Thomas Goltz - Chechnya Diary

Brrt, brrt, brrt!

Boom, boom, boom!

Talk about dumb accidents, I say to myself. You are stuck in a surrounded town under fire and trying to get as close to the source of that fire as you can. No, that is no accident. It is just dumb. Nuts. Suicidal, maybe. Should have tried to leave in that Doctors Without Borders vehicle the other day. Should of, would of, could of, but now nothing to be done. You are here, so catch your breath and make a career out of it. You need a stand-up, or narrative-spoken-to-camera. Actually, a squat-down. Get your sorry self in front of the lens, now, and do a little reporting for posterity in case you get killed, but your stupid camera survives and is found intact by the heirs to my job.

“The final assault has begun. We will see if the defenders of this small Chechen town in the northern plains can resist the Russian attack — and if I can get my sorry ass out of here at the end of it. Lest anyone forget, this is a surrounded town.”

I taped two takes, the first with the “sorry ass” reference that just sort of slipped out of my mouth, and the second without reference to body parts. Then I picked up the camera with my right hand, hunkered down the street shielded by barns and buildings, and headed toward the point I estimated the armored train to be firing from—and then ran into some guy who confirmed my estimation. I turned on the camera as he signaled me to follow him to the front.

Brrt, brrt, brrt!

Boom, boom, boom!

The percussive sound of shooting was a lot louder and closer, even if I was still tucked behind a wall. My guide to the front turned the near corner of that wall, and I and my camera eye followed him around to the next step in the get-to-the-front exercise.

“Fuck!”

That is my voice on camera, looking through the lens at a partially built, two-story red-brick house some two hundred yards across completely exposed, open ground. Maybe it is only one hundred yards away, but it looks more like a mile.

“Fuck, ” I repeat, ruining the audio for any commercial use of this very entertaining material collected on March 27, 1995.

And then I began to run, camera blazing, capturing every stumble and jolt as I galloped toward those half-built brick walls that promised the only shelter for miles around, and the only thing between the armored train and me for several centuries. And all for the sake of Bang-bang. It was, without question, the most insane thing I have ever done in my life.

Ishot, they shot—I shot them shooting. The big guns on the train roared. The sniper rifles in our attic roost snapped and snarled. The unfinished red brick walls of the two-story house were exactly the thickness of form-cast, red bricks. Their bullets were bigger than ours.

Boom!

A tank shell of some sort erupted from a muzzle we could see.

Whiiizzz!

The shell passed overhead, missing.

They really knew we were there; it was really time to go.

Down that ladder, down—no—jump! And bam the second shell shattered the wall of the room in which we just sat, splattering red dust down our necks as we tumbled out the unbuilt grand hallway entrance into the yard.

Don’t even wait. Don’t even turn on the fucking camera. just suck it up. One — two — Three and — sprint….

Back across that killing space, that two hundred yards that was probably only one hundred but felt like a fucking mile. My lungs were bursting, heart popping, legs dying, brain seizing—and I sllliddd in safe behind that street wall and gagged.

The street was filled with folks. Literally. They were sitting in the street behind their own periphery walls, taking casual cover. Some played cards. Others just sat. I recognized a few from Alkhazur’s nightclub.

“How’s tricks, Toms?” asked Vakha, a local wag I saw everywhere, but never with a gun. And he didn’t have one then.

Another was Bekhist, a grandmotherly woman of about forty, maybe fifty. It was hard to tell. All she could do was laugh. Actually, almost everyone was smiling. Smiles painted on their faces. Laugh, laugh, laugh.

I scuttled down the street in the general direction of the gun pit and Hussein. I ran into Xamid and Sultan or Seylah. Maybe both, I forget. They were not laughing. Ali had been hit. I backtracked and ran to the hospital dispensary and burst in, camera blazing.

“No filming in the hospital!” shrieked a nurse.

“No problem, he is with us.”

It was Ali, lying on a bloodstained bed with Ussam tending him.

He was flesh-wounded and laughing.

Itook my usual series of ducks and dodges back to the front lines, working my way toward the bramble forest and Hussein’s ambush pit via the farmhouse sniper’s nest. It was completely smashed. Beyond it, the armored train continued to pour withering fire at whatever it was shooting at.

Broadside.

Then the shooting slowed. Then it slacked. Then it ceased.

And then the armored train started moving back down the tracks, away from Samashki.

I was now in the bramble forest, exchanging God is Great passwords with guards.

“We are repositioning because of all the women on the road,” said one.

Women on the road?

I changed direction, moving out of the familiar bramble gullies and up to the pasture apron between the forest and the Samashki-Sernavodsk road.

Did I see it or hear it first?

A tinkle of distant cymbals, or maybe the ethereal hum of chanting, a distant visual snatch of men in orange robes and shaven heads—the shock troops at the head of a column marching under a banner declaring the words Ne Ubitz!, meaning “Don’t Kill”?!

The vision of this extraordinary column out on the road that should by rights have been filled with tanks and troop carriers was—well, extraordinary, and I started sprinting across the open pasture to intercept the marchers. I got to the highway, and breathlessly set up my camera to capture the moment, whatever and whoever they were.

Nam yoho renge kyo, Nam yoho renge kyo, chanted the dozen bald men, all dressed in yellow robes and tapping cymbals and drums. Nam yoho renge kyo, Nam yoho renge kyo.

La illahi il Allah! La illahi il Allah! wailed a chorus of Chechen women, following in the Buddhists’ wake. There is no God but The God!!!

Was I hallucinating?

Was I going mad?

And, at that moment, a dark green Toyota—or maybe Mitsubishi sport-utility vehicle—wheeled up out of the ditch and stopped right in front of me. A door opened and a man with a camera got out smack-dab in front of mine, and I started adding my own audio to the extraordinary scene that spoke much more about my state of mind than the mood and intent of the marchers, which was peace.

From Planet Moskau, by Sonia Mikich:

And then a discovery, one of those little, ridiculous comic moments that allowed us to breathe for just a moment during the course of this war. Among the fighters, I see a tallish, bearded man carrying a Hi-8 camera. Beneath a fantastic khaki uniform he is wearing body armor, and on his head a filthy, Uzbek-style cotton prayer cap. He glares at me with bloodshot eyes and shouts:

“Tell your fucking cameraman to get out of my fucking frame or I will fucking kill him!” It is the familiar voice of my friend and colleague, Thomas Goltz—a journalist, madman, and adventurer. My Russian cameraman, Maxim, has walked through his frame—unconscionable! I have not seen Thomas for months. He smuggled himself into Chechnya from Azerbaijan and has been existing on noodles and garlic sauce. Stinking and sprinting, he has been filming the story of Samashki.