# The Letter

Igor Koval

Translation by Anatoly Filippenko.

I. Koval

"The Letter"

Well, let me try and figure out what to tell you all about, my dear. Surely, army life is no picnic. It"s not like what I thought it would be when I was a civilian, absolutely not. That"s why I wasn"t writing to you - there was nothing worth writing about because when you are talking about a soldier who has put in just two weeks or a month, what could he write about? It"s clear that he would complain to his mother how hard it is to be here and how homesick he is: the deds [1] are treating him badly, he"s never getting enough chow, he"d shurely add a couple of lines about that heartburn he keeps getting from that lousy rye bread that only dusharas [2] find edible, and all that. Utter gloom... And now, finally, there is something to write about.

To tell the truth - between you and me - I did write to you before. Oh yes, I must admit that I used to bitch a lot trying to unburden my heart. But after my graduation from the boot camp I learned that the Osoby Otdel [3] had set the brake on all my letters. They never went anywhere. And you know what? - I was glad to learn that. After you have swallowed half a year of service, you don"t want to complain to your family anymore, for they might think you"re a pussy. The Osoby Otdel deserves a praise for that, they really did me a favor - though those guys must have had their own reasons for setting the break on soldiers" letters, that"s for sure... I mean it. Because I serve in the Turkestansky military region. There have strange ways here, and the mail often sinks to the bottom and stays there, somewhere with the osobists [4]. That happens because we are so close to a hot border - I think so, and the guys say the same. The Afghan"s [5] searing heat reaches you even from beyond the mountains.

As for my present location, that I can"t tell you, because besides it being a secret, sometimes I just don"t know where I"m going to find myself tomorrow. The thing that I can tell you for sure is that I"m a "wheel" [6], a real wheel serving in a transportation battalion in the Turkestansky military region, I"m a Transportation junior sergeant, people call us "solyara" [7]. I"ve traveled almost everywhere in the Middle Asia, from highland lakes to deserts. I"ve been to Tashkent, Fergana, even the Kamchik defile - that"s Uzbek territory, by the Afghan border; then I got stuck in Kagan for two months - and then we started hauling cargoes to Tajikistan. In short, we are big travellers, my Mishka [8] and I. You may ask "Who is Mishka?" Well, that"s my ZIL-131, and I call him Mishka. Back in the boot camp I used to know an instructor, a prapor [9] , a senior praporshchik, and that"s what he told me, he said you"ve got to love your truck, really love, and if you do it"s not gonna let you down, that is you"ve got to treat it like a person, a live being, like a friend. So I followed his advice, and what can be better when not only you have a friend, but a friend with a name? Why "Mishka"? Had I called him "Seryoga" you"d ask "why Seryoga?" Well, I just think this name becomes him.

Mishka and I are thick as thieves. He was in not too good a shape when I took him over. There was a guy who drove him before me, and that guy had worn him out as hell. I should say though, Mishka has a good excuse, though I don"t think that one should be looking for excuses when dealing with a friend. That guy wound up in a hospital with a shrapnel wound. You may ask where that happened. Well, here in the South there are lots of places for that. Especially over there, across the river. Yeah, that"s what I"m talking about: the Afghan. I was taking some dembels [10] to Tashkent once, giving them a lift. It was hard to deal with them at first, but after a while everything went well, and we started talking. If their stories are true - well, those desantura [11] did see a lot, no doubt about it. Well, my Mishka, before we met, also had spent some time in combat - he did four convoys up and down the Salang, spent two years fighting. The guys even left a picture for him to keep, one of those that the komitetchiki [12] hadn"t taken away. So he"s got friends everywhere now, all around the Union: in Vologda, Perm and Kaluga.


Michael has seen a lot of truckers, but he had never found a soulmate... Must have waited for me to take him over. Before the army, I"m sure you know that, I worked in Kolomna, my home town, at a motor depot, qualified as 3rd grade expert; I worked for a year driving a 130 [13]. I had picked it up at a junkyard and put it back into service. My foreman, when seeing me off to the army, he even shed a tear; said how could he go on without me, said I had magical hands - what if I wouldn"t come back, what if I would extend my service? [14]. He says "What will I do then?" That"s the way it was, and I"m not trying to impress you. Same story with Mishka, I brought him together from scratch. He"d been wounded, the "outside" was all in a lousy shape, and the motor with the running gear were almost dead, and looking at him you just couldn"t tell he was a hero. That"s how people had been treating him: such a disgrace, and nobody cared a shit. The good thing is that getting spares here is no problem at all, it takes just a bit of effort and persistence: all you need to do is write a request and submit it to the maintenance officer - and here you are, come and pick up whatever you need, whereas back in the civilian world you would have to wait for spares until the second coming of the Lord. In short, I tuned up the carburettor, restored the hydro all by myself and using a minimum of spares, and was commended for that by the maintenance officer; I also installed a new head, not to mention that after two weeks of work my truck looked totally different. Also, we installed a new gear box recently, after he"d let me down at the Fergana route and at the Kanchagai. Before that happened Mishka constantly howled, played pranks every now and then, that is, he was asking for help, and finally he let me down. I had had a feeling that something was going to happen, and I didn"t blame him, because it can happen to anyone working as he did, wearing himself out. I had reported to the commander, but those higher-ups wouldn"t even give me a chance to breathe myself. And then one day Roach, that"s our company top, summons me to him and says, "Well, Samokhin, get down to taking care of your Mishka, install new spares wherever possible, so that it wouldn"t let you down, because hot days are coming, we gonna go to the Afghan". Well, I don"t mind, if they say the Afghan, let"s go to the Afghan, I"m just happy that they let me revive my truck. That "man" has taken a lot of abuse, but he can"t keep taking it forever.

They gave me three new guys to help, from the spring draft. They were good guys, never shirking rough work. So, they are happy working with me, very obedient. Anyway, it"s better to be here than back in the company: no need to do anybody"s laundry, no chest-pounding from the deds. In short, those guys helped me a lot, and I"m awfully thankful to them. Well, they also learned some things from me, too, became a bit saltier - now they know what is what here. After two weeks of work we put Mishka back into the ranks.

It was my first convoy across the river. We crossed the Termez-Jeyretan bridge on the 12th of September. The convoy wasn"t yet up to full strength, but somebody in the brass ordered to move out today, and I thought it was a correct decision. It"s not that cool to cross the border on a 13th. They decided to wait for the tanker trucks and security guys on the other side; besides, motorized infantry were already there expecting us.

On the 14th the convoy rolled onto the Termez-Kabul highway, and it became clear what the delay was about. The first convoy had set out just two hours before us. Our forces were conducting an operation in the Hindu Kush mountains somewhere towards Meydan Shahr, Vardak Province, and all traffic was temporarily halted. It seems they were bombing dushmans. O"K, let them bomb them, do their serious business - and we"ll just sit and wait in the meantime.

Finally, we moved out. We were passing kishlaks, and, while we made a stop to rest, I saw an old man with a bony donkey. The dark-skinned old man with a humped back approached my truck and stood gazing at me intently while I was pouring water into the radiator. He smiled and chanted, "Safar ba hair shuravi". He said it a few times. The praporshchik told me later that in the Dari language it means "May your journey be a lucky one, Russian". I smiled back at the old man and we went on. There were six vehicles riding in front of mine, KAMAZ trucks with some civilian cargo, and a tail-end BMP with paratroopers sitting on the armor. They were riding right in front of me. They were old salts, and theirs is a hard job, escorting convoys. But they are used to it. They know all there is to know, you can tell that by their faces, stern and sun-tanned, all in caked soot from truck exhausts. Their rifles were as if glued to their bent arms, the web-gear all stuffed with banana clips and ammunition, wherever possible. I talked to one of them during a break (he asked me for a smoke), well, he says he hasn"t been to a shower for three months, and that they had to wash in mountain springs. Maybe he"s lying, I don"t know. However, I should admit that they hold our kind in deep respect, the wheels are gods here, for it"s us who bring everything from the Big Land. They all circled me and gave me lots of requests, and that guy, the smoker, even suggested that we start a business - says visit my man in Kabul, pick up six cartons of Marlboro and take them to the Union [15], and also some Korans, says it"s profitable as hell. I say it"s my first run, but he keeps talking about his stuff. In short, I made a promise to do that, so we are friends now.

Starting with Mishka and I, all the way down the convoy, trucks were hauling military stuff. We were carrying artillery ordnance, mortars, and further on there were three 66s [16], they were carrying some new models of artillery pieces. I thought then that they shouldn"t have piled all the vehicles up - if my Mishka blows up, all that artillery will be as good as shit.

At the second mountain pass, after we left the first Northern Pandjsher provinces behind, we were handed over to another desantura team, I think they were from 345. The paratroopers turned out to be roaring hungry. A black-haired fellow from Rostov, or maybe from the Crimea ran up to me and traded an American pistol plus ten clips for two cans of canned meat. Says they have been two weeks on the detail already, sleeping on the armor while expecting us - and so they have eaten up all they had.

"Well, what am I gonna do with this?" I say.

"You"re gonna get some good money in Dushanbe or Tashkent, you moron," he says.

"But how am I gonna pass the border checkpoint?"

He looked at me in utter amazement.

"First run?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, I see now. Put on your body armor."

He turned around and deftly jumped up on the armored vehicle.

"Good luck, wheelie!" he shouted to me as his BMD [17] belched out plumes of black smoke and leaped forward like a frog.

An order came: Forward!

We were rolling on down the Pandjsher gorge. The caravan had spread out for a couple kilometers or more. Mishka rolled on with confidence, no overheating, axles spinning, and there was music from a war trophy, a Panasonic, in the cabin. I don"t remember now what kind of music it was. The truck commander, a young praporshchik, was mumbling something as if to himself, and I tried to hear what he was talking about. It turned out that he"d been talking to me, and had already revealed to me that he"d extended for a year, and that it"s been two years since he"s been here. He expects that his time in the Afghan will pay with a vengeance. He married recently and is expecting an arrival in the family. Says a couple more years and he"ll have enough dough to by an apartment back home. He showed me a picture of his wife. She was a beautiful woman . As for me, I didn"t have a girlfriend. For some reason, I never seemed to find the time for that. And now all I have to do is look at the pictures of other men"s wives and envy them. The АКМ clutched between my knees-that"s my girlfriend for the next year. But that"s all right, I wasn"t born yesterday, and I"ll catch up. But frankly speaking, I even got envious of him. No, not because of the prospects of his service. I would never extend-I wanna go home, this terrain is not to my liking, everything is so alien here. I"m talking about the family. It must be just wonderful-you go out on a long run, and back at home there are people waiting for you to come back: the wife and the son, maybe the daughter; and each time when the wife tells a bedtime story, she tells the children how good and kind there father is, and that right now he is earning money to buy them candies and gifts. Pure happiness. And maybe at that same moment I decided that after the army I would join the long run department in my motor depot. They pay more money there, and, actually, there are prospects to get a job at the Sovtransavto and drive trucks to foreign countries, and then... just paradize.

The desantura passed a signal that we should switch over to hill-climbing gear-the serpentine started going up into mountains. The Salang Pass lay ahead. On each side of the road I could see abandoned vehicles, half-burnt KAMAZ trucks, vehicle sceletons, garbage. A bit off the road, in a little ravine, there was a tilted BMP abandoned there after a mine had mutilated it. It stood there like a monument with burnt-through red armor, like a sign warning that there was a war going on. My Mishka, as if awakening at the sight of his brother in arms, passed a roar from his motor, and, heavy and obedient, made the road"s red dirt spin on his life-asserting tires-attaboy, he"s a good man, all my trying hasn"t been in vane; the motor runs like clockwork, and keeps pulling. The kusok by my side is as happy as can be.

Suddenly, an explosion roared behind us, and the blast even blocked one of my ears. I peered into the rear-view mirror...

"Let"s go, move on," hollered my truck commander, his face disfigured with a grimace.

They radioed in that a tanker truck got blown up-a landmine. The dukhs were out there. The BMD jerked to the right, and the paratroopers hopped off the armor. The rattling of rifles stayed somewhere behind, but not for long. Lead started raining from the sharp red mountain tops. The BMD turned its turret and opened up at the mountains.

"Forward!!!"

I stepped on the gas. Mishka whined out. Bullets started hitting the cabin and the 10-grade steel sheet installed in front of the radiator. Something burned my ear. I didn"t even understand how it happened-a ricochet maybe. Mishka was rushing up the hill gaining speed, I switched over to the third gear and it seemed that I was helping him flee from that unexpected heavy fire from the dog-mean dushmans. They were crawling out like cockroaches from holes all around the place somewhere out there, but I couldn"t see them. I just had a feeling that there were many of them. Too many. And they keep crawling up.

The first KAMAZ was seven meters away from me. I cast a side glance to the right and saw the picture ot the praporshchik"s wife lying on the floor. I called him. He didn"t respond for he was either dead of gravely wounded-he was motionless, except for his head that was hitting the window glass and the post when the truck was hitting bumps. And then for the first time in my life I realized what fear meant... I really did, as it crawled up into my stomach like a ghost from some bad dream, with a razor-blade in his hand.

It"s hard to relate, or better to say describe a pillar of fire bursting out of a KAMAZ rolling over, there"s no way to put that in words, it"s just that there are no words for this. And the tank truck, all in flames, and the impact that had happened before all that started-that is something really special. It"s like the birth of a nightmare, like a prelude to the appearance of the Angel of Darkness coming out of the deep. And you back home in the Soyuz can hardly imagine what a man feels when this is happening right under his nose-not in a movie, not upon the screen in a cinema, but when your truck bumps into this mass of hell, and there is no way to simply push a button and switch it off.


I didn"t hear anything anymore-as if somebody had shut off the soundtrack, muted it. And for some reason everything that was happening had some reddish hue. It didn"t take too long to find out why-probably it was because of blood that was pouring out of my ear and cut forehead, and getting into my eyes. However, I still could see. Once again, Mishka hadn"t let me down. His mighty engine, roaring as it was revving up, pulled the ZIL backwards, and a part of the KAMAZ too. And then, suddenly, it bumped into something... The rear truck had blocked my way back. I jumped out of the truck and, in the heat of the moment, yelled at the wheel of that truck. The truck"s door was half-open, and my eyes met an officer"s eyes. He was looking somewhere, somewhere in my direction, but surely not at me. I couldn"t hear well, but I do remember that the convoy commander was firing his AKS [19]. I turned around. On the left side of the ravine, about forty meters away, the dooshmans suddenly appeared, as if crawling right out of rocks. In spite of all me previous feelings, that was when I first saw them, and so close, too. They are crawling about, moving, one can even hear them speak. I opened up on them. The word "grenade launcher" brought my hearing back. I looked to the right and saw a couple of men with turbans on their heads: one with an RPG [20], that"s for sure, and the other, it seems, with a "boor" [21] upon his shoulder...

Well, actually, that"s about it... The rest doesn"t matter. Although... wait a bit. Didn"t I think about it then?! The young wife in that picture and a happy family life-can there be anything better than that? The praporshchik in the truck could be still alive. I recolled then that he had been moving his hand and moaning when that truck bumped into us from behind. I rushed into the truck, grabbed him by the belt and started pulling him out. If the explosives in the truck go off now, we are goners, all of us. Did I know what I was doing? Hell if I know. I was just thinking: for some reason, I was thinking of having a wife and children, of trips abroad and long runs. That"s what really matters, not the war. Who the hell needs it, that I don"t know. I don"t need it, that"s for sure...

Well, having said that, I feel there"s anything more left to say. And now something kind of specially for you - sort of an amendment. Sorry for being so sincere and for speaking in such detail. I"ve never spoke nor written about that to my folks. You can"t tell that to your mother, you know. Besides, it smells of being a big mouth hero, whereas we are of a modest kind, we are just "wheels". I guess she still doesn"t have a clue.

Wait a minute, I feel like I haven"t told you something... Oh, it"s about our conversation about who needs all that and the like-well, I do, and I"ve told you that before... I believe that"s what life is about.

It"s such a pity that I"m not gonna have all that, I"ll never will. For I was killed on that day...

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Notes:

[1] Ded (Army slang, from a Russian word meaning "grandfather" or "aged man")-a conscript after a year and a half in the army (with half a year left to serve).

[2] Dushara (Army slang, pronounced doo-SHAH-rah), derogatory variant of "dukh" (pronounced dookh)-a conscript during the first half a year, and most often during the whole first year in the army. Note: "dukh" also means "dushman" (pronounced doosh-MUN)-mujahideen, the too meanings are in no way related.

[3] Osoby Otdel-literally translates as "Special Department"-Counterintelligence.

[4] Ocobist (Army slang)-an officer in the Osoby Otdel.

[5] Afghan (colloquial, pronounced av-GUN)-abbreviation of "Afghanistan".

[6] Wheel (from "steering wheel")-driver (general nickname).

[7] Solyara (colloquial)-diesel fuel.

[8] Mishka (colloquial)-Michael (name).

[9] Prapor (Army slang)-praporshchik, rank in the Soviet/Russian Army, similar to that of warrant officer.

[10] Dembel (Army slang)-soldier discharged from military service.

[11] Desantura (Army slang)-"desantniki", paratroopers.

[12] Komitetchiki (colloquial)-KGB officers.

[13] ZIL-130, truck.

[14] That is, become a professional enlisted man, maybe go to a school to become a praporshchik.

[15] The Union (colloquial)-the USSR.

[16] GAZ-66, truck.

[17] BMD (Boevaya Mashina Desanta)-IFV designed for use by paratroopers.

[18] Kusok (pronounced koo-SOK, Army slang, somewhat derogatory, literally translates as "lump")-praporshchik.

[19] AKS-74-"S" means a folding-stock version.

[20] RPG-it"s interesting that numerous foreign sources translate this abbreviation as "Rocket Propelled Grenade", whereas in Russian it means "Hand-held Anti-tank Grenade Launcher" (Ruchnoi Protivotankovy Granatomyot)

[21] Ancient rifle widely used by the dushmans.