Глеб Бобров - The Torn Souls - An Anthology of Prose About the Soviet War in Afghanistan

Between the APCs, I see two sappers, wounded but not mortally. The resistant one worries me; he is completely covered with blood. To restrain his convulsions, I throw myself on top of him and use wadding to cauterize his wounded leg. At the same time, not letting him move, I inject anti-shock promedole (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) with into his other leg. There is no time for bandaging.

He tries to kick me, but the wound is such a mess that I cannot see what to fix, where it is nerves, bones, or blood vessels. Doctors will fix it later.

These two who had held him, now drag this fellow to Stepan, but the kid has lost his mind and screams, yells, crying for his dog “Darling Dusya! Darling Dusya! Darling Dusya!”.

Come on, sleep, brother. I will take care of your dog. Lifting the animal, I run behind the tank. Such a huge dog, just enormous! Boldy comes to help me: he jumps up, grabs the tail and a leg of the dog; and two of us can move the dog to a safe place. What a clever Tatar man! Spotted immediately which leg is not hurt… But this mate of mine has dropped his gun! What a moron!

Meanwhile, the tanks so enthusiastically showered cartridges towards the rocks that, in my opinion, the shallow Kokcha-river produced some waves that in agony climb the river banks. On the ground, the previously spotted unfriendly valley was ironed so tidy that Afgan’s kalashnikovs (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) stopped making its mortal noise after only three outbursts. Then the iron of death transformed into a pointed hose of Armageddon that reached the highest and therefore the most hidden placed amongst the rocks with no way to escape. As a result, the enemy’s machine gunners were silenced. The heavy machine gun also went to sleep.

I can imagine how these brave Afghanis were looking for any tiny cracks to crawl into it, but it was pointless, there was no place to hide…

The tankmen are famous for a very methodical approach and seldom do things spontaneously. Their fists are small but heavy, if they are involved in a fight, any wish to resist will vanish into the air quickly.

And finally, the pair of “crocodiles” (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor), had arrived. They circled above with hushing noises sending their unguided rockets and left off with a sense of honestly delivered international duty. What can I say — the elite! I always envied pilots… I guess, I should have paid more attention to a saying my Mom kept telling me during my childhood: “Those who are studied will fly, but whose who are not — will cry”.

But the battle is still on…Sappers rushed at once to the hot spots trying to finish the business as soon as possible: there was not much time to do scrupulous de-mining: a battalion of wounded soldiers needed be transported immediately to the landing points as helicopters will be there in a matter of minutes. A column of armored vehicles showed off as well and after sending few lines of rockets towards the bare mountains, left in a hurry, speeding up to Kisima.

We did not leave; we stayed on the same spot as before — fifty meters from the outposts of the tank, but when we will be marching back, we will be the first, leading the march. We get used to it and are not surprised any more.

But I have a feeling that something is not finished. Kind of feeling that I forgot to return a favor and this was bothering me! I don’t want to do a big return of favor, as I had in the beginning of my military service. No, I am a different now, I am almost home but I need something smaller, something that only can satisfy my itchiness. I waved to Bogdan, who picked up his rifle, jumped out of his car. We left young solders on out spot, and we waited for a while when a continuous stream of moving armored vehicles will be broken up into a small shattered window to be able to cross the road. We were heading towards the kishlack(see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor), well, let say, the remains of kishlack, the destroyed Afgany’s settlement.

Yep… a good job done by tanks… This bare land is used producing a bare minimum for living, but now, as far as you can see, no sign of life is left, nothing alive and some bits of house stamps like rotten dragon’s teeth were sticking out from this dead land.

We spotted him immediately. This son of sneaks was still, laying next to a funnel and already spreading stinking odor of his dead body. I remember that I was surprised when mentally assessed how well thought-out his position was. His position was not in kishlack as we always presumed they are, but 30 meters away down the hill. From our position we would mistakenly think that he is in the middle of kishlack but it does not matter now… his trick did not work. He could not destroy our tank, only minor damage has been done. Soon his dissembled body will be buried in pieces.

We went closer to the body. Buried his snout in the dust, I can see his right arm together with a shoulder are dissembled from the body. His left arm is twisted up. One leg is missing from the knee, only a rubber shoe is visible, by the way, the common Soviet black rubber shoe with pink velvet inside. This devoted believer to Allah is completely chopped in pieces, burned, covered with blood and shredded pieces of clothes and skin…so tiny and pitiful…Only when he is dead.

I turned the body on its back with a gun barrel. We are standing and blatantly staring at the body. Other guys popped out from tanks’ manholes and also looked towards us wondering what was in front of us.

And in front of us on the ground we saw human remains — a body of an inexperienced human cockerel, only twelve years old, maybe a little bit older, with open eyes filled by pale yellow dust to the point that it looks like he was wearing dusty glasses. His facial features reminded me of Mephistopheles in his adolescence, a kind of prototype for a medieval image of little devils. An inhuman face of an animal nationality…. Devils bustard! Why did your Mother brought you into this world, dead meat?!

And then I cannot explain what got into me. In the past nothing even close to this had happen and I cannot re-call that other guys had experienced something like this… I got mad… I picked up my gun and started to shoot. I kept shooting this ugly face till the very last bullet. Take it all, bastard! Now, these pieces can be buried, these leftovers of a devoted martyr for jihad, a twisted seeker of the Islamic state, mothers fuckers!

Zubyara heavily approached me from behind and took PC mine. Patting my shoulders, he said softly in his native Ukrainian:

— Lets go, brother, he had got enough….

Indeed, he got too much enough! With all of these we left….

Near the machines is a boiling pot. The young soldiers are preparing their positions. The platoon commander is rushing to a commander to make his report. I looked around, my comrade Yurets together with the rest of the young soldiers are hectically shoveling to prepare a stand point under the brisk shouting of Slobodyanyuk. But where is Timur? Timur has not been seen around. What a..?!

Here he is! I can see him sitting under a tree and saying something to — or crying over — the dead dog. It cannot be right! I came closer… It turns out he was singing! He was sitting down on his haunches and with a twig shushed away flies and, at the same time, was murmuring something special in his own language to the dog, unrecognizable to others, but distinctively very sad.

I looked attentively and to my surprise — the dog was breathing! What a cool dog! The breath of this dog was shallow, irregular, occasionally intermittent, but the injured body was not yet giving up life! I looked at the wounds… A terrifying line of razor was visible from the neck to the belly, forming a deep wound with visible edges and unrecognizable parts of this body: you cannot identify where the impact occurred and where not. The wound was a mess… a mixture of dust, blood, curled fur in the chest glued with dried blood. The heat already did its job….