Afghantsy

It was a war with no victory.

I was a young university student, at my first year. Usually they were not drafted.

But I was.

My mother tried to talk to the relatives, to get me out. Earlier it had been possible to slip the draft, but because the number of deserters and draft-avoiders had been alarmingly high, politburo had announced that anyone who helped a deserter or to avoid draft, were regarded as a enemy of the state.

And those who were in the position of power knew too well what it meant.

From the distribution center I was transported to the training center, to the Central Asia. Corporals yelled at us and herd us around like sheep. The old looked at us with grim grins on their faces. It was chilly September.

Dedvoschina. It was a word that I learned to know.

We were nothing. Absolutely nothing. We had to salute the old, even the most simple and stupid privates. If we didn't, we would feel it later.

Barracks were cold and drafty. During the nights, moist froze to the walls. Food was what it was, after the cooks had taken the best bits and sold the middle. Our officers sold gasoline and ammunition, which meant that our APCs often didn't have enough fuel to train and we enough ammo to shoot. Commander of the training unit was an alcoholic. He came to duty near the mid-day, sat in his office couple of hours and drove away with his rusty Volga.

There were few soldiers from Central Asia, doing mostly manual labor. I didn't see them handle a gun once. They were low on the ranks - even lower than us. When we left, they stayed.

We were mostly Karelians, Lithuanians, Uralians. Far from home. Some of us were volunteers. I did not see any from Moscow or Petersburg, nor did I hear that anyone from those districts had served in Afghanistan. We were from small towns and rural districts.

After weeks of training, our motorized rifle battalion was deemed to be ready to be deployed. We had a short parade, we got even new uniforms for that. Before deployment, we got new gear. The old who stayed, told us that we would be dead by January.

After long road march and train transport we drove over the bridge to Afghanistan. The same bridge would become famous later when the last Soviet soldiers would withdraw across it.

It was 7th of December, 1982.

I had had some image of Afghanistan, but in a way I was shocked to see its state. It felt like travelling back in time. The road march was long. We stayed overnight at different towns on the way. I noticed how the veteran units rode on top of their APCs, instead of inside as we did. Roadsides were littered with wrecked tanks and trucks. Hinds and jets were in the air whole time.

Round villages there were elaborate web of ditches. Later on we would learn that Afghans used them like trenches, not needing to dig-in.

We were sent to Kabul, to relieve the battalion of the old. We met some soldiers from Afghan army. Their appearance didn't wake trust. Central Asians were the labor force here also, repairing the damage that insurgents and saboteurs did. Their gear was old and worn-out. They didn't like us, Slavs. I talked with one, very old starchina. He was a reservist, been here for ages. He said that when they first had gotten there they had been thought to be only peacekeepers and builders. But when mujahideen had started to attack them, they had lost great number of comrades. They had lacked training, ammo and heavy weaponry. Many of the Central Asians were Muslims, they didn't want to fight against their brothers in faith. So, they were relegated to other duties.

Our first mission was to search local village. A column of Kamaz were ambushed at its vicinity. The corpses of the drivers were mutilated. Commander of the forces in Kabul was furious. We were sent there to revenge. We had a company of the old with us, military police. They had the trademark of Afghantsy - large moustaches.

We attacked like in the textbook, with artillery bombardment. Our APCs drove around 200 meters away from buildings and we disembarked. There were dust and explosions, noise was deafening. Hinds flew above us and shot everything that moved. Our lieutnant told us to search the houses. I saw my first dead there. He was an old man, lying on the dust. Shrapnels had cut him into pieces. We all stopped to look at him. Our lieutnant came and yelled us to move, he kicked and shoved us forward. I still can see the old man, as if I were there.

We did not find anyone who looked like mujahideen. Only old men and women with children. Dead bodies, around twenty. Rest of the villagers were either fled or stared at us scared.

The sun was already setting when we left the village. We didn't get far until we were ambushed. I just heard echo of the explosion and felt when our driver braked. Suddenly walls of the vehicle bang like someone was hitting them with a hammer. Gunner started shooting, I don't know how he could see anything. The sun sets really fast in Afghanistan, it was totally dark outside. Our lieutnant ordered us to disembark. Yuri, a young Karelian tried to open the side hatch of the right side. He was hit instantly to the throat. Vlad, a boy from Ural, opened the left hatch and jumped out. He ran couple of meters, then there was a flash. He had run onto a mine. He screamed but no one dared to run at him. He continued to scream all too long. It ripped our nerves.

We started shooting inside the APC but couldn't see a thing through the small ports. We just blasted magazine after magazine. We heard more explosions. Then the gunner started yelling that insurgents were firing RPGs. We had to jump out.

Mujahidens were all around us. Muzzle flashes were as numerous as stars in the sky. I don't remember well what exactly happened during that evening and night. I was so scared that I could only lay down and try to be as small target as I could. I have no idea how I managed to survive but apparently we were able to hold our own. We stayed there until morning, when a rescue column got there. I did not have a scratch, but my magazines were empty. Empty cases and burned APCs were around. Blood stains where people were killed or wounded. I suddenly noticed how cold I felt. Fear and addrenaline had kept me warm but now I was freezing. Half our platoon was killed. The whole battalion had taken heavy casualties. I got a ribbon and promotion to junior sergeant.

It didn't make me feel any better.

I went to hospital to see my comrades. The guard didn't want to let me in, but I bribed him with cigarettes. It was called central military hospital, but it was closer to something else. Floors were dirty, many doctors and nurses had blood stained jackets which were once white. My comrades, Dimitri and Alex, had minor wounds from shrapnels. They told me they wanted out of the hospital. Patients died to lack of hygiene, bad food and negligence of staff. They asked me to smuggle them from the hospital back to our unit. To their great disappointment, I had no guts for it at the time. Boys got out couple of weeks later, but they were gotten in so bad shape in the hospital that they were discharged from duty.

Afghan women are usually under a strict supervision of the elders, although in Kabul they had a bit more freedom than usually. There were a few Soviet nurses. I actually managed to take one for a short date during my evening leave. She told me that solidarity programs they reported in newspapers were not succesful. It was difficult to gain acceptance from people that were bombed yesterday. They had asked for more resources for patients, but in vain. Hygiene was so bad overall that most patients were there because of sickness and sexual transmitted diseases rather than because of insurgents. The whole army was rotting inside, she said. Especially officers. She said that they were harassing nurses, making suggestions. Often drunk. Some days ago a baddly burned soldier slapped her on ass when she was examining another patient. I asked her for sympathy. Most of us were just young boys who had to spent time themselves, day after day. It was natural that they couldn't help themselves when seeing a woman. She said she was not a whore and didn't want to be treated as one. The date was not overally succesful but it was better than killing time at the barracks. I didn't see her again, supposedly she got a transfer or was transferred to another place.

During next months we did many attacks on the surrounding villages and towns. Every time we were prepared to face mujahideen on the battlefield, but every time we met only the same: old men and women, children. Young men were not there - our interpreter, Afghan army officer translated village elder's words: young men hide away because they are afraid that we would kill them. Our new lieutnant, who had replaced our previous one because he had gotten blood poisoning from some scratch, told the elder that its just insurgency propaganda and uttermost lie. We don't kill innocent, he said. Those youngsters are not hiding because they are afraid, they are hiding because they are mujahideen, he yelled.

Our lieutnant told this while there was still smoke in the air from the craters from rockets of our gunships.

After 7 months in Afghanistan, I knew I would not survive whole two years' service there. We got ambushed, time and time again, while responding to them by destroying villages. I had written many letters to my mom, to try to persuade our relatives to transfer me to some other place. It was tricky to get the message through mail, because I knew they would censor everything negative. There were good signs, however. Perhaps because I didn't want to slip the draft, I just wanted a transfer. But it took weeks the post to reach my hometown, then my mom to contact relatives, and then getting the answer back.

My mates had told me to grow moustache. I resisted but they made me. They said that I look like a rookie without them. So I did grow moustache, but they were so thin that you could only see them in hazy lighting.

One day we were on guard duty out in the field, on a supply depot. I had found a puppy from the village we last time searched. Afghans don't have great sympathy for stray dogs, I saw many pitiful sights of dogs limbing wounded around, struck by a truck or a bullet. I had presumed that its mother was killed, so I had taken it. Finally you have got yourself a real suka, my mates yelled when they saw it. I kept it in my breast pocket of my jacket, so small it was. My mate took a picture of me and my comrade Mykhail, a big burly man. He was a strong as a bull, coming from Ukraine.

One evening I felt myself really sick. I vomitted several times. My mates said that I had sunstroke or dehydration. It lasted all night. At morning I went to our medic, who was pretty reluctant to sent me to the hospital. It happened only after Mykhail had had a "friendly conversation" with the medic.

I was diagnozed with parasite infection. During my time at the hospital I quickly realized why Dimitri and Alex wanted away. I was really afraid of dying there.

Fate has sometimes odd sense of humour. I got a letter from my mother that I would be transferred to border duty on the border of China. On the same day doctor came and told me that my health was so poor that he would request a discharge from duty due to medical reasons. I had to write to my mother that I didn't need the transfer anymore because I would be coming home! Unfortunately, the transfer had been decided in different bureau than my discharge, which would cause problems later on (and thus I had to wait for three weeks at the distribution center and assert that no, I hadn't deserted and no, I wasn't killed, I had been discharged).

It took me years to recover from what I experienced in Afghanistan. I had hard time to concentrate on my studies once again. I woke at nights, sweating rife. I drank too much. We, Afghantsy, were disdained, especially in Lithuania. We had served the regime that surpressed the independence. It took years for the Soviet state to recognize that there had been war in Afghanistan, that it was a war with casualties and veterans. They finally did, but it didn't last long before the whole state collapsed. The rotten system. It was much later that I read about PTSD. I had left my studies and worked as a carpenter. I tried to apply several times again to university, but I was rejected. It was only in 2000s when I finally got accepted to study psychology, as an old, life-battered guy.

We caused pain and death to Afghanistan. We did some good, but it was drowned in blood of too many, innocent people.

Afghanistan took a lot from me. It took my life, although not as violently as from my fallen comrades, mates. But it took the toll that is indispensable.

It took my youth.

People hate us for what we did. They are right, but they don't take into account that most of us hate ourselves for what we did. There is no more the state that was responsible, there are only the people to blame. We served the system, but moreover we were the slaves of it. It was rotten, but we had no choice.

We have already all paid the price, in a way or another.

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