And to wash yourself with a pure teardrop

The God’s servant Alexander

November has passed beyond half. Finally, it got colder, and the nightly rains are falling on the ground. And there is a bright sun residing in the endless blues of the sky in the mornings. But in the nighttime, nature seems to cry furtively, dropping cold tears over a mangled battlefield. Suddenly, on one such evening, a nice female doctor I knew in passing sent me a letter. What a pity, it wasn’t on a paper triangle (back in times of Great Patriotic War letters to and from the frontline were sent folded as a triangle), otherwise I would have cried together with her and with the nature over these handwritten words…

But I got a few lines on the screen of my smartphone about Kolyuchiy (Spikly) instead.

Kolyuchiy was a mortarman from the mobilized troops. An ordinary man, in his late fifties who fought well, you know—diligently, conscientiously. One could rely on him. He became a crew commander, received leave for valor and went to his village somewhere near Voronezh. He returned from the vacation earlier than was expected, as apparently something was dragging him back to war.

He returned to duty at the very moment the offensive started. Autumn had blown away the “zelyonka” (leaves from the trees). Under the conditions of an offensive, according to regulations, mortar crews are required to move very close to the front edge of line – only a kilometer or two away. The infantry rushes forward, and it’s not an easy task for them to nourish the soil with the blood without support of mortars.

So the crews crawled after them, leaving Vodyanoye and Opytnoye behind. Not a single bush could be found there and only small piles of bricks scattered here and there, where the houses used to be. Hiding mines is up to the crew, but the choice of placement is poor to say the least, even getting all the stuff there. Equip the gunpowder and “kolbasky” [sausages - additional gunpowder sacks, which are wrapped around the mine that regulate its firing range] where you want to direct, notwithstanding everything, the mortar must be ready to fire at anytime.

But it is an art rather than a skill. Zubr, a battery commander, had found an excellent position once – one could hide a mortar and hit the point at the same time. But the infantry rushed ahead, and the mines now worked at the limit of their range. He needed to make a fiery shaft about one hundred or hundred-and-fifty meters ahead of the infantry, after that – one kilometer ahead of them – to take the enemy out of the game, so they don’t throw the infantry back. However, if the enemy would succeed in recapturing the position, then “sky-high” commanders would start swearing. Here the political moment is also present— no one gives a fuck about this policy in the trenches! But the commanders most likely are having hard times because of this freaking Avdeevka – it turns out that the whole world watches it, everyone wants faster, so the commanders are scolded. So, they [the commanders] are quite loud when swearing on the phone. And so it goes, until the profanity impulse reaches Zubr who, in turn, passes it further to Kolyuchiy.

So that very Kolyuchiy is exactly that unknown soldier, who wraps “sausages” around the mines – were he to put too little – then his own infantry would receive this precious gift. Were he to add too much – then it would fly into the blue sky without harming the enemy at all. As to gunpowder and mines – these are also pain in the arse: the bosses are freaking strict about them! When the brigade advances, ammunition consumption is sky-high. If every gun commander spent gunpowder without accounting, there wouldn’t be enough at all. So, it turns out that all the roads lead to Kolyuchiy, as he is the one who does the calculations, but no matter how hard you count, it’s better to keep close to the infantry to be as sure as hell one is not called a freaking horse. It’s a local out-of-the-trenches idiom—profanity by the battalion commander “Taiphoon”, used when empty fields catch fire instead of the enemy.

Here Kolyuchy and his mortar crew rushed after the infantry. But there’s no greenery, all the buildings were ruined – so soldiers were free to choose how to fight and where to hide. This is how mortar crews work – on cold rainy nights crawling forward with all their gear, keeping reasonable balance between the risk and fulfilling a combat mission as they choose.

It seemed like shrapnel flew into Kolyuchy’s liver about two weeks ago: The crew was fighting somewhere far ahead of Vodyanoe. There was not a single chance to evacuate him during the daytime, so he died there – quickly and painlessly bleeding—looking into the bottomless blues of the November skies. And at nighttime he was washed by cold teardrops of the rain, until his crawling comrades secretly dragged him back to Vodyanoe. There he stayed for a while, lying somewhere under a pile of bricks, until they managed to evacuate his body to Donetsk under heavy shelling, where they filed all the required documents to send him to a special morgue in Rostov-on-Don. There he got a “Muzhik” ( Order of Courage [courage is “muzhestvo”]), was put into state provided coffin and sent for further burial in some unknown tine village near Voronezh.

And so, on this empty November evening, when it seemed like that the Lord God himself was crying outside the window, a nice little tactical female-doctor from Voronezh (one of those who constantly cruise back and forth teaching soldiers how to put on bandages correctly) wrote me about Kolyuchiy and how he was buried. It turned out that he lived at the neighborhood of her village “dacha” [holiday home]. Small world.

I’m always ashamed, when they write or ask me about a perished soldier when I cannot recall a memory of him. I know for sure, he was there, standing in the line of heroes as I constantly portray in my videos and notes. But I cannot recall the face, even the name slips away from my memory, I just know one thing: that here he was – Kolyuchiy, standing between Dym and Shum. Or maybe between Shaman and Efendi. I know he was there, but I cannot remember nor his name, neither his face… 

And here – I get the letter, it turned out that his name was God’s servant, Alexander—so the plaque on the coffin said. The whole village came to his funeral to honor him and to say a final farewell, his the grave was buried in flowers. In civilian life, Kolyuchy was a village drunkard, a bitter drunkard together with his equally dissolute wife. And he was painfully, drop by drop dying  from cirrhosis. As my dear gray-eyed doctor wrote—he was a living aid for students — the liver, in a large lump significantly protruded from under the ribs. From a medical point of view, this is certain death. And there is no way to avoid it. And when the God’s servant Alexander was mobilized, his drunken wife tried to convince the military registration and enlistment office that they were taking a terminally ill man to war. And he calmed her down, came, became Kolyuchiy, stopped drinking and began to fight hard. He rose to the rank of mortar commander and began to wrap those very “sausages” around mines, about the accuracy of which all these sky-high generals so passionately swear on the phone, so that they could finally take this Avdeevka, which the whole world is watching...

“You understand how the Lord God works—He took pity on him and let him die not in agony from cirrhosis, but happy from bleeding in that same cirrhotic liver... The whole village came to the funeral with flowers, the authorities arrived, and everyone cried...” —wrote the grey-eyed female-doctor…

Eh, why does life always weave such intricate circles? Now, on this November evening, it would be nice to warm myself up with cognac and have affairs with the glorious, gray-eyed female doctor, (who was suddenly brought here by a warm wind from mainland Russia), not to worry about my broken memory, not knowing to cry or rejoice for God’s servant Kolyuchiy, who bled to death while his weapon and his guys were fighting nearby. He, their commander, looked into the endless blues of the sky and died quietly without pain... That’s why on this empty evening it seems to me that the Lord God himself is quietly crying outside the window—because he probably also doesn’t know whether Koyuchiy was happy from such a gift of a glorious death or simply left in peace without pain...

(Dedicated to all the lovely tactical doctors who are brought here by the good wind from the mainland to help the soldiers. By the way, I sent what I wrote to her before publication and she wrote: “Happy, of course happy!” Such a soul.)