Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

“It’s hard to get used to this weather. It’s rained non-stop for two days; last night the rain came down so thick I’ve never seen anything like it. It pours into the tents. And not far from here, in the tundra, there’s two metres of snow,” worries a man sent by the Czech Kingdom to bring peace and progress to an archipelago that may soon be part of it.

In Horná Náprava they bring humanitarian aid and progress to dozens of migrant herders and a number of reindeer grazing behind the barbed wire of the military base. The Slovaks are apparently doing fine; the Czech soldiers seem to them, now they’ve helped the Slovak guerrillas conquer the capital, a welcome distraction. But that doesn’t mean that the Czechs are no use to the local population: a military doctor tends to their injuries. Sometimes a herder cuts his hand, or boys who’ve been throwing rocks at each other come. Soldiers have to be tended to, as well: sometimes they hit themselves with a hammer or get abrasions at work.

“Hey, when do you go back home? Will you take our letters?” ask the tattooed rough fellows with submachine guns on their backs and shovels in their hands. (It’s the weather. They have to clear mud left by the melted snow from the base.)

“They haven’t assigned us an address in Prague yet. Nobody knows where we are. We’ll collect the letters ourselves. And we’ll give you money for the postage,” say the soldiers eagerly.

“If I tell anyone in Prague that I went to Horná Náprava, they’ll all just laugh at me. After all, you can’t find it on any map. General Tvrdý thought that we were taking the piss and that we invented the name for his sake,” is the rough soldierly reply of the Czech company commander Pavel Vodička in the officers’ mess, formerly the warehouse of the Russian fur post. “The power’s on for several hours a day. There’s no more fuel for the generators. And they told us that Junja is floating on oil.”

But the Czech soldiers are not in Horná Náprava to cater to local Slovaks. They are mainly here to signal to the whole world by their presence the will of the Czech Crown to remain here and realise the dream of so many people of a restored Czechoslovakia, but this time with Slovaks who want a common state as much as the Czechs do.

We’re told that they’ll take us to Ćmirçăpoļ, or New City. We’re happy we’re going to see something at last: watching soldiers reading porn magazines, or digging ditches in the mud seems boring now.

Day D, Hour H

On Monday morning we set out for Ćmirçăpoļ, New City. At the crossroads we wait for other military vehicles to join us. At last another jeep and an army truck come. We wait a while. Soldiers shout something to each other. The truck vanishes in the dust and two jeeps go on to the city.

The city, as it turns out, is not muddy and the corpses don’t smell so bad here. There are burnt out houses, but not that many. We agree that we’ve seen much worse in Junja. The soldiers show us what a proper patrol looks like. Fingers on the triggers of their submachine guns, they proceed cautiously down the road. They don’t talk, but signal with their hands. This impression is somewhat spoiled by the press spokesman of the company, Tomáš Branický, who walks as he is, unarmed and dressed in a bulletproof vest.

Suddenly, a very old Junjan appears on the road, leading two reindeer behind him. He looks at the behaviour of the soldiers with surprise. He has been quite alone in his burnt out village for weeks. Since members of the Czech Army are supposed to “collect information from the population,” the commander Vodička talks to the old man. The Junjan tells him what happened at night: “There were mercenaries here. They were shooting. Shooting right behind the hill. With submachine guns. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. You understand?” Vodička says he does. “If you have any problems, stop my soldiers, they’ll help you. We patrol here.” The old man who has had quite a night, asks an innocent question: “And where were you at night then? I didn’t see you anywhere.”

Up Your Arse!

Patrolling the city is the only way for a soldier to get out of the base. Otherwise, Czech soldiers are not allowed out. This means that most of them haven’t seen anything outside the base. Hope for the prisoners in green comes when a new plant is built in Horná Náprava. Soldiers occupy the old one. Before anything gets done, most soldiers will have to cope on their own.

“For example, I read erotic literature, but only soft porn, nothing hard. The boys read crime novels or war books,” Radek admits. Almost everyone reads porn magazines on the base. What else can you do? Josef, whose nickname is Shovel, who has a golden necklace with a blue elephant from a Kindersurprise chocolate egg, is reading Forsyth’s The Fist of God.

His best friend, Lety (real name Pavel) gladly tells us what the book is about: “It’s about the Gulf War. How Saddam Hussein tried to build a big cannon so that he could hit even America, but the British found out.”

After a walk among the tents it is clear to me that porn is much more popular than any other literature without pictures.

But reading doesn’t satisfy. You soon get bored with cards as well. And a soldier’s day is monotonous. Reveille, breakfast, work, lunch, work, free time, sleep. If God so chooses, then there are two duty shifts in between. Guarding the base. Those are entertaining at least, because you can play with the children.

“Hi, how are you, I’m fine, thanks, please, you’re welcome,” a ten-year-old Slovak herder’s daughter with big slanting eyes repeats the Czech words. The Czechs educational effort in Junja is bearing fruit.

The most popular entertainment is the so-called “broom.” When I ask what it is, the soldiers laugh madly: “It’s a really popular favourite game.” My curiosity grows and finally, after a minute’s hesitation, it’s satisfied. “Well, one man takes a broom handle and the others hold the one who deserves the broom and together they really clean him out. His arse,” he adds, so there’s no doubt where the broom handle goes. They usually play the broom once a week and they say that every new soldier has experienced it.

Rambos

When the Czechs were in NATO they were new soldiers, too. And God knows: if they hadn’t left the organization in record time, they might right now be getting the broom.

“I used to clear mines in Bosnia. But not here. We’re not allowed to do anything. If we find munitions, we have to call in the Slovaks. We’re not allowed to clear anything,” says the explosives expert Marek.

“I think Slovaks don’t want Czech blood spilled in this land,” says Ota, his friend. “Then we’d have a claim to it. But the Slovak representatives treat us like guests.”

“Yet they learnt it all from us, at sabotage courses in the Czech State,” says Marek. “They say we’re guests too precious to risk our lives. What guests? When they were up shit creek in Ćmirçăpoļ, they had a use for us, didn’t they? Didn’t our politicians promise us that this here would become a Czech colony?”

When I listen to Marek’s stories I wonder if a man like him isn’t more dangerous in his own surroundings than when defending peace and order. He has a lot of weapons and a big bomb at home (not functional, unlike his guns). His dream is not just to clear mines, but to lay them. “For example, I’d lay an anti-tank mine so it was visible. And when you came to pick it up, you’d have to kneel with both legs on two mines.” Marek is in his seventh heaven when he shows me the refined traps he’d lay on the road.