The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life)

And last but not least, the wide belt of sturdy tarpaulin with the weighty metal plate-buckle which could be used for a host of purposes, starting from digging a hole up to becoming a lethal weapon in a fight, when used as a mace on a string, sort of. It was not used to keep a soldiers pants though but to have him girded over any jacket or greatcoat he had on, and only in the parade-crap the belt was not observed, yet mostly present under the jacket, just in case.

Here, in short, how the construction battalion soldier, aka conbatist, was dressed. Though we, the spring draft of 1973, at first were honored and trusted to finish off the Russian and Red Armies' tunics with the stand-up collar, aka choker, which had been inherited and kicking back around in the warehouses of the Soviet Army. Later on, when we had worn them off to tatters and they became a real rarity, the "pheasants” were steaming with the itch to get such a one, unlike anybody else’s.

The comparative analysis of the component items in the outfit of the conbatist serviceman shows that the most idiotic piece in it was the forage cap, being uncomfortable to put under your head when sleeping, because of its hard visor, and mulishly resistant to attempts at pulling it over your ears in the rain…)

Each of the barracks was entered thru the outside cell in the middle of its long side. The narrow vestibule (3m x 3m) had the floor of wide ash-colored tiles underneath the low ceiling of painted plywood resting on wide lattice windows in its walls.

Outside the front door, a rectangular grating of parallel rebar-rods bridged a shallow cemented pit for the dirt falling off the high boots when scraped against the grating.

Close to the vestibule there stood an equally sized openwork gazebo with a bench of three beams running along the three plank sides. Its four-sided roof was propped by the posts in the gazebo corners. In the center of the cemented floor there was another pit, this one of rounded walls and without any lid or grating – for the servicemen to throw their cigarette stubs in, which eventually would be cleaned up by the on-duty soldier.

Next to the gazebo, there stretched a three-meter-long footrest allowing several men to simultaneously put one or the other of their feet upon it when polishing their high boots.

Anything omitted? Oh, yes! And the grass on both sides of the asphalt path around the barrack. When the Sergeants got over hot with drilling us in the sun-swept drill grounds, bounded by the gate, the Canteen, and the sorteer, or fed up with driving it home to us the meaning of lines in the booklet of the Statute of Internal Military Service, they cut us loose with the order to eradicate ragweed, aka ambrosia.

Previously, I knew for sure that ambrosia was a cheerful drink at the feasts of the eternally young and immortal gods of Olympus, and never suspected it had a nickname – the terribly vicious grass. We were shown sheets with a black-and-white picture of the wanted culprit coupled with short lines calling to find and liquidated the offender spreading dangerous hay fever.

That was the one and only unreservedly welcome command because the Sergeants disappeared for an hour or so, and, lying in the grass, we could talk and get acquainted in no hurry… From Konotop there was no one but me and others were from different cities – Buryn, Krolevets, Shostka, in the same Sumy region.

In general, the entire spring draft to VSO-11 was from Ukraine with the Dnepropetrovsk fellas brought before us. They had already undergone the training and got distributed to the companies of the battalion. Taking advantage of the Sergeants' absence, a couple of them sneaked into the gazebo to collect the cigarette stubs from the rounded hole, dropped there by us at the command to fall in.

Nobody really knew why the poor Ambrosia was hunted down so severely, and nothing in the grass around resembled it even remotely, but the idle talks helped to at least shortly forget about the gruesome eternity piled on us for the following two years…

~ ~ ~

The newly acquired outfit harbored certain predicament at training the commands of "get up!" and "light out!", the buttons could hardly be squeezed in and out of the tight buttonholes. On the advice of a wise newbie Vitya Strelyany, I widened them with an aluminum spoon handle in the Canteen, and they began to fly in and out nice and swiftly…

The immediate goal of the drill training was to sell ourselves on the Oath Day. All in all, there were three platoons in the "training" barrack with one and the same song for them all, which was often aired by the All-Union "Mayak" Radio Station.

"In two winters,
Merely in two winters,
In two summers,
Merely in two summers
I'll do my honest service in the army
And come back to you…"

After the first platoon finished their ceremonial-step circling round and round the drill grounds and singing the song in a false course chorus concluded by the finalizing, "Stop! One-two!" the second platoon marched into the same ground singing the same song, which turned unbearably long. And when at last they also stopped, we, the third platoon, stomped in, blaring about the third pair of winters and summers, which was a crying redundancy.

The recruits snickered, the Sergeants of the first and second platoons laughed outright, and our Sergeant got icky nervous… When I told him I could prepare another song for us to sing, if only I had a pen and paper, he did not immediately get it what I was talking about, but then I was set free from the drill grounds to do creative work for the benefit of the platoon.

The Sergeant instructed me to get the needed stationery from the on-duty soldier guarding the cabinet-box… The first thing you saw on entering any barrack was a soldier standing next to the cabinet-box. The soldier was an on-duty serviceman, and the cabinet-box was his sentry post. Standing there, he had to issue the command "Company! At attention!" when the barrack was entered by an officer.

There were 2 on-duty privates daily who replaced each other by the cabinet-box every four hours, and at the mealtime, the one free from the watch went to the Canteen under command of the on-duty Sergeant to lay the tables with the havvage for the company servicemen to have it.

Those 3 (the on-duty Sergeant and the pair of private men) were called "on-duty detail" and stayed it for 24 hours. The current on-duty Sergeant was surprised by my request, yet he gave me a pen and a sheet of paper.

Passing to the end of the barrack, I entered the room which the company political commander, aka zampolit, called "Leninist Room" because its walls were paneled by yellow chipboard and next to the mirror there hung the brown-yellow icon of Leader's profile in a piece of Beaverboard, but in the soldiers' lingo it was "live-mains room" because of the wall sockets for an iron or electric razors and the mirror wide enough to be used by 2 or 3 of shaving men at once…

The song air was no problem – everyone knew the perennial hit:

"Maroosya, a black-haired girl,
Picked berries
Of gelder rose…"

But not everyone knew that originally the song was sung as "C’mon, fellas, uncinch the horses…" which meant that it got used to transformations of its lyrics:

"Our parade march is the best,
And our song's the loudest,
That's the tune
Of our platoon!.."

Sitting over a sheet of paper I twirled the pen in my fingers picking up words in my mind, fitting them this or that way. And gradually the Leninist live-mains around me, and the acrid smell of fresh cotton from my uniform, and the smarting itch in my right foot rubbed to bleeding, all that faded into the woodwork. I was in AWOL from the army…

Yes, we did learn and sing it quite bravely…

~ ~ ~

At the end of the day, the rookies stood at ease about the entrance to the "training" barrack when the Master Sergeant of Fourth Company, a man of about 40 with a round good-natured face and a paunch of the potbelly, was passing by.

He stopped to ask where we were drafted from. Probably, he just wanted to while away the half-hour before the Ensigns and officers, as well as a couple or two of women from the accountancy by the Detachment Staff were to be taken to the Stavropol-City. For the overnight staying in the battalion, there remained only the on-duty officer.

One of us, Vanya by his name, seeing the human disposition of the senior in rank, asked with a sucking-up smile, "Comrade Master Sergeant, could they exempt me because of this?"

Lowering his head, he rested his index finger in a wide scar on his pate, that peeped thru the bristles of the close-cut.

"Fucking smartie, fixin' to fuck the army?" said the Master Sergeant. "No fucking way!" And he slapped Vanya's shoulder blades with his broad fatty hand.

From the sonorous spank, Vanya bent in the opposite direction and pouted to show that it hurt, "Ouch!"

The soldiers readily laughed at the witty remark of the Master Sergeant…

As for the tactical drills, I even liked them. All the three platoons of rookies were formed into one column and marched out of the battalion grounds to the field by the pigsty. The Sergeants explained that "flash" meant a nuclear bomb explosion, and it was necessary to drop flat on the ground with your head in the flash direction.

Then the command "run march!" followed, and when the whole column moved in a disorderly trot, one of the Sergeants yelled, "Flash on right!" With animated yells and screams, we clumsily fell in the grass. The drill was repeated several times.

(…an eternity later, when we also became "grandpas" and the buddies from my draft recollected those "flash on left!" and "flash on right!" as one of the inhuman trials for the startup youngs, I could not understand them.

I still do not understand. Running in the summer field, tumbling in the green grass when you have the strength and wish – it's just fun!

"How young we were at that time!
How young we were at that time!."…)

After the concentrated, hard, fatigue-denying, training in the course of the unforgettable four days, we took the Military Oath and became servicemen at the Armed Forces of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics. No, we were not holding any automatic or another kind of weapons which customarily adorned that ceremonial ritual in the Soviet Army. We just took turns stepping out of the ranks to approach the desk in the asphalt path, pick up the sheet with the text of the Military Oath, read it, put it back onto the desk, sign another sheet (the lieutenant indicated the place for the signature), step back to the ranks, turn about and face the barrack wall made of white silicate brick laid in shiner position.

Behind the desk, facing our ranks, there stood two officers. If somebody, while taking the Military Oath, was not quite dexterous about the reading of the printed text, they did not really pick on him – just finish it off quick and scribble your scratch on the sheet.

In the end, the lieutenant asked if anyone had a medical education. After a moment of refrained confusion in the ranks, a young soldier stepped out and reported his having been a help for the paramedic at the first-aid post in his village. He was singled out to continue his service at Fourth Company, as well as four professional drivers from our draft.

(…how many times in the 2 years that followed, I cursed myself with every taboo word under the sun for missing to step forward and report my 3 years of reading up for admittance exams at the neurosurgery department of a medical institute!.)