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

It was evident that they would not be able to get sergeant’s such knowledge without rising from the ranks, from cadet to sergeant. That process made it possible to educate soldiers in a grand style, so they could assess their inner abilities, set targets, be trained consciously as individuals, and who therefore were ready for critical challenges which were set on the basis of the facts of the sergeants’ past life and not on the basis of some “ideal” abstractions of the regulations.

However, in order to do so well, it was necessary for them to have time and opportunity to learn new things. Moreover, these qualities were needed to acquire the strength necessary for the role. As soon as that strength had been acquired, the possibilities to use it appeared…

There were three months left until the end of the beginning…

If you see that the fight is useless you should fight with a doubled force.

…In any way, when they broke through to what was under the surface in life, he remembered what he had seen.

With tears all over their faces, covered with a thick layer of dust, two soldiers were not shy about their emotions. Taking turn, eight people were digging the foundation for a fence. It separated them from their friend who was wounded in the thigh and had fallen on the other side. Dukhs (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) were cutting them off with their fire, not giving any chance for the fence to be climbed over. The two who had tried to do it were injured. They threw the grenades. Using AGS (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor), they tried to support their wounded friend who was returning fire to the approaching ghosts. Men were following the fence with all that was in their hands.

He was amazed to see the kind of work they had managed to do; almost with bare hands, they had managed literally to gnaw through the fence.

When the hole in the fence base had exposed them, their friend was wounded in the right shoulder. Bleeding, losing consciousness, suffering an unbearable pain, the wounded man blew himself up with a grenade, the intensity too great. Having seen the futility of their attempts to take him alive, the ghosts retreated.

Even though they did not know if he was still alive, they were digging this hole. Their friend’s survival had lacked eight minutes. Five minutes after the grenade explosion the ghosts brought back the encirclement. Eight minutes after the grenade explosion the soldiers punched another hole in the fence base. Five minutes later another group joined them.

Now the two soldiers who had punched that hole were crying like children, unable to hide their emotions. Nevertheless, they dragged the unresponsive body of their friend into the damned hole, not recognizing the senselessness of it…

Lying in the hospital bed, he began to understand that the time of death entirely depended on how and when the vital force of a person was struck down. He saw that severe trauma could kill a person instantly, while others wounds, with less impact on a human, could cause dementia, loss of self-control, or disorganization of the will.

“To live, to live and TO LIVE must be the only inflexible decision.” In this sense he understood what had happened back then.

However, before equilibrium can be restored, it will initially be broken. And there will always be someone who will be the first.

“Now the most important thing is for you to learn to live without legs,” — said the surgeon, patting his shoulder encouragingly, when the bandages had been removed and his lungs had been exhausted from screaming. He understood that he had been the first.

The vast country was able to allocate very few resources for social rehabilitation. The reason was not lack of the resources, but lack of purpose. That is why it was not a priority.

It was the amputation (through the war) of opportunities for the wounded which transformed a human into his direct opposite. “Limiting manipulations” are cost-economical and very effective. The government knew it very well. What was the result of this amputation of opportunities? It gave the government the antithesis of a man, who had been sent to war.

Shortchanging the men in such a way, the state was able to manipulate them by means of benefits, after having deprived them of their own capabilities and goals. The goal is always inseparable from the instruments which are used to achieve it: each goal corresponds to the instrument and each instrument corresponds to the achieved goal. Now he had only one goal and the only instrument to achieve it — his prostheses as a symbol of human pain and patience. He understood that his life was just many, many days in which the pain would turn into infinity. When so much has been lost, try harder. If you do not know what to do, take a step forward. The war will show the plan; the main thing is to get into a fight, and then we will see!

“Fish wins tactically when it feels the taste of the worm, but loses strategically having been hooked”. (Haiku). “Never enter into the struggle that is imposed on you by your enemy; it is better to retreat in time rather than to step over your own dead body later.” (The prose of life).

The easiest day…

White walls, white sheets. Peace and quiet. He was dreaming about it during all his military service. Now he perceived these things quite differently.

The battalion commander sat nearby. The deputy commander in charge of policy, who had come with the battalion commander, brought a new parade uniform along with a vest, beret, insignia, two rucksacks filled with Kandahar pomegranates, figs, apples, and “CC” lemonade. “There are 500 cheques in the package. This is a gift from the battalion for you when you will be discharged from the hospital”, — the battalion commander said, putting a simple soldier’s envelope on the pillow. “What are you going to do in civil life, son?” the battalion commander asked. Trying to look confident, he could think of nothing, but answered: “I will make stools and sell them in the market.” Burning pain in his legs went to his confused head. The battalion commander abruptly raised the sheet which was wrapped around his foreshortened body and said: “If I learn that you are good-for-nothing in civil life, sergeant, I will come and kill you myself. Do you see? Remember my son, yesterday was the easiest day! Now is the beginning of a real war in your life…”

A plane was to arrive in the morning. The company personnel have already stocked him up and covered his stomach and arm with bandages. The battalion commander and the deputy commander in charge of policy have just left him.

He did not realize completely the current situation, continuing to perceive the world in a light of old sensations before having been destroyed by new realities. Non-existent amputated legs hurt. The holes in his arm and stomach did not trouble him. In his contused head one single thought periodically surfaced: “Yesterday was the easiest day, indeed!”

To be honest, I don’t know how to put the whole story across to you. It started seventeen years ago. “Soul” was his nickname and I found it a good “moniker”. This story will make you sure of it — though it is hard for me to relate the story by strictly keeping to its chronology, I will try to tell you what really happened.

The list of various wounds and severe injuries which one could easily get, without leaving the brigade’s position, could cover many more pages than my story. It was possible to get into the most unbelievable situation if you were not a sissy boy; it was quite possible to live through it and to cope with it.

Soul always landed on his feet. One of his funniest qualities he had, was an amazing pantophagy (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor): he could eat literally everything that grew on the land, and it was very difficult to define the basis of his rations. There was one more quality which distinguished Soul from the rest — his unusual flexibility, the ability to adjust to any conditions, any difficulties.