Every time I smelled that odour I would think of all that, and I told myself that I would rather have ended up with the ‘missing’. At least that way they could spare themselves those empty shots, flags and the whole song and dance at my grave.
We were hiding behind that vehicle, while Nosov and Moscow inspected the area. The house was big, two-storey, and before becoming the private residence of some local big shot it must have been a nursery school, built during the Soviet era. The roof had been turned into a big terrace, upon which we spotted an anti-aircraft gun; we called it a ‘Shilka’. It has four powerful cannons that fire so fast they can disintegrate an armoured car in seconds. It had to be destroyed; it posed too big a danger for our units.
In order to avoid killing one another, Nosov proposed the so-called ‘closed’ assault system: one team (the assault team) comes into the residence from one entrance, a second blocks the other exit (but doesn’t shoot, just keeps anyone from going out), and finally a third covers the first two.
I was on the assault team with Nosov. Jumping over the nursery school fence, we entered the yard. We immediately noticed a group of Arabs. They hadn’t seen us; they were sitting on some chairs by the stone staircase that led up to the front door of the house. They had their guns in their hands and were talking. Nosov signalled for me to strike.
While he and I shot at the Arabs sitting outside, three of our men jumped onto the stair, flung the door open and launched three hand grenades inside. They waited for them to explode, then to be on the safe side opened up again and threw in another two. The explosions were strong – the glass in the windows went halfway into the garden. The captain and I went inside while the other group went to block the exits. I opened a door, then Nosov and I shot two volleys crossways, making a big X in bullets, and then we jumped inside, into the dust. They responded with a long blast, we threw a grenade, then we moved to the next room. Three Arabs lay on the floor. One was trying to get up, but his legs were full of shrapnel. I finished him off with a bullet to the head. Without waiting, we rushed off to the second floor…
An assault on a building, watched by someone who doesn’t know the procedure, might look insane: people running through rooms, throwing hand grenades everywhere and shooting everything that moves. But in that chaos there is also a harmony; all the participants are perfectly synchronised, and they don’t need to utter a word, because each of them knows his job. While one breaks down a door, another throws a grenade and yet another already has the next one ready; then the first shoots a spray of bullets from top to bottom, right to left; behind him a comrade does the same in the opposite direction, then they jump in, and so on and so forth… Speed and the proper use of hand grenades is very important, since if they don’t injure the enemy at least they stun him. Being able to seize those seconds to kill him is fundamental, not stopping no matter what, just keeping pushing and pushing… Getting into a fire fight with the enemy is pointless and dangerous, because then he has the time to organise himself, make a retreat and exploit his knowledge of the place. If anyone gets hurt, he’s left where he is; nobody is allowed to stop.
Jumping over a wall, running, or generally moving with any agility is very difficult if you’re wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying weapons. It’s not like it is in the movies, where soldiers break windows with their heads, start kicking at doors and jump around everywhere.
Well executed assaults don’t last long. An expert squad can ‘clear out’ a five-storey building in less than ten minutes.
I was breathing hard; I could feel my nose was full of dust. The smell of burnt human flesh intermingled with that of fresh blood, explosives and gunpowder. I ran behind Nosov, pulling pin after pin from the hand grenades, throwing one into every room. I would shoot and jump in, passing the enemies’ disembowelled bodies lying on the floor, hitting them with a few extra bullets to make sure they were dead…
We finally managed to reach the door to the roof, but we didn’t have time to break it down before it was blasted apart from the other side when a powerful grenade hit it with a burst of flaming air. Luckily we were at each side of the door, and we immediately flung ourselves to safety into opposite corners. The room filled with black smoke; where the door used to be was now a burning hole in the wall. My ears were ringing unbearably and my eyes seemed determined to abandon me once and for all. I watched the scene as if I were outside my body; it didn’t seem as if I was really there…
To keep the enemy from reloading the grenade launcher, Nosov threw a series of hand grenades into the newly-formed gap.
‘Out!’ he yelled.
Shooting madly we leapt onto the roof and into the fog. We hit three Arabs. One of them tried to flee by jumping down onto the street, but our explorers were waiting below to finish him off. We put a hand grenade on the anti-aircraft gun then rushed back into the building. The explosion was impressive – the flaming fragments scattered widely, like so many fireworks.
We went down the stairs, being careful to avoid any surprises at every turn. But the enemy had been totally eliminated.
Only once we were outside the house did we start inspecting one another, to see if we were all in one piece. As I mentioned, many times someone would get some kind of wound but not realise it amidst the chaos of the battle. At the end of an assault, everyone inspected everyone else’s vests. A little dazed, covered in dust and debris, we were otherwise fine. Shoe had a cut on his hand. It wasn’t deep but a lot of blood was coming out; we wrapped a bandage around it to stop the bleeding.
‘We can’t let our guard down now,’ Nosov said. ‘Let’s defend the perimeter of the building and prepare ourselves for a possible counterattack.’
We had to keep that house under surveillance at all costs, waiting for our units to arrive. Moscow rushed back onto the roof and shot the three signal flares in a row. There was the risk that in the middle of the fog they wouldn’t be very visible, but a few minutes later we received a green flare in response from the other side of town – that meant that our column of men would begin marching towards us.
At that point our artillery units, who were positioned a few kilometres away, shot some illumination flares. Everything was as bright as day, yet the shadows fell to the ground strangely – the flares came from several directions, and each of us had a row of faint shadows at his feet. It was unnatural, it gave me the creeps.
The time it would take to get to our position should be a quarter of an hour at most – the problem was that we could no longer count on the surprise-effect. Now our enemies could easily spot us.
Suddenly, an RPG shell came at us from the street. No one had expected such a rapid attack. The grenade hit the facade of the building, and two of the explorers fell to the ground, killed by the shards.
‘Take positions!’ Nosov shouted immediately. He too was shaken by the enemy’s speed.