the most final
concluding work

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.

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.

Then they announced where each of us belonged. I got to First Company, that of masons. Plasterers served at Second and Third Companies. Fourth Company was for drivers and everything else.

We were taken to the respective barracks and presented to the commanders of our squads who indicated free bunk beds in the koobriks of the silent empty barrack because at that time of day the company personnel was working at construction sites in the city…

In all the living nature there hardly could be found more disgusting sounds than the thrice-cursed command "Company! Get up!"

After the first night in the barracks of First Company, of all my personal belongings in the cabinet-box of the koobrik I slept in, there remained only a half-pack of razors "Neva" priced 25 kopecks when full. The loss of the toothbrush and paste-tube together with the safety razor was not so depressing as the disappearance of 30 kopecks from the pocket in my cotton pants. That would buy me two packs of cigarettes "Prima". I recollected the fellas from Dnepropetrovsk picking up cigarette stubs from the trash pit in the "training" barrack’s gazebo.

Having meticulously covered my bed with the blanket (otherwise, the on-duty serviceman would rip it off and demand to do it better), I collared my neck with the army waffle towel, as everyone else around, and went to the sorteer in the general flow of khaki color.

Over each of the ten hole-ochcos, someone was squatting attended by a waiting line of 2 or 3, and even the wall-width-long urinal runnel was not accessible at once. The place was filled with a babel of tinkling, farting and exchanging news of the past day.

"He was rat-arsed then?"

"You knows yoursel."

"Got caught?"

"I am fucked if I know. They were looking for him."

"They'll get him."

"You knows yoursel."

At the washstand trough, they milled the same piece of news only in more detail.

By eight o'clock the on-duty Sergeants had driven the youngs and dippers of their respective companies to the drill grounds and carried out the complex of exercises. Then the companies had their breakfast and got loosely lined, 4 rows deep, on the drill grounds except for those grandpas who fucking fucked all those fall-ins already.

At a little to eight, the "goat"-Willys of Battalion Commander and a small bus with the officers and accountancy ladies pulled up at the gate.

Battalion Commander, Political Second-in-Command, aka Zampolit, and Chief of Staff went to the middle of the drill grounds, the officers joined the ranks of their respective companies, the accountants bypassed the barrack of Third Company heading to the barrack of Fourth Company – half of that building accommodated the Staff of VSO-11.

The Morning Dispensing started with the report of the on-duty officer to the trinity of Commanders that during the last day there were neither incidents nor violations in the Construction Detail 11. Then Chief of Staff ordered two soldiers from Third Company to step out and face the ranks. The day before they violated military discipline at the construction sites in the city. He announced the penalty – 10 days of arrest.

The gray-haired Battalion Commander, turning from side to side his horn-rimmed glasses, commenced the prosecution harangue. Those oratories of his were outright beyond comprehension because his chronic brain leakage allowed him to reach no further than the middle of a current sentence, and then he leaped to another one of which though no more than a half saw its completion and left you puzzled whether that was the starting or concluding part in it.

Behind the Battalion Commander's back, Separate Company was approaching along the asphalt path on their way to the Canteen for their breakfast havvage. They fucking fucked all that Dispensing, they were Separate Company not belonging to VSO-11.

Finally, Zampolit told Battalion Commander that was enough for the rhetoric. Battalion Commander fired off a pair of concluding "fucks" and shut up.

The on-duty officer passed his responsibilities to another officer whose turn it was to stand on duty for the following twenty-four hours.

The discipline violators surrendered their belts to the new on-duty Sergeant and plodded to the checkpoint guardhouse to get locked up in the clink there, the darkroom with the tin-veneered door and no windows at all, yet provided with the decking of planks to lie upon.

Chief of Staff ordered the rest of the servicemen to turn right and march to our workplaces. We walked to the gate with the trucks already waiting for us outside. Battalion Commander started up – a shred of a sentence that had slipped off when he was at it, landed back into the Colonel Lieutenant's brain.

Fuck yourself, fucker! The Dispensing's over! We're already boarding the trucks – a foot on the tire-tred, hands grabbed atop the plank-side, swing over it and rush further so as the following buddy wouldn't land on your back. Off we go!

The gate stayed behind; the wall of white brick panels between the white brick pillars ran by on the left. We're going to the city!.