Nosov approached the soldier with the radio and replied personally:
‘102, 102, Birch here! Tell the air patrol to fuck off, and if those bastards shoot at us again, I’ll take them down with the RPG!’
‘Birch, answer the question, forget the rest!’
‘I won’t forget shit. Thank God we moved… In compensation, the Arabs are still waiting for us, just like before… Actually, now they’re ready because they know we’re about to attack!’
‘Birch, we order you to follow the assault units in zone B14! Confirm receipt!’
‘Receipt confirmed, 102! Zone B14, we’re heading for the position now!’
‘Over and out!’
So we went back to our burned-out positions.
Everything was black and covered in ashes; a light dust lingered in the air. There was a strong smell of explosives and acid that made our noses itch and went all the way down to our lungs. Our eyes burned, as teary as if someone had sliced up a giant onion.
We went onto the street and joined the paratrooper assault unit, whom we had been ordered to follow. They were all ready and couldn’t wait to begin.
A few minutes later came confirmation of the operational order and we set off for the first enemy-defended route. Between us, behind the assault unit, three tanks followed. On the other side of the block, a group just like ours was entering the enemy zone. We heard the first shots; they were coming from the top of our column. It was the paras firing at the Arabs, and then they moved to the next point. The tanks would come to the places to be liberated, launch a few rounds and then continue on their way, while we covered their retreat.
One of our tanks fired five rounds at a three-storey house where some machine guns were firing. Right after that came a missile from behind a fence that hit the tank full on. The explosion was extremely loud; we were twenty metres away and the powerful wave of heat blew us to the ground. This time nobody was going to deny us a nice fat shock…
The turret exploded, and after flying a long way it plummeted into a half-destroyed house. The chassis was in tatters. It was remarkable seeing such a powerful vehicle catch fire so quickly, like a box of matches. The guys inside had burned to death in less than a second.
Nosov stood up and shouted:
‘Onward, onward! Don’t stop! Everyone move!’ Then he crossed the street and unloaded a blast towards the gate from where the enemy had fired.
Moscow, from behind him, threw a hand grenade, while Zenith fired the machine gun. From inside they responded with a loud RPG blast, but it hit the inside wall of the courtyard. A piece of the wall blew up, raising a cloud of dust, and the broken bricks flew into the street. We rushed into the courtyard, shooting in the smoke and dust, and we took out the enemy.
That’s what we did, house by house, following the paratroopers. They moved very quickly, doing the majority of the work and leaving the survivors to us, tightening the ring even more.
By noon we had liberated almost the entire neighbourhood. The radio announced that the enemy had tried twice to break the ring at multiple points but both attempts had failed. Their losses numbered about five hundred men.
To conclude the operation, the infantry units joined us.
The infantry soldiers in that war were treated like beasts at the slaughterhouse. The commanders over at headquarters didn’t give a shit and used them as pawns. Fallen infantrymen surpassed the fallen in all the other units combined. Not because they were incompetent or their officers disorganised – no; simply because in Moscow they were scorned. In Russia they always say the infantry is the queen of the army. Well, if that were true, then the guys in the infantry paid too high a price to maintain that regal title.
Our group, meanwhile, had been given a street to clear. Nosov was talking on the radio with the tankers’ colonel, the one with the sad eyes who I had talked to before the beginning of the operation.
‘How goes it, Birch? Your men all healthy?’
‘Yes, all fine, it should be over soon…’ Nosov replied.
‘Did you see what happened to my “little box”?[16] The paras say that my guys exposed themselves too much…’
‘I saw it, we were right there… They stopped on the crossroads for too long; they should have fired fewer rounds and hidden behind us…’
‘Whore of a war, those were good boys… Well, good luck. I’ve sent you three light tanks for support, with ammo and food. They’ll be there within fifteen minutes…’
‘I’ll expect the tanks. Confirm receipt…’ Our captain was about to end the conversation.
‘Such shit, my friend…’ the colonel said suddenly. I could picture the melancholy look he had at that moment.
‘What shit?’ Nosov asked, knowing very well what he was referring to.
‘Fucking constitutional order…’
‘You know the only place where the constitutional order counts?’
The colonel was silent for a moment.
‘No, I can’t say that I do…’
‘It’s simple, old man: the cemetery!’
Hearing a conversation like that between two officers was like being splashed in the face with ice water – your mind began to replay the events of the last few hours and see things in a much simpler way. We were the ones who established the constitutional order, the ideal we were ready to lose our lives for, the ideal we all hated… But we knew that, in reality, such an ideal didn’t exist. At least not for our officers, not for our fallen and wounded, not for the families of the missing in action… Because if a soldier is ‘missing’, the government doesn’t pay anything for the transport of the body or for the funeral – but a missing person could also be a deserter or a traitor who abandoned his unit and went to the enemy side. Those who were truly missing were few, because in the large units the majority of the fallen were left on site – they were referred to as missing because the bodies ended up in common graves and nobody could find them. That was why we no longer had respect for the constitutional order – because we knew there was no order, the entire Nation had plunged into chaos.
About twenty minutes later three BMP-2 vehicles arrived with a group of soldiers sitting on top – they were Cossacks who had come to back us up. They were coming from the other part of town; they must have just finished an assault. The cars were dirty and the men were tired; one had a bloody bandage around his left arm. They were all veterans – there wasn’t a single young soldier among them. In order to be a little more comfortable riding on top of the tanks, they had put some old car seats on the armour.
As we approached, they came down from the vehicles and the first thing they did was have a cigarette. After smoking and eating the food they had brought, we restocked our ammo. As we reloaded our rifles, we exchanged information on how the operation was going. Then Nosov briefly explained the situation, showing them on the map the places where our intervention was needed. The Cossacks listened to him attentively, without asking useless questions, and when he finished we set off.
Within a couple of hours we had liberated three enemy-controlled positions, eliminating their scattered units, who tried to run away by hiding in the cellars.
We came to a very well-defended house and found a terrible spectacle before us. The bodies of our infantry were scattered everywhere; there must have been about thirty dead.
From the way they were positioned it was clear that the enemy had taken them by surprise. Maybe they were tired, and had made the mistake of not inspecting the area well enough, thus exposing themselves without having anyone to cover them. Many soldiers had had their throats cut and no longer had their vests, a sign that the enemy had already come out from their position to pillage them and finish off the wounded.