Does a soldier need more than mentioned above, if he wants to be happy in a soldier’s paradise? Maybe, just a touch of a sincere devotion or personal affection. And they were given all of these by the shaggy dog named Padzhak, the common pet who lived with them. Padzhak loved all soldiers with no exceptions.
Being sincerely generous, he always hid bones after lunch under their pillows. Soldiers scolded Padzhak for it, but not seriously, as they knew that he wanted to please them.
Padzhak served not because of fear, but according to his conscience. That is why the sentries often slept on their duty: they knew well that Padzhak will not miss any stranger. And when Sanya Bashylov received a letter from his fiancИe, well, you know what kind of letter it was… So Padzhak came up to petrified Sanya, put his head on Sanya’s knees and was sitting there all evening long, not moving a step from Sanya. And he had not let Sanya step anywhere. When he tried to move a little, Padzhak put his paw on him: “Sit!” Eventually Sanya started to beg: “I want just to piss, I swear!” Padzhak accompanied him to the toilet back and forth and spent all night under his bed. Clearly, this dog was the best friend for soldiers; and there was a paradise not only for soldiers, but also for him among these mountains.
As for the toilet, the soldiers had to do “bombing” from the edge of the rock, because it was impossible to dig a hole there. They placed themselves on a narrow path, crouching and moving their asses out towards the precipice, and start their bombing. Meantime, they held a climbing carbine, which was hammered into a rock fissure, to prevent them falling down from the cliff.
It was all right as they became used to it, although at first it was weird to hear the wail of night wind blowing from the rocks into their asses. Sergeant Lyoha demanded that soldiers should go to a poop only as a pair: while the first one did “bombing”, the second one should be on guard, because anything might happen.
One night Dimon went off duty and wanted to do “bombing” before going to bed. Who could he ask to be on the watch? Sanya was on his post at the station, Gogy was on his guard duty. To wake someone? This was out of question.
Well hoping for the best, Dimon put his submachine gun together with the pyramid of others, and went to do business on his own. Not a big deal! As the saying says “If God helps, nobody can harm”. He placed himself over the precipice as usual, and holding on to the climbing carbine, he started his business. Icy wind was blowing as hard as if it wanted to blow off all the stars from the sky. And it was wailing in the rocks as if a witch was giving the birth, even neighboring jackals were answering to her.
Having been woken up by Dimon’s horrified screams, soldiers jumped out of their beds as if they were tossed up by an unknown force. Indeed, there was not simple fear in that scream, but the chilling horror and unbearable anguish. The solders snatched their submachine guns and barefoot rushed outside, wearing only underpants. Suddenly they spotted rushing headlong towards them Padzhak with his tail between his legs. He whisked into the house and hid under a bed. In a second after him, Dimon emerged in their view. The rage distorted features on his face, his hand was holding a cobble; and Dimon himself was running towards them with lowered pants and he was shouting without stopping:
— Bitch, bitch, bitch!!! I’ll kill you, fuuck!!!
It turned out that clever Padzhak decided to guard Dimon just to be sure of safety. He was used to seeing the soldiers going there in pairs, and made up his mind to take the initiative incognito. He followed Dimon, stepping on a stony path with no noise. Then he sat in the darkness not disclosing his presence, protecting Dimon from any misfortune. When in the most responsible moment of Dimon’s “bombing”, Padzhak decided to cheer up Dimon as if he was tried to say: “Don’t be afraid, my friend, I’m here, next to you!” and under the light of the moon licked Dimon’s shiny ass!
Next morning, shaving his whiskers in front of the mirror, Dimon noticed that his cossack forelock had gone grey. Was it dirty with the lime from rocks? Dimon ruffled his forelock with the wet palm, however, this grey colour could not be shaken off.
Ravil Bikbaev
Bikbaev, Ravil Nagimovich was born in 1961 in Astrakhan. During 1980–1982, he served in the 56th Airborne Assault Brigade, located in Afghanistan, Paktia Province, Gardez. Bikbaev Ravil Nagimovich was awarded the medal “For Battle Merit”. Currently he works as a lawyer. He is a member of the Writers’ Union of Russia.
My Dear!
Who has not heard one of those tearful army stories about soldiers who, after receiving news about betrayal of their loved ones, shoot themselves, unlawfully left the army or fell into depression? In the Soviet army, there was a sacred tradition of sending a letter with an enclosed picture of an imprinted soldier’s boot with the pathetic patriotic text: “If not for this boot, you would have been raped by the foreign soldier” to the girls who betrayed loyalties and expectations.
As for me, I do not blame the girls. A well known Russian saying stated: “Do not judge and you will be not judged”. I know a number of situations when a girl who waited for years for her beloved soldier, in the end got the proposition “to just be friends”. Sometimes she was even introduced to a wife of her ex-boyfriend. I think, there is no need to blame one side because both parties can be equally responsible for the breakdown of a relationship. But the story I want to tell you, will not be a classical unhappy scenario of a separation, a fatal betrayal, a broken heart or an inevitable retribution… It will be a kind of different love story…
…Sitting at a clay pit, we keep counting the bricks over and over again without any hope. You see, our daily task was to make five hundred bricks, but so far we managed only a hundred, and the day was half gone, already after noon.
— I wish, I could go sooner to hospital for my surgery. I am so fed up of making these bricks! — Vitek lit his cigarette, — It is a joke! Back home, if you will say that paratroopers were making bricks for building houses, nobody will believe you. Everyone will think that you served in an engineering battalion, not paratroopers.
— “Two soldiers from engineering will replace any excavator’s digging”, — I rhymed one of the self-made army slogans and sat down on a molding box. — I bet, at home we will tell that all day long we were fighting in close range, and when we had breaks, we were piling hundreds of mujahedeens’ bodies on top of each other.
— Do not jump in front of horses! Wait till you will get home, — tanned by clay dust, Forelock (the Ukrainian) sarcastically commented and climbed out from the pit with a heavily sweaty face, — hold on to the time, when you will be at home and you will figure out what to lie.
… January 1980. Our brigade has been brought into Afghanistan and left at this bare clay plateau, so-called airdrome, the closest one to Kunduz. In this place we are supposed to serve the army, not how we wanted, but how we were told. We were not only paratroopers during combat operations, but also the soldiers for the Building Construction Army Forces between these combat operations. How we managed to survive in such bare and empty conditions and, at the same time, to fight, is a special topic for another story.
All textbooks underline the reputation of paratroopers as a strong military force, namely: if paratroopers got involved into a military situation, it does not matter how hopeless this situation will be, eventually, they became winners. This quality has been tested in our current situation. Being completely surrounded, without any drop of help, we learned how to make bricks from dirt, how to build houses with these bricks, how to steal wood necessary for a construction, and how to create the cozy clay town from literally a bare space of nothing.