"HOW FAR FROM AN IDEAL WE WERE" THE WAR VETERAN ON THE OCCASION OF THE FATHERLAND DEFENDERS' DAY

On October the 14th Defender of the Fatherland day took place. And as expected many officials and bureaucrats had made their pompous speeches on this occasion. They spoke loud and fervently without sincerity, they spoke because they are required to do so. And that is all I have to say on that matter. 

I'm happy that at one time I had the opportunity of living and sharing my life with these guys, I had listened to their life stories, saw their eyes, and heard their laughter.

You can't even imagine how far most of them were from the image of an ideal soldier, promoted by our military propaganda, and most of them are far more distinguished even when compared to those photoshopped Rambo like men from the recruitment posters.

Some have abandoned their education in prestigious universities in order to go to the front, others have given up their careers, there were even those, who came straight from school after their final class of the day. I had literally been fighting alongside guys who went straight to the front from school. They had given up on their final exams and left school 2 months before graduation.

I spent a month living in a room with an 18-year-old boy. He was radiating with energy. He wanted to learn all he could as quickly as he could - how to operate and shoot the PK machine gun and how to use the SVD, how to put stretch marks and plant mines. That boy wouldn't let me rest at night by asking more and more questions. He had been demanding I tell him stories about the Reich and about the Kriegsmarine, about the Ustashes and Ancient Rome, about the theory of a preventive war, about the UNSO campaign in Abkhazia, about how we will win and why Taganrog is part of Ukrainian land ... And then, on August 24, 2014 a coffin with his body was laid to rest in the earth of Volyn. And this year, standing at his grave, it was the first time in the past 12 years that I was unable to restrain my tears. 

Many of the guys had quite bad and unbearable tempers. This annoyed me greatly back when we used to share a room with sixteen other men. But now these memories make me smile when looking back on them.

If anyone of those foreign-funded Marxist or civil rights activists had managed to listen in on one of our discussions in the barracks after returning from the field they would likely have died from a stroke listening to these men, they were filled with so much "hatred", and "intolerance"  and there was plenty of it.  

I witnessed how this war killed feelings, how it destroyed relationships and families. I witnessed boys who had betrayed their girlfriends, betrayed many of them and betrayed them often; and how girls would dump their boyfriends, betrayed them, and cheat with their friends back home who had been too cowardly to go to war. And yet I saw a guy, who held a photo of his girl while hiding in a trench during an enemy shelling.  

I knew some paranoiacs, who couldn't sleep without having a grenade under their pillow. They would never go beyond the base without a gun and a couple of RGD grenades. They would only sleep for four hours each day, the rest of time they spent on improving and cleaning their weapons and ammo. 

Some of these guys were afraid of a combat departure. Wildly afraid. They were in panic, they were literally unable to straighten out their own knees and dismount from their vehicle. But all was better the next time they would go out. And after a while, they were calmly drinking mineral water when others were jumping into trenches after hearing someone shout "GRADS!" (a warning for mortar shelling).

I remember the sparks in the eyes of the men, when they were awakened at night for combat, how they were running around with ammo boxes, how they were hurried in loading new ammunition cans on the PK machine guns, and how they were stopping for a moment to think about what they should throw into the Kamaz - a block of water or an extra box of grenades.

In such moments their imagination was painting images of a burning Donetsk or an assault on Novoazovsk. But after half an hour the guys would get the word that the operation was canceled and with feelings of total disappointment, they went back to their beds, insulting "Novorossiya".

Can you imagine a dude, who is trying to take a selfie, while paramedics are working over an exit wound in his shoulder? Or a fellow, who would slowly drive a car, loaded with 120mm shells, through a free-fire street and calmly whistling Iron Maiden's Brave New World? Or a guy, who's recording on a GoPro camera an explanation to a dean of the Prikarpatsky University why he hasn't visited the university while lying in the snow somewhere between Shyrokino and Sahanka under the tank crossfire? Can you imagine this? Because I definitely couldn't. But I was lucky enough to see this and many other similar moments through my own eyes.

I don't know how to explain who all these people were, and what sort of mess they had had in their heads. What insane ideas they had been bearing. How strong their hatred was, how much they wanted to fight and how genuinely they were rejoicing when a new batch of ammo arrived.

One day, a National Guard general arrived to one of our bases for an inspection. He silently watched over the volunteers, who were working on tactics in the grass in front of the dining hall. Nobody was going to stop the training in order to greet a high ranking visitor solemnly, to align and to salute to him, or to arange an excursion for him, showing neat lawns and freshly painted bedside tables. These people couldn't care less about the size of the star on shoulder boards of a man, who actually hadn't led them in the battle for Mariinka, who hadn't sat with them in the trenches on the outskirts of Mariupol, and a man who has never been in Shirokino's lighthouse. 

The General had been smoking nervously and muttered to his Assistant-Colonel something to the sort of: "Look, it turns out that there are many batshit-crazy people in this country and they all happened to be brought together in this place." 

I don't know how the war will end. Neither do you. 

Maybe there and then, in the Azov steppes in 2014-15, I had witnessed the resistance of one of the last bastions of our civilization. Perhaps, I had witnessed the gods of war gather in one place.

Maybe there and then, in the Azov steppes in 2014-15, I had witnessed the resistance of one of the last bastions of our civilization. Perhaps, I had witnessed the gods of war gather in one place, in a place for real men. Not for the weak, the cowardly, the coddled,  but for those young, angry and ready to fight. 

And perhaps something new that we still haven't realized had begun.  Anyway, I'm happy to have been involved in this.

Andriy Dyachenko, a veteran of the Azov regiment