"Don't worry until you join me in the infantry. I'll tell you when you have to go to the SZCH." We continue to publish a mobilization diary from an IT guy from Threads - about the motivation to serve in the busified, the difference in service conditions for staff and infantrymen, and weapons in a blanket
This is the third part of the diary, where the IT worker shares his thoughts on why those who are BUSIFIED do not flee the army, how different the conditions of service are for staff and infantry personnel, and weapons in a blanket.
This is the third part of the diary, where the IT worker shares his thoughts on why those who are BUSIFIED do not flee the army, how different the conditions of service are for staff and infantry personnel, and weapons in a blanket.
How I learned why the busified remain in service
Our platoon of 30 people consisted exclusively of busified men: one went for bread, another went on business, a third did not make it home, a fourth was met at the exit from the supermarket and only three of them were able to cram into a bus. Almost 100% of them had to move around the city and the region for 4 years, and they were lucky. Until one day they were unlucky. Like me.
No one asked each other why they hadn’t joined the army earlier. The «evaders» have the answers to these questions among themselves, so they can easily understand each other. Everyone knows that they don’t want to be here. But that didn’t mean that everyone was ready to go to the NWCH. Despite many opportunities to do so in the unit before, during, and after the BZVP, only 4 out of 30 people left, and only when the time X approached. I understood why I wasn’t doing it (yet), but I didn’t fully understand why the others were staying. Over the course of two months, I heard the following explanations:
— I can’t stay at home even for a day, I have to go out, I have to work (now I’m a driver).
— But my time has just come (now 300).
— We need to understand what to do next. I don’t have a plan. And they’ll catch me again, send me to Skelya right away (I was injured during the BZVP, ended up in the hospital, and I lost contact with him).
— What he already says, he happened to be here — I will serve (200).
— I was already thinking about the brigade, I recognized it. My mother dissuaded me, plus I looked after her, but I still didn’t make up my mind. Well, it was decided by itself (now something like a clerk/company assistant).
— I’ll just get drunk at home. I don’t want to. And I’m not going to run away from the CCC (200).
— If they let me in, I’ll be transferred to a normal place (I was transferred to the PPO for money).
During this time, it became clear that motivation is far from the main and only driver for staying in the military. At least not for everyone.
Other mechanisms appeared that allowed them to act as if it were there. For some (like me), it was an adaptation and an attempt to find the optimal way out of the situation; for others, over time, it became a responsibility to their fellow citizens, with whom they had become friends at the BZVP and after the first exits. For some, it was a rationalization of their experience and a search for meaning in it for themselves; others saw no alternative, so they accepted the given situation under external coercion, and whatever happens, happens.
In the end, everyone had their own reasons, quite logical and understandable to them (as well as the reasons why they didn’t go to serve), but absolutely indifferent to the system they found themselves in. Because it all comes down to one thing — a person serves, carries out orders, sometimes dies on a senseless task that was sent down from above. And that means the task is completed.
How I was appointed to a position and sent home
The last weeks of the BZVP dragged on, and the nervousness only grew. What to expect next? We knew exactly as much as we needed to invent and guess something. But now we are already in the unit, we get off the bus, we are lined up and distributed according to the list to the units. Almost 75% go to the infantry companies, one person to the BPA, one to the anti-aircraft missile unit, one to the communications unit. We are the last ones left, 5 IT specialists-administrators. I calm down a little.
Since the battalion was newly formed, there were already positions ready for us. Even before the BZVP, a lieutenant spoke to me and «confidentially» told me which commander I would most likely end up with (because he «scored» me). It was a person from headquarters. When I learned about this, I decided to take the initiative and, through the company commander, sent him my resume. The response was: «he didn’t understand anything there, but the resume impressed him.»
Unexpectedly, my future commander offered me several directions of work, and I chose the one that was closer to the documentation and farther from the line of combat contact. I was given a slow standard laptop, and in two meetings they explained what I would have to do. «Don’t worry, until you join me in the infantry. I will tell you when you need to go to the SZCh,» the commander reassured me. I wanted to believe him.
A couple of weeks later, while the infantrymen were going through some sort of adjustment, I helped company officer Vasilyevich (a fictitious name) with the documents. He allowed me and a couple of clerks to go home at least every night (I live quite close to the unit), and return early in the morning. If I met someone and they asked where I was going, I would say that I was out for a walk, because I like to walk in the fresh air in the morning. I was lucky not to meet anyone.
The command would definitely not approve of such an initiative, so Vasilyevich took it under his own responsibility. I still don’t understand why he took such a risk (it could have ended with a reprimand and non-payment of a bonus for him) and why he trusted me so much, but I’ve never spent so much money on a taxi before.
I realized that I was too lucky compared to other guys who weren’t even allowed to go to the store. Being home with my girlfriend after a BZVP, even for a short period of time, felt like a luxury.
But when everything is going so well, you relax, which I didn’t want to do. I knew that you always have to expect a trick and be on your guard. In a few weeks, the combat order came, so we had to be ready to leave in a couple of days. Some of our guys were taken by bus, others by train. One of our guys went to the North-West Front straight from the platform. I was driving by car, getting closer to my native occupied home with every hour. I didn’t know where we were going or where we would live until the last moment, but everything turned out better than I expected.
I will end this indefinite period with the folklore of our platoon, which I wrote down while still at the BZVP. Original language (there were 3/30 of us Ukrainian speakers): -Whoever gets up early, God gives him a rope.
— I’ll stock up a couple of cartridges here, for TCC. Fucking bitches.
— Time stopped for us the moment they pushed us into the bus.
The first combat order and the new city. Lyrical digression
I wander through the streets of an unfamiliar city, whose charmingly neglected courtyards, icy arches, ingenious faded shop signs, majestic gables and spires of bloody times followed my innocent childish steps, youthful embarrassing leaps, love-struck running and sluggish dragging with a broken heart.
Does it matter that these were not quite them, but their exact copies, brick «twins,» landscape «brothers and sisters» from a harmonious city that still exists, but is mentally lost and physically mourned (or physically lost and mentally mourned — that would also be true)? Does it matter where exactly my body is, if my senses persistently search for a lost home, yearn to be deceived, and with trepidation burst into a sweet delusion, taking me with them?
But no, I don’t resist, on the contrary — in flight I firmly grasp the ends of the ropes of my illusory memories, those that only resemble real ones, for which déjà vu is semantically insufficient, even limiting, like déjà senti, déjà entendu, or déjà vécu, which simplify and convey one feeling at a time, while déjà encompasses you completely and completely, leaving you alone.
According to the rules, you have to fly with hope and naivety, so I forget:
— year;
-your age;
— where am I going;
this damn war and I’m looking forward to landing, because there will be nothing closer to this joyful and at the same time incredibly painful feeling of home.
The strange beginning of my service as a clerk
We arrived at the place late at night. It was a 12-hour drive, almost without stops. My legs ached, my stomach grumbled. The geolocation worked poorly, so I didn’t fully understand where we were. They opened the door from the back entrance. I heard that most of the management had already arrived.
«I still have an automatic rifle here,» I say to the lieutenant in slippers who met us.
— And what should I do with this information?
-Well, where should he go? To his room?
— Well, not for me!
During the short time I was in the army, I was made to understand that the machine gun is an extension of you, a kind of Horcrux that must be carefully hidden, because if it is gone, not a single particle of you will be gone (your commander will destroy it). Therefore, after receiving the machine gun from the KZZ (a weapons storage room that is guarded 24/7), it seemed strange to me to leave it with me, and in a house where many civilians lived. Should I keep it with the cartridges under the bed or in the closet? As it turned out, that was where they belonged.
I wrapped the machine gun in a blanket and tried to hide it behind my jacket. It didn’t work out very well, but I hoped that the lieutenant wouldn’t notice and let it pass. «Oh, my God, how you’re holding it! The end of the barrel is pointing where you’re going! Put it on your bag, cover it and quickly scurry into the room.» Later, on advice, I bought a spinning bag, which helped me move around with the machine gun more inconspicuously.
We were settled in. The tiny office staff room became an improvised headquarters, so rest was impossible there. Lying down meant not working, but you always had to work. Tables, chairs, three beds, bags, and a couple of boxes with rations took up all the space, in which there was only room to move around like a snake. The door to the room was almost never closed, because someone was constantly coming in on work-related and not-so-work-related matters.
«What are you doing, working?» is the standard daily greeting of a battalion commander who sees that everyone is working.
— Yes, we are working.
-Well, look at me. Work.
Fortunately, there wasn’t enough space for me in that room, and besides, I was a clerk in another department, so I lived alone, in peace and quiet, with a closed door that no one knocked on. For a while, no one moved in with me, which, as an introvert, made me very happy. Over time, the three of us started living together, but the guys were constantly on duty, so we only saw each other in the evenings.
It was a strange feeling, as if I had returned to my student days: living in a «dormitory», sharing a room with other guys, cooking in a shared kitchen, and eating again in bed with a laptop on my lap. Even the price for a bed hadn’t gone up much. Only now you can’t go on dates and not be afraid of the commandant. What has changed noticeably is the loss of the feeling of an «open world», freedom of action, and sweet youthful excitement about an exciting future. The vending machine in the closet reminded me of this every day.
How I felt the difference between staff and infantry
A couple of weeks passed before our battalion was sent on its first combat mission. We were critically understaffed and untrained: only one infantry company out of three had barely recruited the necessary number of people, and those who were promised sergeant positions did not have time to undergo training for them. But such was the order from above, so everyone from privates to senior officers, saying «this is complete shit,» prepared for combat operations.
Compared to the BZVP and the unit, the conditions in the headquarters were luxurious: no stove and constant stench from the fire, showers with hot water almost 24/7, a closet where you could hang things, the obligation to wear only civilian clothes (later I sent all my military things home, even the pixel backpack became an obstacle), and most importantly — life in civilization, in a city (albeit a front-line one), where the commander is not watching you every second.
Until the fighting began, I had a lot of free time. The irony of life: I had to join the army in order to go to the philharmonic orchestra and the cinema for the first time in a long time without worrying that a bus with a surprise would meet you on the way. I was discovering a new city for myself, its museums, cafes, bookstores, eateries, parks and ordinary streets, in which I was looking for elements of my lost home.
It was nice to see carefree young people, to walk alongside them, to eavesdrop on their silly conversations, taken out of context, just to feel closer to them, to a normal life that had already passed; to forget that neither today nor tomorrow after the walk I would return home. Once on the way from the store I met two commanders of detachments with whom I had passed the BZVP. They arrived with the company commander, who was at a meeting while they were waiting for him in the car. The uniform and face were a little dusty, overgrown, dirt under the nails, tired.
«What are you doing, how is it?» asks Fox (a fictional call sign).
«What about me, I’m fine. How are you?»
— Man, BZVP was just a resort. I haven’t washed for a week. Food sucks.
— So maybe you can come to us, there’s hot water here, at least you can wash up.
— No one will let us. I will ask, of course, but I don’t think so.
The fox was right. The rules of the game had changed. He said that the infantry lived in unfinished VOPs (platoon strongholds, essentially areas of combined trenches, dugouts and trenches for 30-40 people), went to shooting ranges and asked the commander to buy cigarettes, because no one was let go so easily. At the same time, I could calmly shop at the supermarket, drink a filter in a coffee shop, visit an art exhibition and sleep on a soft mattress.
The gap between the recent equality in the BZVP and the current difference in our conditions was catastrophic. I mentally thanked fate for being on the other side of the infantry, but at the same time I carried within me a dull, sincere pity for them and this injustice that I simply had to accept. My deep-seated rejection of myself as a soldier found another support: considering what these guys would go through, we would be going through two different wars with them.
«Individuality is not needed. And the more of you there are, the lonelier you are.» Mobilization diary from an IT guy from Threads — about BZVP, «NATO lip shots» and «playing stormtroopers»
«Do you know that you are already 200? Have you already bought yourself a black package?» In Threads, a mobilized IT worker keeps a diary of his service in the army — about communication with the TCC, thoughts on the SZCH and IT experience in the non-digital system of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
