One Soldier's War In Chechnya

by Arkady Babchenko

  It doesn’t seem right. There is no other punishment apart from death because anything less is still life, and so it’s no punishment. To shoot a swine of an officer in the back is in our eyes not a wicked deed but simple retribution. Swines shouldn’t live when decent people die.

  Oldie and Shepel were good mates; they immediately hit it off though they weren’t from the same town.

  ‘I understand. We won’t touch him,’ I tell him.

  ‘Did you come here with the medic?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have we got many wounded?’

  ‘None, just sick. The war is coming to an end now.’

  ‘Too bad, I really wanted to go home,’ Oldie says.

  ‘We won’t leave you behind. If need be we’ll tear this shitty Khankala to pieces, but we won’t leave you. You’re coming home with us.’

  Oldie makes a tired gesture. He has let himself go since he’s been here. Maybe Shepel’s death broke him somehow, or maybe he’s just worn out by it all.

  ‘To hell with the lot of them,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter any more. The main thing is that we are alive. I don’t care about anything else. After all, a few years behind bars is still a few years of life, isn’t it?’

  ‘They can send you down for seven years on these charges, you know.’

  ‘So what... it doesn’t matter any more.’

  We smoke another cigarette and then it’s time to go. We push a few packs of smokes through the window and head back to the hospital where the transport is waiting for us. Fixa and I turn and see Oldie watching from the window.

  We won’t leave him behind.

  The battalion leaves for Kalinovskya where we are to be discharged. For us, the war is over.

  It starts to rain. The tyres of the vehicles squeal on the wet asphalt and rainbows glimmer in the spray thrown up by the wheels. I open the hatch and stick my face out under the rain. Large drops fall straight and evenly on my skin. The sun hangs heavily on the horizon and our column casts long shadows in its rays.

  And that’s it. Peace. This warm, damp day is the last day of our war.

  Shepel is dead, and so many others. I remember all of my comrades; I remember their faces, their names. At last we have peace, lads - we waited for it for so long, didn’t we? We so wanted to meet it together, to go home together and not part company until the whole platoon had been to everyone else’s home. And even after that we would stay together, live as one community, always close, always there for each other.

  What will I do without you? You’re my brothers, given to me by the war, and we shouldn’t be separated. We’ll always be together. We still have our whole lives ahead of us.

  Hey Kisel, Vovka! How’s it going Igor, Shepel?

  I stand up to my waist in the hatch. The runway is deserted. Warm rain falls. Large raindrops roll down my cheeks and mix with tears. I close my eyes and for the first time in the war I cry.

  19/ A Soldier's Dream

  Snow fell the whole night. It fell in soft, large flakes, and when we wake up we can’t find our friends because they are all covered in snow.

  It grows light and we wait for the sun to appear. The night is ending. Our hands tremble slightly, and we feel chilly as the nervous tension ebbs away and our bodies relax.

  The most frightening bit is over; we have survived another night and that means we have another day ahead of us. Nighttime means cold, and we hate and fear the night. The climate in the mountains is changeable: by day it is plus fifteen Celsius, the sun shines, and at night it can easily snow, blow a chill wind and send the temperature falling to minus ten. We take the jackets from the wounded, who are evacuated to the rear. The jackets get soaked through under the snow, and if you switch off for ten minutes to lean against the armour, you find yourself frozen to the surface, even your hair.

  Night-time means fear. As dusk falls you feel everything inside you grow cold and hard, feel it knot in a lump and mobilize itself for action. Your brain starts to work more precisely, your eyes see better and your hearing tunes in. The tension is acute; you expect anything to happen and you are ready for anything. Then the fear recedes to a deeper place beneath your stomach, turning over from time to time, but faintly, leaving behind just the tension.

  Night-time means loneliness. No lights around, no sounds, no movement. A huge, endless sky above you where you know a plane with lights and passengers inside will never fly. There is no-one around, you are quite alone. And even if there are a hundred of you, you are still alone. All of you are alone.

  There is no life around either, you yourself are life and comprise your whole world. You are a little soldier in the middle of enormous Chechnya under the black southern sky, and everything is inside you. And you are very tired.

  Finally the sun appears and you relax. Your brain feels like cotton wool; you think about nothing and you want nothing, only to sit there just as you are, with your gaze fixed ahead of you.

  I sit on the mount of the grenade launcher and smoke. My hands are trembling slightly and the sun is already starting to beat down, warming my back and defrosting my boots enough for me even to take them off. At night they get wet, tighten and freeze to my puttees.

  I am happy. Happy that I am home, that this is all over, that everything has finished and is in the past. What peak is that, and where did that come from, that peak? Did I dream it? But I have never been there, so why am I dreaming about it? Or have I? I don’t know. I feel clean sheets against my skin and the luxury of a warm blanket; I know I am at home and I’m happy. I smile, turn my face towards the sun and squint. It’s good to be home. True, I don’t know why there are mountains here, and snow, and wet boots, but it doesn’t matter, I’m at home now, there’s nothing to fear.

  Igor appears. He is telling me something but I don’t listen as I sit on the gun mount smoking and savouring this picture of home. It’s good that Igor is here too, only odd that he’s at my home; he surely has his own home yet he’s here, but no matter. In fact it’s good that he’s round at my place.

  Ash from my cigarette falls onto the bolt of my rifle and I brush it off with my sleeve. I have to think where I’m going to stow my weapon now that I’m home. Usually I lay it under my head in the tent, but home is for good - it’s not some tent for a day.

  Igor is still trying to tell me something and I am still not listening to him. Then he falls silent, looks at me strangely and says: ‘Let’s go!’ I suddenly feel empty and cold inside, a vague thought appears but I don’t allow it to register and I chase it from my head because I know what the thought is.

  ‘Where to, Igor?’

  ‘Let’s go,’ he says again, pointing behind me. I don’t turn to look, I know what’s there. A mountain and infantry scattered across the snow, crawling, scrabbling upwards, through the gaps in the lines and towards the tracer rounds that are flying their way. But it’s still quiet; the sounds of fighting are not audible. The thought in my head is now persistent but I suppress it, still not turning round to look. I cannot let it through, it’s not true. I’m at home, and I won’t turn round.

  ‘No, Igor, we’re at home, it’s all over, have you forgotten? Come on, I’ll introduce you to Olga and my mother, we’ll sit down together, have a drink and talk. We dreamed about this for so long, remember?’

  I am suddenly terrified - I already know what he’ll reply.

  ‘I can’t, I’m dead,’ he says and looks beyond me.

  I turn round and see the mountain and the dots of the men and I hear the deafening, ear-splitting roar of battle. Igor is lying on the snow; his hand is shading his eyes and his chin is upturned, and this is just how people sleep when they are dead tired. He is far away, but I see him as if he is five metres away. There is a hole in his head, just above the left eyebrow, and frozen blood and snow have formed a flat crust on his face.

  ‘Let’s go. You aren’t home. We all stayed here, you know that, and there’s no way out. Go on.’ He motions again with his hand.

&
nbsp; And I see myself. I am lying not far from Igor, also dead, the snow around me covered in blood, my blood, and all around me infantry are scrabbling and falling, slipping on my blood.

  Damn it, such a shame. I so wanted to be home and they went and killed me. And I have to go to the mountain - I can’t be one of the living if I’m dead.

  Igor sets off in the direction of the mountain and I follow. I want him to let me go but I can’t stay behind - how could I be alive while he’s there, dead?

  But then I suddenly remember, Olga! I stop, Igor stops too, and he looks at me. His face is crestfallen and I see from his eyes that he knows what I am going to say to him.

  ‘I can’t, Igor, I can’t go with you. I have my Olga and I can’t leave her. I have to live.’

  Igor doesn’t like Olga. Every night he comes to take me with him up the mountain and every night she prevents him. And this time too he leaves on his own.

  His face becomes grey, dead. His teeth set in a snarl, his lips tighten in a death grimace. The bullet hole appears in his head, shrapnel holes in his jacket, it gets dark around him and the blood wells. He is no longer beside me, he is up there on the mountain, dead. I return to the realm of the living, fly away from this scene, but all the time I look back, look at him lying there on the mountain...

  I wake up. The sheet is soaking wet and I am shaking. My soul is empty; I feel nothing, absolutely nothing. Later I come to my senses and I start to bawl. I bite the corner of the pillow so I don’t wake Olga and wail and wail. Later it passes and I just lie there, clutching the pillow. I can’t help it, I lie with the pillow in my teeth and I am afraid to open my jaws. I want to die.

  20/ Field Deception

  War always smells the same - diesel and dust tinged with sadness.

  You notice it for the first time right here, in Mozdok, in the seconds after you come off the plane and stand bewildered, flaring your nostrils like a horse, absorbing the smell of the steppe. The last time I was here was a couple of years ago in 2000. I sat right here under this poplar tree where some soldiers are now sleeping as they wait to catch a flight to Moscow. I drank water at the same fountain, and over there, in the boiler house behind the highroad, they sold locally-made raw vodka. It seems that nothing has changed since then. And there’s the same smell that was here two, three and seven years ago: diesel and dust tinged with sadness...

  I first came here as a conscript. They brought us by train from the Urals, fifteen hundred men packed into the carriages like sardines after someone miscalculated the numbers.

  Everything had been just the same then, the same tents, the tower, the water fountain, only there had been more people, and there was a constant flow of movement. Someone would fly in or out, the wounded waited for a flight going the right way, soldiers stole humanitarian aid. Every ten minutes, attack aircraft groaning with bombs would take off and return later

  without their load, while helicopters warmed their engines sending a wave of dust over the airstrip. And we were scared.

  Of the fifteen hundred men on the field, only eight stayed in North Ossetia. The rest got packed off to Chechnya right away And the beatings we got - it wasn’t just bullying, but unbridled lawlessness. Soldiers with broken jaws would fly out of barracks windows onto the parade ground while they were still running up the flag in the mornings, landing at the feet of the regimental commander in the middle of the Russian anthem.

  They all beat me here, including Chuk (Lieutenant Colonel Pilipchuk), a towering man with fists like shovels which he used to beat us all without distinction: the young boys, the dembels, the warrant officers, captains and majors. He would pin us to the wall with his huge stomach and flail at us with his fists, shouting: ‘You lot can’t hold your liquor.’

  Chuk himself was no mean drinker. Once the ex-deputy chief of army, General Shamanov, flew in to inspect discipline in the regiment. Shamanov came to headquarters, put his foot on the first step and opened the door. A body fell out onto him, drunk as a skunk - Chuk.

  Now Chuk still doesn’t know who shot at him, but I do. It was night and the recon were drinking vodka in the barracks. The street light on the square was shining through the window right into their eyes, so one of them took his silenced rifle, went to the window and aimed at the light. I was standing at the window smoking and saw Chuk walking across the square... Thank God they were both drunk: one missed and the other didn’t notice. The bullet hit the asphalt and zipped off into the sky. Chuk disappeared into headquarters while the recon guy finally hit the light and went back to finishing his vodka. And I just carried on mopping the corridor.

  *

  On 12 August 1996,1 waited on the field to go to Chechnya with a combined battalion that the regiment had managed to scrape together from ninety-six men. We were sitting on our kitbags when a postman ran out from headquarters, waved and ran towards us holding something up in his hand. It was a good five hundred metres to the airstrip from HQ. and we watched him running and shouting, each of us wondering which of us he was coming for. Turned out it was me. ‘Babchenko - here. Your father died...’ he said breathlessly, handing me a telegram. And right at that moment they gave us the signal to board and the battalion started loading its gear. The other soldiers went past me, clapping me on the back and saying: ‘You’re lucky.’ Instead of going to Grozny I went to Moscow to my dad’s funeral.

  My father gave me life twice. If he had died twenty minutes later I would have missed the telegram, boarded the helicopter, and died half an hour after that. The helicopter was shot to pieces as it landed in Khankala. The battalion returned a month later. Only forty-two men remained of the ninety-six. That’s how the war was then.

  And all that happened on this very field.

  I only reached Khankala in early 2000. I was still a soldier, but this time I was under contract. It was raining. We slept beside fires beneath a railway embankment, sheltering from the wind behind doors we had removed from their hinges. We didn’t stand up to our full height and didn’t look over the embankment as we were being fired at by snipers.

  And then the sun came out and a sniper killed Mukha. Unlike the rest of us fools he never took off his body armour, convinced that it would save him. But the bullet hit him in the side and went right through him.

  ‘There was a little hole on his left side, but on the right the was nothing left when we tried to bandage him - even his arm had collapsed into his chest,’ Sasha recounted. Mukha didn’t die immediately but only later, as the lads pulled him out from the line of fire.

  That same day, taking advantage of the good visibility snipers killed two more men and injured six. We began to hate the sun.

  These two wars convinced me of the unshakable nature of Chechnya. Whatever happens in the world, whatever humanity might be achieved, it will always be the same here - there will always be war.

  I’m a journalist these days, and now I’m back in Chechnya and I don’t recognize the place. Everything is different. Khankala has grown to incredible proportions, and the republic as a whole surprises me. It has filled up with people and the smashed clay huts have been replaced with new, three-storey brick cottages. You see Ladas driving among the carriers, and scheduled buses stopping outside cafes. And the towns are lit at night.

  Most of all I am amazed by the aerodrome at Severny. The 46th brigade of the interior ministry troops is based here, and this cosy little world tucked behind concrete fences is how the army should be - neat and ordered with rows of barracks, green grass and white road markings.

  They set up a firing range on the airfield. In accordance with regulations, red flags would be hoisted to warn people against entering. When they’re not shooting, white flags flutter in the wind to signal that it’s safe to cross. They built the range to teach the soldiers how to destroy the old city that’s located only a stone’s throw from here.

  In Chechnya now there is a strong sense of duality. Wherever you go, it is more or less peacetime, but at the same time it’s not. The war is never
far away. In Starye-Atagi four FSB intelligence service agents have recently been killed, mines continually blow up in Grozny, and there are frequent ambushes in Urus-Martan. But in Severny it’s quiet. Here they only shoot when they raise the red flag.

  The army in Chechnya is now in stalemate. There are no longer any large rebel bands to fight; there are no front lines, no partisan units, and no field commanders. The war is generally over here, at least in the conventional sense of the word. Now there’s just rampant crime. A war-hardened rebel with a bit of authority will put together a gang of three, usually young lads he takes with him to sort out feuds and extort money. He doesn’t just fight federal troops. If there is a bounty on someone’s head the gang will lay a booby trap to get him. If there isn’t, they’ll go and rob the locals or fight a neighbouring gang over oil deposits in the area. It’s all about money, and if they gun down a policeman in the process, it’s just by the by and can even be a matter of honour.

  ‘My husband worked in the paramilitary police,’ says Khava, a trader. ‘This summer their unit lost thirty-nine men. They kill them in the middle of the street with a bullet in the back of the head. Someone murdered my neighbour a week ago and then his son yesterday. Both of them worked in the militia.’

  The army is incapable of fighting crime. Imagine if in Moscow they got tired of all the robbery and banditry in the back streets and stationed a regiment on Red Square to keep order with tanks, anti-aircraft guns and snipers. By day the military line the Kremlin grounds with even, sandy roads and hang portraits of the president on all the corners. And at night they shut themselves into the camp, fire at the slightest sound and never venture beyond the gatehouse. Is that supposed to stop the trouble in the suburb of Tushino? And what if Tushino’s neighbourhood police officer and the prefect are in cahoots with the local tough guy, Shamil the Chechen, and fought by his side in the last firefight with the police?