The Bloody Veil
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We met one by one. It was as if it was saying, "Now I will scatter your hated body". Then I saw death in sight. The mine opened its black jaws, as if laughing. I cringed. I looked around. The soldiers hid behind the AFV. The yellow-faced man who had sent me to my death was watching me intently from behind the shelter.
This picture, and maybe my prayers all worked together, I came to myself: I felt a tide of strength, courage. In front of me was an ordinary "landmine". Without thinking, I removed the explosive, raised the mine. The soldiers, seeing this, fled again to a considerable distance. I brought a mine and got into the car with it. Everyone was watching, holding their breath. We returned to the regiment in silence.
– You are called by the chief of staff, – said the captain when he returned.
Now I did not care. I could even go to hell with this mine, because hell was on my chest. When a man is brought to extremes, he is capable of anything.
When they saw me with a mine on my chest, they all threw up. When I entered the chief of staff, his eyes almost came out of the orbit. He began to retreat.
– Put it there, put it there—only the chief of staff could speak, pointing to a corner away from him.
I remember another case. After serving four months in the desert, I returned to the regiment. I have been in the army for a year and a half. We were raised at four in the morning. They brought shoes from somewhere. I climbed, but on the way it started rubbing the leg, then I removed. It seemed like I couldn’t reach the goal today. I felt like I was on a mine and I exploded. Two soldiers were sent to demine the roof of the house. We were waiting for them. A lot of time has passed and concerns have grown. At this time there was an explosion, dust rose and soon settled.
– What happened there, go find out, – the commander told me.
It is not difficult to understand the feelings with which I went to execute this order. As soon as I entered the house, I saw an open crack in the ceiling that formed after the explosion. One soldier failed in it. His face could not be recognized. There was blood, but it was hard to know where it came from. I tried to help him, but he refused:
– Find my machine, I’ll go out myself, – he said. His machine was attached to the wall of the house. It's hard to say now whether I understood then what he was up to, but the machine gave. This happened often. At that moment there was a scream from the house: "Help!". I turned and took a step back. On the staircase leading to the roof of the house, a soldier stood and held a wounded comrade in his arms. I took a wounded man from him, but as soon as I tried to come down with him, there was a terrible explosion. The wounded man fell out of my arms, and I flew out of the house.
I woke up in the stretcher. I wanted to get up, but it didn’t work. Looking at my legs, I found that I had not one of my legs, and the other turned into something like a meat puddle. The trousers on the legs were broken. Someone ran somewhere, quarreled, screams were heard. They gave me some medicine to smell in the car. It seemed like I drank a lot of vodka. Then they turned from one side to the other. I don't remember anything further.
Four days I failed in the Kandahar hospital, from there I was transferred to Kabul. On the naked legs was put a bandage. Bandage was tightly attached to the bone, it was very painful. Three hours from the healthy part of the leg cut off the skin and attached to the bare bone of the feet. But everything is unsuccessful.
I was taken to Tashkent. Severe pain was caused by bandages attached to the bone. I could not sleep all night. It seems that the whole body has turned into a continuous rupture, ready to break. In Tashkent, the doctor, removing the bandages, tightly compressed my legs. The pain was terrible.
– The foot is clean, there are no cracks, – he said.
I was operated on that day. When I woke up at night, I didn’t feel any pain in my leg. I thought a lot about meeting home. I thought I would enter my hometown. Everybody knows that the news of such trouble spreads very quickly in the cheeks. My heart broke when I thought about it. Many times I thought: "Would I go back like this?". In front of my eyes passed dead comrades and blamed me for such thoughts.
The older brother arrived. When he saw me, he cried. Apparently, something was wrong with the remaining leg, and I was sent to Moscow. There I met a friend from Namangan. He lost two eyes. We walked together. Bitter tears flowed from his eyes.
Doctors promised him to do surgery, but only a year later and did not guarantee that at least one eye would see.
– If I don’t get my eyesight back, I won’t go back to my hometown. I will live here until I die, – he said.
He was very sociable, I couldn’t withstand his complaints and tried to avoid them, because I could not comfort him or myself.
I was treated in Moscow.
My older brother knew what had happened to me, but when I got back in the shell and went home on a prosthesis with a trunk in my hands, my mom was fossilized near the gate. Then she ran to meet me, pressed me to my chest…
"STARS IN DIFFERENT WORLDS"
Bahriddin Haydarov, born in 1967. From Bukhara region of Uzbekistan.
– The year 1986. Beginning of October. We returned from Hanabad to Kunduz. It was announced that Ahmad Shah had returned. His men settled in the highest, well-fortified place. Our battalion was strengthened by a regiment of motor gunmen. The Afghan sarandoi were also with us. At ten o’clock we were located four hundred meters from enemy positions. Seeing our preparations, the dushmans began to shoot first.
Two AFV were sent from us for investigate. However, they quickly returned, the soldiers reported something, and the commander decided that there was no point in attacking.
Planes were called. They, along with artillery, began to intensively shot at enemy fortifications. Unable to withstand the arranged hell, the Afghans withdrew to the village of Hanabad. In the battle a boy from Leninabad was wounded. We took three prisoners. When we, the sappers, purified this elevation, we were ordered to stay here and to settle.
We cut down trees around the fortification. The next day after returning to the location of the regiment, came the news that enemy units had appeared in Herat. We flew there by plane. From there we were transported to the mountains by helicopter. Three days later, we met in the mountains. The enemy stood on the opposite mountain. The distance between us was about a kilometer. Every movement could be seen in the binoculars. Among them we noticed people in foreign shape with light hair, as well as Arabs. They disassembled machine guns and mines.