The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - Сергей Николаевич Огольцов

metal plate-buckle which could be used for a host of purposes, starting from digging a hole up to becoming a lethal weapon in a fight, when used as a mace on a string, sort of. It was not used to keep a soldiers pants though but to have him girded over any jacket or greatcoat he had on, and only in the parade-crap the belt was not observed, yet mostly present under the jacket, just in case.

Here, in short, how the construction battalion soldier, aka conbatist, was dressed. Though we, the spring draft of 1973, at first were honored and trusted to finish off the Russian and Red Armies' tunics with the stand-up collar, aka choker, which had been inherited and kicking back around in the warehouses of the Soviet Army. Later on, when we had worn them off to tatters and they became a real rarity, the "pheasants” were steaming with the itch to get such a one, unlike anybody else’s.

The comparative analysis of the component items in the outfit of the conbatist serviceman shows that the most idiotic piece in it was the forage cap, being uncomfortable to put under your head when sleeping, because of its hard visor, and mulishly resistant to attempts at pulling it over your ears in the rain…)

Each of the barracks was entered thru the outside cell in the middle of its long side. The narrow vestibule (3m x 3m) had the floor of wide ash-colored tiles underneath the low ceiling of painted plywood resting on wide lattice windows in its walls.

Outside the front door, a rectangular grating of parallel rebar-rods bridged a shallow cemented pit for the dirt falling off the high boots when scraped against the grating.

Close to the vestibule there stood an equally sized openwork gazebo with a bench of three beams running along the three plank sides. Its four-sided roof was propped by the posts in the gazebo corners. In the center of the cemented floor there was another pit, this one of rounded walls and without any lid or grating – for the servicemen to throw their cigarette stubs in, which eventually would be cleaned up by the on-duty soldier.

Next to the gazebo, there stretched a three-meter-long footrest allowing several men to simultaneously put one or the other of their feet upon it when polishing their high boots.

Anything omitted? Oh, yes! And the grass on both sides of the asphalt path around the barrack. When the Sergeants got over hot with drilling us in the sun-swept drill grounds, bounded by the gate, the Canteen, and the sorteer, or fed up with driving it home to us the meaning of lines in the booklet of the Statute of Internal Military Service, they cut us loose with the order to eradicate ragweed, aka ambrosia.

Previously, I knew for sure that ambrosia was a cheerful drink at the feasts of the eternally young and immortal gods of Olympus, and never suspected it had a nickname – the terribly vicious grass. We were shown sheets with a black-and-white picture of the wanted culprit coupled with short lines calling to find and liquidated the offender spreading dangerous hay fever.

That was the one and only unreservedly welcome command because the Sergeants disappeared for an hour or so, and, lying in the grass, we could talk and get acquainted in no hurry… From Konotop there was no one but me and others were from different cities – Buryn, Krolevets, Shostka, in the same Sumy region.

In general, the entire spring draft to VSO-11 was from Ukraine with the Dnepropetrovsk fellas brought before us. They had already undergone the training and got distributed to the companies of the battalion. Taking advantage of the Sergeants' absence, a couple of them sneaked into the gazebo to collect the cigarette stubs from the rounded hole, dropped there by us at the command to fall in.

Nobody really knew why the poor Ambrosia was hunted down so severely, and nothing in the grass around resembled it even remotely, but the idle talks helped to at least shortly forget about the gruesome eternity piled on us for the following two years…

~ ~ ~

The newly acquired outfit harbored certain predicament at training the commands of "get up!" and "light out!", the buttons could hardly be squeezed in and out of the tight buttonholes. On the advice of a wise newbie Vitya Strelyany, I widened them with an aluminum spoon handle in the Canteen, and they began to fly in and out nice and swiftly…

The immediate goal of the drill training was to sell ourselves on the Oath Day. All in all, there were three platoons in the "training" barrack with one and the same song for them all, which was often aired by the All-Union "Mayak" Radio Station.

"In two winters,Merely in two winters,In two summers,Merely in two summersI'll do my honest service in the armyAnd come back to you…"

After the first platoon finished their ceremonial-step circling round and round the drill grounds and singing the song in a false course chorus concluded by the finalizing, "Stop! One-two!" the second platoon marched into the same ground singing the same song, which turned unbearably long. And when at last they also stopped, we, the third platoon, stomped in, blaring about the third pair of winters and summers, which was a crying redundancy.

The recruits snickered, the Sergeants of the first and second platoons laughed outright, and our Sergeant got icky nervous… When I told him I could prepare another song for us to sing, if only I had a pen and paper, he did not immediately get it what I was talking about, but then I was set free from the drill grounds to do creative work for the benefit of the platoon.

The Sergeant instructed me to get the needed stationery from the on-duty soldier guarding the cabinet-box… The first thing you saw on entering any barrack was a soldier standing next to the cabinet-box. The soldier was an on-duty serviceman, and the cabinet-box was his sentry post.