The only protection from bullets and bullet splinters were immovable APCs on the road which were abandoned by us. The close proximity of the enemy made their large-caliber machine-guns useless. In this cocktail of screams, shots and grenade explosions, the commander made an attempt to get into the carrier to help the shell-shocked driver, whose position inside prevented us from being able to hide behind its armour. All our attempts to stop the convulsive movement of the heavy eight-wheeled frame with the butts of rifles on the armour and our shouting yielded no results. Hardly had the commander put his hands over the hatch’s clamp, when the second fatal grenade shot resounded.
I was there; I just heard a loud clap. Then the five-meter APC’s trunk jerked and almost simultaneously the armour cracked like an eggshell and hit the company commander head. His powerful, well-muscled body was tossed into the ditch, straight to Soul’s feet. By this time Soul’s face became so inflated, that his head seemed twice as large.
The commander was thrashing about the ground, shaking his head so that the ingot had turned into a solid blood clot with hair clumps and only one miraculously saved eye with a furiously rotating pupil. That was horrible! At such moments a man is guided by his instincts rather than by his mind. Soul rushed at the commander, pressing him down with his body, while the others were frozen as if turned into stone. The commander, trying to get rid of Soul, was shaking his smashed head from side to side. We finally managed to bandage his head, but I do not know how. Somebody was vomiting nearby. The battle continued.
The carrier took fire — the red-hot fragments set aflame the barricade we had made out of mattresses on the zinc ammunition load. There was a wounded driver enveloped in pungent smoke in the vehicle’s interior. In a couple of minutes the ammunition load would detonate. While we, being busy with the commander and regrouping, were running between cars and creeping over the ditch, Soul had pulled out the driver who was riddled with splinters and, ignoring the shelling, covered the fire in the carrier with sand.
After the commander and the driver had been evacuated, Beck took command. We got to know on the jabbering walkie-talkie that the commander died aboard the helicopter.
The back-up arrived astonishingly fast. Our battalion, consisting of two platoons and the fourth company that joined us, with the support of Afghan commandos and two undamaged tanks, made the mujahedeens retreat to alternate positions prepared beforehand. Having organized the all-round defense, we decided to take the initiative in the battle.
The garden surrounded by the heavy adobe wall, the concrete bridge blown up at the end of the kishlak (see “Terminology and Glassary” — Editor), the narrow concrete road with the disabled, burned tank, — all of these came together in the bright and smooth color of a sunset. We decided to dislodge the enemy from his positions with a bold attack. The commandos went in the center of the attacking line, and two of our platoons were on the flanks. The fourth company was preparing r the attack at the garden. The sun went downrapidly, leaving us no time to adjust our strategy.
The attack misfired. The commandos fell back, taking with them two dead and three wounded fighters. We retreated too, not having managed to make it to the right flank of the enemy. Our flimsy advantage was destroyed by the enemy’s heavy-caliber machine gun, which came from the left flank.
During the roll call after the failed attack, we learned that Beck and Soul, who with their group had attacked the left flank from where the mujahedeen’s machine-gun had rained us with fire, had gone.
We had to report that to the battalion commander.
— “Hectare-4, Hectare-4. This is Mars. Do you copy? Over.”
— “Mars, Mars, This is Hectare-4, read you. I’m in the last position on the enemy’s left flank. We are ready to attack. Over”, — Beck reported the situation calmly.
— “Hectare-4.This is Mars. You are ready to support the attack. Roger that. How many of you are there, son? Over”. The commander was definitely trying to make sense of the current situation.
— “Mars, This is Hectare-4. There are two of us here, just two; we grabbed our “samovar” (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor). Ready to support the attack with fire”, it was obvious that Beck was flying into a rage.
The commander made a decision.
— “Calm down, son. ‘Elephants’ (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) are going to strike from two barrels. Try to adjust the fire. Over”. We passed “Get ready to attack” down the line.
It was beautiful. In gathering dusk two tanks at great speed, simultaneously turning around, lept out into the position for the straight shot. Just the look of their maneuver made our hearts beat faster, the dose of adrenalin made our knees tremble and our heads spin. The tanks stopped sharply, and at the same time, seemingly without preparation, fired a volley towards the left flank. A cloud of dense dust, almost black in the coming dusk, covered the enemy. At this moment the walkie-talkie began to speak with Soul’s stammering voice: “М-а-а-r-s, М-а-а-а-r-s, th-i-s i-s S-o-u-l… Shots landed 15 meters from us. Sergeant is wounded. Th-i-si-s S-o-u-l, over!” Everybody froze, waiting for the command. “Calm down, son, no shots anymore. Support the attack, over!” we could sense in the commander’s voice a note of suppressed laugher. Then there was a command “Forward!”. Almost in full darkness, torn by our tracing fire, we rushed in silence upon the mujahedeen’s positions. The machine gun opened from the left flank, but Soul covered us. The mujahedeen abandoned their position and retreated with no resistance.
“That’s the place!”. At the next table, breaking the taboo, helicopter pilots bent over the map which had been taken by someone. Without ceremony I interrupted the man I was talking with, and approached their table. Now, so many years after the company commander’s death, I felt tears welling up in my eyes, but I was not ashamed of them. “That’s the place,” — I said to myself after twelve years — “look, here’s the place where I was shot in my head by a grenade launcher”. Suddenly, my companion stabbed his finger right at the point our group had passed just twenty-four hours before the mujahedeen’s ambush!
“Hey, man, give me more details about the grenade launcher’s attack on your head. “I finally began to grasp the meaning of what was going on. “That was the sergeant who gave me a punch with the grenade launcher,” — he said, looking at me with the eyes of an old sick and tired man.
“Soul, is this you? That’s impossible!” I realized I had repeated these words already a few times, feeling utter disbelief. Some onlookers formed a group around us.
“Yes, I’m Soul. I am Soul!” This thin, exhausted man wept like a child.
We dislodged the mujahedeen with an impetuous push, grabbed their position and combed the garden in the complete dark. Nearly without losses — two men from the fourth company were wounded and one was killed. We bumped into Soul when he was carrying Beck to our position. Beck shook his head, covered with flour-like dust, and moaned. It was dark and we were blinded because of flashes from our guns; but it was impossible not to notice a mad glint in Soul’s eyes and a shiny white smile on his swollen and heavily bruised face. He stammered and shivered from head to foot, but his enviable health had let him hold out till the end of the battle.
Later on, the grenade launcher’s hit on our carrier was officially seen as the cause of Souls’ trauma. His report to the commander became a joke and turned him into a brigade legend. He was awarded the rank of sergeant and was recognized as an equal among experienced soldiers. With the natural chronometer in his head turned off by by Beck’s blow, his world had became frozen, giving him his own particular rhythm in life.