collapse later during battle. None of my comrades said anything; the captain went on talking by himself, pondering military tactics, making comparisons to similar cases he had encountered in the past.