got to base, there was already a delegation waiting to pick up the prisoner.
Captain Nosov spoke to the colonel while his men loaded the Arab onto another helicopter. The colonel called Nosov ‘son’, and the captain called him ‘old man’; you could tell that they were buddies.
The colonel said:
‘The infantrymen complained, saying that you made a bloodbath, you tortured a prisoner . . .’ He wasn’t at all angry; he spoke with a mixture of complicity and irritation.
Nosov, as always, was playful and in good spirits:
‘You know how they are, old man, those guys shit themselves as soon as they get wind of an Arab . . . They need to be shown that we’re the dangerous ones – they should be afraid of themselves, not those ignorant, incompetent, drugged-out religious fanatics . . .’ Whenever he spoke, Nosov had a mysterious power; his words carried a strange certainty. The colonel thought for a moment, and then, smiling, clapped a hand on his shoulder:
‘Son, you’d certainly know better than anyone else. But remember, if anything ever happens, I’m always here . . .’
As the helicopter ascended, the colonel smiled from the window and waved. Then he made a sign on his chest, as if he were drawing our bat with his finger. Still smiling, he clenched his fist, as if to say ‘Keep it up!’ We all broke out in big grins and waved back at him, as if he were our own grandfather who had come to visit us.
I thought a lot about what happened that day. Sometimes I regretted not having killed that poor man I’d shot in the knee. But later, after some time had passed, I came to understand the insane logic that guided our captain’s actions, and I realised that, yes, it was true that he made some extreme decisions, but he did it so that we could keep fighting the war the way we did.
We owed our reputation to Nosov’s great skill in handling complex situations well in the face of the realities of war.
And if his choices didn’t always conform to human morality, it was only because they reflected the horror and the difficulty we endured every day in the war, trying to stay alive, strong and sound.
_______________
* This was what we called military supplies – ammunition, weapons, clothing – that came from a foreign country.
FIRE ON US
. . . for this offensive special commitment is required of the soldiers and officers in the assault units and of all the active units on the front lines. Given the high priority of this operation, the nature of the task does not call for the capture, arrest or transport of terrorists or any other member of an illegal armed group. All human units who pose a threat or cause difficulty in carrying out orders during direct combat must be physically eliminated; whatever weapons or ammunition they may have must be destroyed on the spot or used by the active units to carry out the received order. Any form of communication with representatives of illegal armed groups is prohibited, as with civilians or any individual who does not belong to the units working in the area. Respond to any requests from terrorists for medical aid, negotiation, conversation, or unexpected offers to surrender to the law of the Russian Federation with gunfire.
Part of the order transmitted via radio to all the units involved in the offensive in the city ‘N’ in the Chechen Republic, 1999
Pummel, throttle, crush . . .
A favourite saying of General Aleksei Yermolov *
If you only knew what a friend I lost in battle . . .
It happened not forty-two years ago, but just the other day . . .
In the middle of the mountains, in the sand, where the heat burns all,
sparking my memory, now far away from youth . . .
Can you hear me, my friend?
My dear friend, in the end we were able to climb,
climb to that height that cannot be measured in words,
under which you fell . . .
What a friend I lost in battle . . .
As kids we would read war stories,
he certainly couldn’t have imagined
I would have to drag his body behind the rocks . . .
Thirty metres away, only thirty metres,
but how far that road was, between night and day . . .
Sand and stone,
sad light of the unknown moon over our heads.
Honour to the flag!
Farewell my friend, you will be with us forever more.
Forgive me, you were killed and I was only wounded,
in the Afghan mountains, in Afghanistan.
If you only knew what a friend I lost in battle . . .
The damned dust filled our eyes,
and our BTR was in flames,
in the sky, like a dragonfly, the helicopter circled
and like voices from the past, everywhere you could hear shouts of ‘Go!’ . . .
Like a nerve, he broke like a painfully stretched nerve,
and from the slope straight towards him a bullet took flight . . .
Sand and stone,
sad light of the unknown moon over our heads.
Honour to the flag!
Farewell my friend, you will be with us forever more.
Forgive me, you were killed and I was only wounded,
in the Afghan mountains, in Afghanistan.
Song by singer-songwriter Alexander Rozenbaum, dedicated to the veterans of the war in Afghanistan
And even if we don’t yet know the sweet touch or allure of a woman,
even if we’ve never experienced the pleasant torments of love,
at the age of eighteen we’re already used
to gun fights,
to bloody battles that never end,
and we know exactly what it means
to cross the line of fire.
Those days blazed, those nights went up in smoke,
and death flew
