The Kombat arrived at nightfall, our second on this marsh. His carrier and three cars raced noisily up the hillock and stopped, making no attempt at concealment.
He sat on top of the lead vehicle, rising above us like Mont Blanc in his usual arrogant pose, his arm resting on his knee, his elbow cocked and his body inclined forwards, looking like an eagle. He was wearing a fancy NATO-issue flak jacket and his camouflage was not muddied. A real warrior.
‘Oh. Here he is at last. Just look at him, strutting like a peacock as if he’s on parade. All that’s missing is a brass band -then not only the Chechens in Alkhan-Kala but the whole of Chechnya will know that Dumb Prick has arrived.’
The Kombat was not popular in the battalion. He treated us like cattle, talked down to us and used his fists a lot; he thought of us merely as cannon fodder, as drunks and morons. ‘Dumb prick’ was the Kombat’s favourite expression, and indeed this was the only way he addressed his infantry - ‘Hey you, dumb prick! Get over here!’ - and then he’d smack you in the mouth with a ‘Take that!’ We soldiers regarded him with a mutual hatred and had dubbed him Dumb Prick for the rest of his days.
One of the cars started to turn round on the hillock and take up positions. The Kombat quickly discussed something with Sitnikov, then turned to go and see the infantry; his squat figure vanished in the bushes.
Sitnikov went back towards his vehicle, followed by Ventus and myself. As he passed he told us: ‘Get ready everyone, we’re going back. We’re being relieved.’ He started to remove the Bee launcher from the carrier.
‘Take everything. This vehicle is staying here - we’ll ride with the Kombat.’
We took all the stuff to the other carrier. Sitting up top were two recon who accompanied the Kombat wherever he went, Denis and Anton. His arrogance had infected them as well, like a kind of flu, and they didn’t bother to help us throw the launchers onto the top or give us a hand up. They just sat and smoked, waiting for their boss.
The Kombat came back a few minutes later, jumped up onto the carrier and dangled his legs into the commander’s hatch.
‘Let’s go.’
The carrier lurched and crawled down from the hillock. Behind them the vehicles of the 9th also set off, breaking the bushes as they went before turning onto the track and heading for home. The newly arrived carriers had already taken their place.
The Kombat didn’t wait for the infantry. ‘Come on, step on it,’ he ordered the driver.
The vehicle went faster and we felt the wind rush past us. I began to shiver; this past day had been too cold, my jacket was too damp and my stomach too empty. But our mood was buoyant. At last we were leaving this cursed marsh and going home. And even if home was only a wet, eternally muddy dug-out, at least it had a stove; the rest of the battalion was there and you didn’t have to spend the whole night worrying about being shot in the back from the forest. You could relax there, dry your boots and eat thin, undercooked, unsalted, tasteless, hot porridge. Finally I’d be able to throw off my body armour and stretch out on my back. And sleep on a bunk, not on the ground in the rain, or in a frozen carrier, but in a sleeping bag on a bunk! What bliss! You’d have to feel this with your own skin, your own frozen bladder and your armour-crushed shoulders to appreciate it. We’d been halted in the same place for over a week and had been able to set up a proper little existence there. And to be left undisturbed for a second week is an incredibly long time for a soldier.
Our carrier drove through the forest, avoiding an enormous puddle with a tractor stuck in the middle of it like an island, sunk up to its cabin in the ooze. I sat with my back against the turret, idly staring at the marsh as it receded into the past. Ventus sat behind me on the turret. The top of his boot rubbed against my neck, but I didn’t bother to move away, or even to move at all.
I was thinking about nothing at all, a skill that I had developed in recent days. I had looked into the eyes of other soldiers as they were being jerked about on top of the carrier and I was amazed by their expressions, not focused on anything, not making out individual objects from their surroundings, letting everything just flow through them without being filtered by their senses. Absolutely empty, yet almost saturated at the same time - all the great truths of this world can be read in a soldier’s eyes when they are turned inwards; they understand everything, all is clear to them, and yet they care so little about it all that it scares you. You want to shake them and jerk them to their senses - ‘Hey, mate, wake up!’ - but their eyes will glide past your face, they won’t say a thing and they turn away, cradling their rifles in a constant state of waiting, seeing and hearing everything but analysing nothing, only switching on if there’s an explosion or if tracer rounds flash past.
The first houses of Alkhan-Yurt crept into view. The hillock where we have just spent one of those never-ending days of war is now to the left and rear.
Damn, how long a day can be! We had spent just one day, a little over twenty-four hours in this marsh and it seemed to last half a lifetime - so long and unbearably endless. I could hardly remember what it had been like before, back in civilian life. That life had become blurred, lost in the marsh that had now according to some unfathomable logic suddenly become very important, so much so that it seemed all significant events had happened here, in this marsh, where I’d spent half my life, stretching minutes into years, obscuring my memory with these minutes, letting them blot out everything inconsequential.
A tracer round flew out of the woods that now hid the hillock, silently dotting a red line just above us before it vanished in the woods on the other side. We all threw our heads back to follow it with our eyes and then looked at each other, trying to work out what it meant.
‘Is that our infantry fooling around?’
‘Idiots - as if they haven’t done enough shooting.’
The shot came from roughly where one of the vehicles of the 7th should have been standing. They’re shooting at crows for fun, I decided, and I cupped my hands round my mouth to amplify my shout: ‘Hey, infantry, cut it out, you’ll injure your own people.’
Right then another round flew out, much lower and more deliberate, and whined straight over our heads.
Instinctively we all dropped flat on the armour with a jerk, and our brains reacted a moment later.
‘Shit, he’s after us!’
‘Chechens!’
‘Son of a bitch sniper!’
A hot flush penetrated to the very core of my body, instantly dislodging the cold that had pulled me apart for the past day: I started to sweat and my clothing became hot and damp like a sauna. Fear.
I unslung my rifle as fast as I could, hampered by Denis who was leaning on my legs, pinning me to the armour and preventing me from finding a better position. I could feel the hard metal of the turret against my back. A bullet could just go through my chest now, hit the turret and ricochet back inside my body, ripping my lungs and heart to shreds. But Denis couldn’t really move either.
Safety catch, get the damned safety catch!
Denis was already firing his sniper’s rifle into the forest. He was firing blind, without aiming, his tracer rounds hitting above the source of the sniper’s shot. He emptied the whole magazine in a couple of seconds and the hammer struck the empty chamber. He turned round and held his arm out. ‘Give me a rifle! Get the driver’s! I’ve only got ten rounds left in my other magazine.’
At last I slipped off my safety catch. The first burst of fire was like an orgasm, accompanied by a groan of relief. Over there, he’s over there! Aim lower. The carrier jerked and jumped around... One more burst! Hell, I’ll blow Denis’s head off, I have to raise the barrel.
‘Denis, get your head down!’
My rifle kicked right above Denis’s ear and the muzzle flash seemed to lick the back of his head as the bullets passed a centimetre above it. ‘I’ll blow his head off,’ the thought flashed again. Ventus’s rifle thundered to the right of Denis’s ear and hot shell cases tumbled off his head and shoulders.
Our bodies were piled on top of each other, plastered all over the armour, and we were shooting indiscriminately with just one aim, to pin him down with lead and get him first, kill the bastard before he killed us.
‘What’s going on?’
I turned round and saw the Kombat half lying on the armour behind me.
‘A Chechen sniper, over there, to the right of the tractor, right where we stood. Some of our guys are still there.’
But contrary to our expectations, the Kombat did not turn the vehicle round.
‘Speed up, come on, step on it and take us into the bushes.’
The driver yanked the wheel sharply to the left and accelerated. With a lurch the carrier jumped into the bushes, and I managed to shelter behind the turret as Ventus piled on top of me. Thick branches hit the vehicle, ripping off a crate of sand tied on to the side, smacking our backs and arms and rasping the skin off our fingers. But the tracer shots kept coming from the wood, zipping over the top of the carrier on the right and left and hitting the trees with a dull thud, smacking the branches and clanging off the vehicle. Anton cried out, rolled into a ball and fell off the side towards the wheel.
‘Comrade Major! Comrade Major!’ I jabbed the Kombat in the side with my rifle barrel. ‘We’ve lost a man.’
‘Who?’
‘Anton.’
‘Is he wounded?’
‘I don’t know, probably. He clutched his stomach and fell from the carrier.’
Once again the Kombat did not give the order to stop and instead told the driver to speed up. The carrier crashed through the bushes and emerged again on the track, sped along two hundred metres and stopped behind a barn on the edge of Alkhan-Yurt.
We had escaped the sniper fire. But behind us, where the two vehicles of the 9th had been and where Anton had fallen off injured, a skirmish had broken out. The chatter of automatic fire intensified.
We all jumped down from the vehicle, ran round the barn and crouched down, all the time looking in the direction of the firing. We had a quick powwow:
‘Sitnikov, take two men and go round the right flank of the village. And you come with me through the village,’ said the Kombat, pointing his finger at Denis.
The initial wave of panic had passed and was replaced with the heavy sensation of impending battle. We could still feel butterflies but there was no more fear. We became grave, acted quickly and silently, immediately understanding what was expected of us.
Ventus, Sitnikov and I ran alongside the barn to the village outskirts; the Kombat and Denis went towards the houses.
Sitnikov knelt down on one knee, while I fell on my belly and an idiotic thought flashed through my head - just as long as I don’t land in a cowpat. We both turned, following a whistling noise with our eyes. A mortar shell exploded with a bang on the spot where we’d just been standing, sending a greasy spout of mud into the sky.
‘Bloody hell, he can see us. Hey, driver, move the carrier round to the back of the barn or it’ll get hit!’
The driver, who was hanging out of the hatch, dived back in and moved the vehicle.
I turned back to Sitnikov who was already climbing over a fence with the Fly launcher thumping the back of his body armour. I jumped up and climbed after him, hampered by my own jacket and the radio which dragged me downwards and cut into my shoulders.
It’s hard to run at a half-crouch with a thirty kilo load and with your back and your legs aching. Must keep up, must keep up, I thought. Sitnikov’s back was infront of me all the time.
When we reached a house we squatted down at a corner, peeping round cautiously. Round the other side was the track, and beyond it the woods. Sitnikov rocketed to his feet and ran across the road, while I took his place and waited until he’d reached the trees, covering him. Then I ran over with Ventus covering me from behind.
The fighting was in the woods, a bit further in. Nothing was visible through the trees, but judging from the sound it was no more than two hundred metres away. We covered the distance in short dashes, silently, straining our eyes and ears. Only occasionally did Sitnikov turn round to ask me, ‘Where’s
Zhenya?’ I would turn round too and hiss: ‘Ventus, where are you?’
‘Here!’
Ventus broke his way through the bushes towards us, his eyes bulging, breathing heavily, his rifle and Fly launcher trailing on the ground. He ran over and threw himself down heavily in the moss.
The infantry lay in a small clearing, separated from the village by a knee-high embankment with coils of barbed wire on top. Behind the tangle was the track, and thirty metres beyond that stood the first houses. The shooting had died down here and shifted to the right in the direction of our hillock, where the 7th were now located.
The soldiers that were concentrated along the embankment were peering into the village, scrutinizing something there. Two carriers had stopped on the right flank and were slowly moving their turrets.
Sitnikov crawled along the wire and tugged the foot of the nearest soldier.
‘Where’s the platoon commander?’
The soldier motioned further on: ‘Down there.’
The platoon commander was lying on his back in the centre of the embankment, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the low sky. We crawled over to him and lay down beside him.
‘So what’s going on here, Sasha? Where are the Chechens?’ ‘Somewhere in those houses,’ he replied without turning over, still looking up at the black clouds. ‘They went quiet for some reason. Maybe we should gradually pull out, while they’re not shooting?’
Without answering, Sitnikov crawled onto the bank and began to study the village. I crouched down next to him.
It seemed quiet in there, nothing moved. The empty clay houses that had been riddled with automatic gunfire showed no signs of life.
Sitnikov turned onto his side and raised himself on his elbow.
‘So, Sasha...’ He didn’t manage to finish his sentence. An automatic chattered in a yard right opposite us; the burst of fire passed over Sitnikov’s shoulders and also hit the earth beneath his elbow. He drew his head into his body, swearing, and jumped down from the wire. Another burst came from the right in reply and zipped across the clearing, passing through the massed infantry. You could see the bullets hitting the grass between the figures plastered to the ground before they disappeared into the woods.
From the corner of my eye I thought I saw a muzzle flash in the window of a house. And then a shadow flitting from room to room. I shouted, waving my arm.
‘There he is, Captain, in that window!’
‘Where, which one?’ Sitnikov asked, pulling the Fly from his shoulder and looking at me. There was a wild fury in his eyes. ‘Well, which one is it?’
But the window was empty again and the house had fallen still; nothing moved, and I was no longer sure that there had even been a Chechen there. Then more bursts of fire came as if from nowhere, flying over the embankment and disappearing. And that was all. We couldn’t pinpoint the source: the shots weren’t visible and we couldn’t tell from the sound, which got distorted by the courtyards of the houses.
I stared intently at the village but my uncertainty only grew. Maybe there really hadn’t been anyone at the window, maybe I had just imagined it.
‘Well, which one?’
‘God knows, Captain, that one I think...’
Sitnikov looked at the window, primed the rocket and trained it at the house.
‘Are you sure?’
I didn’t reply, so Sitnikov lowered the weapon, loathe to waste it, and instead sprayed rifle fire at the window The burst loosed a line of clay chunks from the wall and knocked out the wooden sill, which spun in the air and then fell silently through the window opening.
And then once again I thought I could see someone in the house.
‘There he is, the bastard!’ No longer in any doubt, I unslung my rifle, aimed and fired a short burst at the window. Then another, and one more after that. The deputy supply officer and Sitni
kov joined in right away, followed by the rest of the infantry.
At first I fired carefully at the target, but my hands were shaking after running and I couldn’t hold the rifle steady. The barrel jumped around and the bullets hit low and then above the window, and in the end I started firing in long bursts without aiming.
The magazine emptied quickly. I unclipped it and took out a full one, which happened to be loaded with tracer rounds. I watched them fly through the dark window and ricochet inside the house, bouncing off something hard by the far wall and flying around the room with sparks and a hum as they tried to escape.
The house withered under the intensity of our fire, jumping on its foundations while clouds of dust and dry clay were blown from its walls and streamed to the ground like waterfalls; the earth churned at the base of the house, kicking up clumps of grass.
The infantry worked themselves up even more; some were already firing from the knee, others shot at the neighbouring bouses. We all felt that special intoxication you only get when things are going well, when you know you have clear superiority and the enemy can’t match your firepower. There’s no longer any fear - that has passed and you begin to feel your power. It makes you heady and arouses you; it draws a sweat of exhilaration, a desire to wreak full vengeance for all your fear, as you pour down fire to the left and right without thinking.
Sitnikov grabbed his launcher, went down on one knee and fired at the window. The shell flew through the gap like a fiery spot, exploding with a mighty roar inside the enclosed confinements and illuminating the house with a flash of lightning. Debris spouted onto the street and a cloud of grey smoke was belched out.
I was deafened by the sound of the rocket firing. Sitnikov had positioned the rocket clumsily and some of the back blast had struck me in the back of the head. My skull was ringing, I couldn’t hear anything, and the cordite vapours stung sickeningly in my throat. I leapt off the embankment, pinched my nose between two fingers and tried to swallow and to blow through my ears to clear them. Someone shook my shoulder:
One Soldier's War In Chechnya Page 21