Winter, 5 AM...

Winter, 5 AM. Reveille at 5 means a vertushka [ballast shuttle train] today. The company curses as it gets up. We get dressed, chew our food—we have to be on site by 7. Outside it's -37°C. The sun is red. We climb into the ZIL trucks—by the time we reach the station, our legs turn to stone. Never mind, we'll warm up soon—and we'll stay warm for a long time.

In the freezing cold, the ballast in the dumpcar freezes into a single multi-ton lump. That is, the bed rises—steeply, about 60 degrees—and a mere kilogram of dust pours out. Our task is to turn this block of ice back into ballast and make it slide down into the pit.

The Komatsu started breathing. Work began. The company splits into teams. Three men per team: two have spades, the third has a crowbar or a sledgehammer.

The teams scatter across the dumpcars—you have to run up and clamber onto the bed, trying to climb as high and as close to the side as possible. Shovels pry away at the sides, sledgehammers batter the bed with all our might. And all this with great caution—often the whole thing avalanches at once, in one huge chunk; get caught daydreaming, and they simply won't dig you out in time. That's why you have to stay closer to the side—to manage to grab onto it.

There, the ballast begins to slide down in sheets. You have to keep your footing on the bed and trigger the collapse of the next sheet. From afar, this looks like sawing off the branch you're sitting on, mixed with a crowd of maniacs trying to trigger a snow avalanche.

The bottom layers are the nastiest. There's ice there; it has to be chipped away.

Meanwhile, the frost tightens its grip. Even the officers have taken up shovels—otherwise you'll freeze. And the crowd is already shedding their pea coats—down to just their service uniforms (PSH). It's hot.

Almost no smoke breaks. Lunch is half an hour.

Around five o'clock it begins to get dark. The most dangerous time. The mastodon of a bulldozer moves back and forth constantly. Sometimes, a soldier slides right under it along with the ballast. There are never any survivors.

The sight of crushed guts sobers me up quite well—before the bulldozer passes, I try to cling to the side of the dumpcar; I still want to live, after all.

The safety officer yells at us to hold on tighter—for every corpse, they'll dock a percentage of his pay and he'll have to wait longer for his next rank.

23:00. The work is finished. We head home. The exhausted officers buy a cake for the brigade that won the socialist competition. Everyone is alive. There's asbestos in our eyes. Tomorrow, all day long, it will be oozing out from under our eyelids, and our eyes will be swollen as if we'd been on a bender all night. Faces, hair, uniforms—everything is mouse-gray. Asbestos gets between the fabric fibers and is hard to beat out. And yet in Germany, even when taking down old slate roofs, workers wear respirators.

1:00 AM. Some of the soldiers are already asleep. The duty officer of the unit "gladdens" us with the news—tomorrow, another vertushka.

Dmitry Ibikus 2:5004/16.111 25 Aug 97 21:10:00

About the Railway Troops

Sketch Six — "Green Negroes"

It happened right before demobilization, when, strictly speaking, the order had already been read, the stools broken over the asses of the geese, and our draft year had already been solemnly promoted to "kirzhaks". The kirzhaks wore flattened cockades and belt buckles, and the constant, yearning anticipation of returning home made us forget most sanitary norms, except the gastronomic ones. "In short, a dembel must be fat, dirty, and smelly." (c) not mine.

At that time—and it was already April—the deputy commander for logistics, when checking the company for my presence, asked nothing other than, "And where is citizen Ibikus?" In general, those were quite the times.

The mechanized battalion was housed in a three-story building: the mess hall was on the first floor, the companies on the second and third, and the headquarters was in the basement, simply because there was nowhere else to put it.

Sewage flowed in a river from the mess hall into the headquarters, and at times you couldn't pass without boots. The sewage was fought, as best he could, by the faithful Lance Corporal G., the perpetual headquarters duty orderly, plumber, and cesspool cleaner all rolled into one. He only received one ration, though.

Since the building was barely heated in the winter and the groundwater was quite high, water dripped constantly from the ceiling, thick gray mold with green blooms hung on the walls, and the floor was always damp. Touching any paper was downright revolting. Cockroaches refused to live in the headquarters on principle, but in the warm summer months, woodlice bred in incredible numbers, up to a centimeter long. When you crush them with a boot, they smack appetizingly, splattering whitish slime across the filthy floor. It was fun to drop some gun oil on the beast and watch the agony—the oil clogged the creature's spiracles.

So anyway, at the end of April, having wandered into the headquarters out of boredom, I noticed uneven scraping sounds. Following the sound, I opened the door to one of the dampest and dirtiest rooms. The sight simply amazed me.

In short, the brass had decided to install a new floor to replace the one devoured by fungus. The suggestion to feed the fungus a new wooden floor so it would choke on it was indignantly rejected—the previous floor hadn't lasted even two years. Therefore, they covered the base with marble chips and poured colored cement over it—by an irony of fate, it turned out to be a tender green color, the shade of unripe vomit.

The next operation in the technological cycle was floor polishing. It is done with a grinding machine, but since there wasn't a trace of one in the battalion, they decided to involve the personnel in this task—naturally, the newcomers from the junior training unit.

A picture in oils. One warrior pours water onto the floor from a bucket. Another, surrounded by rags, gathers this water into other buckets. As it seemed to me back then, to save time they simply swapped these buckets afterward.

And about five railway warriors sluggishly dragged huge grinding wheels, weighing 30-40 kilograms, across the concrete—real millstones, which, as everyone knows, are an invariable attribute of the underworld. Though in fact it wasn't clear who was dragging whom—the warriors were clearly featherweights, or at least comparable in weight to the wheels. Naturally, all this was done in uniform number zero—rolled-up underpants.

And the temperature in that room, it should be said, was around 10–13 degrees.

And so these ghosts, covered from head to toe in a pale green substance—the splashes flew everywhere anyway—with trembling limbs, scrape and scrape the floor in a large, dark room with gigantic grinding wheels. We didn't know the word "monster" back then, but the term "mutants" fit quite well. Pure plantation slaves, just a slightly tenderer color. Sluggish movements; every attempt to warm up withers in the struggle against mighty time—from reveille to taps.

For those who don't know what "green melancholy" is—well, that was the very thing.

And two more years of this. That scraping lasted about three days, no less—and thank God none of the little green ones kicked the bucket back then, or else a ghost would have settled in the headquarters, frightening the duty officers at night with the screech of a millstone.

However, there were already plenty of nocturnal ghosts in the headquarters—but that is a completely different story...

Dmitry Ibikus 2:5004/16.111 25 Aug 97 22:48:00

About the Railway Troops

Sketch Seven — "On How the Order Is Read" (A Classic)

Life in the troops, as anywhere else, is divided into day and night. By day is the ceremonial part; by night, everything intimate, so to speak. True, a person who has never visited interesting places in their entire life often won't understand this. Even if you get picked on in the courtyard, you can always run home.

In a company, there's nowhere to run.

Here everyone lives together. And there is nowhere to hide. And nowhere to ask for protection either. Nor is it worth it—it'll only make things worse.

Well then. Let's look at the example of a separate company—the headquarters support company. A company like any other, but somewhat uncharacteristic for the Railway Troops: too much blond hair and gray eyes. That is, unlike the average battalion, there are almost no warriors from Central Asia and the Caucasus here. Almost entirely the central belt and the Baltic states.

And because of that, the customs here are rather different—there is none of the regional clannishness typical of the Railway Troops; here, it's normal dedovshchina.

The command "taps" is given; the officer in charge of the company departs for his quarters. The company duty orderly begins to carry out his unwritten regulations.

"Geese, fall in!" sounds the command. The geese fall in. But today is the day of the Order, so "Geese with experience" fall in as well.

The schedule of ranks is as follows:

• "Geese" — up to 6 months of service.
• "Geese with experience" — from 6 to 12 months.
• "Pheasants" — those who have served a year.
• "Dedy" — a year and a half.
• "Dembelya", "Kirzhaki" — those who have passed the final Order.

This schedule varies, and the names also change depending on the branch of the military, but the essence remains unchanged—this is classic dedovshchina.

The orderly assigns geese to the night watch—the shukher [lookout]. Any non-goose, as well as the duty detail, can shout, "Is the lookout there?" And the answer must ring out: "Present!"

The point of the lookout is clear. He stands by the window in just his underpants and keeps an eye out for the unit duty officer or an inspector. Getting dressed is strictly contraindicated—warmed up, the lookout might fall asleep and fail his life's purpose.

Geese are also sent to clean up—in the latrine and the mess hall. Those especially gifted in the culinary arts are sent to fry potatoes and meat. In short, everyone has something to do.

But tonight is a special night—tonight is the NIGHT OF THE ORDER.

And therefore, the entire company gathers on the patch of floor where evening roll call is held. The kirzhaks recline in the most comfortable spots, the dedy sit, the pheasants stand.

The geese of all stripes are lined up in two ranks—in underpants and undershirts.

They choose the first goose—"The one who will read the Order."

A pedestal is prepared for him—three or four stools are stacked on top of each other, though this is limited only by the ceiling height. The number of stools is chosen so that the goose stands on the top one hunched over—the ceiling won't let him straighten up. He has to stand on one leg and read the Order, which he holds in outstretched hands. (Try it at your leisure).

Reading the Order is no simple matter. I would even say—not simple at all.

The Order is sacred, and it must be read without stumbling, without pauses, marking every period and comma. In a single breath. The geese practiced all day today. But nobody manages to read it on the first try. And here is why.

The dembelya wait below with pillows. The moment the goose takes a breath, swallows a letter, or stumbles, pillows fly at him—many pillows. And he, along with the stools, goes flying down onto the hard stone floor. Lucky if it's parquet.

The dembelya certainly won't miss their chance—they waited two years for this. And don't blame them for cruelty; by the standards of this place, it isn't cruelty at all.

Basically, by about the seventh try, depending on the number of geese available, the Order is finally read. The "transfer" begins.

Well, the transfer is understandable—transferring dedy into dembelya, pheasants into dedy, geese with experience into pheasants, and so forth.

Naturally, the dembels have it the most painful. Since not every dembel is strong enough to survive such an initiation, the dembels hold a council and nominate their mightiest one.

He lies down on the lower bunk of the bed. A huge pile of mattresses, blankets, and pillows is heaped onto the top bunk. Underneath the lower bunk, a couple of geese are shoved in.

Then the goose who was the first to properly read out the order takes a doubled-up thread (number ten is forbidden! You could maim a dembel), and starts whipping the mattresses lying on the top bunk with that thread. The dembel groans softly.

The geese lying under the bed scream frantically. 24 strikes in total.

After this procedure, the dembel staggers to his feet and downs a shot of vodka—for the torment endured.

Pheasants are initiated into grandfathers with a towel through a pillow.

Geese with tenure are initiated with twelve "banks". A "bank" is a soldier's stool. The stool should preferably be nailed together, because glued ones can't handle such stress and shatter on the third goose.

A bank can be dealt casually—just a one-handed swing at the rear, or it can be dealt professionally. Here is how it's done.

The bank is dealt by the goose's grandfather—that is, someone drafted exactly one year earlier. He stands on two stools placed half a meter apart.

The goose stands between the stools in the "guilty son awaiting his father's belt" pose. The grandfather swings the stool all the way to the ceiling and brings it crashing down with full force onto his goose's soft spot. The goose, naturally, cannot cope with the imparted momentum and flies about five meters forward. Only to return for the next bank.

After the received series of banks, the skin on the seating area turns dark purple and swells up considerably, which subsequently prevents sitting on that spot for a week.

But that is not the pinnacle of bank-administering mastery. Since stools began to be made flimsy, and the geese's rears grew larger and tougher, instead of a stool they started using... the door of a soldier's nightstand—weighing about five kilos, made of chipboard.

By the third bank, the skin on the backside simply bursts, sometimes in patches of about five centimeters. And there will be 6 or 12 banks. Moreover, any grandfather might want to repeat it. The most spirited and cocky geese get the most banks.

Furthermore, banks are dealt not only in the evening, but all day on the day of the order, and besides these days, there are also preventative ones—so life doesn't seem like a bed of roses.

As a variation of tools for delivering a bank, there are also large washbasins in the banya slapped across a wet, lathered behind (just you try it!), and the latest technical advancements that were practiced—sitting with your rear on a vibration table used for shaking concrete samples: a goose placed on the vibration table cannot get off once it's switched on; he just sits there and wails. The backside turns a uniform purple color after 10–15 seconds of vibration testing.

After everyone has been initiated, the people, having had their fill—grandfathers on potatoes with meat, geese on banks—fall asleep. Everyone is pleased—after all, there are six months less left to serve!

During the week following the order, you can immediately tell everyone's length of service—by the way they lie in bed...

__________________________________________-

Dmitry Ibikus 2:5004/16.111 26 Aug 97 20:54:00

About the Railway Troops.
__________________________________________-

Vignette Eight: "About Mamed"

"Far across the sea, life is fair; wonders everywhere are rare..." (c) A.S. Pushkin.

Wonders in the railway troops can be seen literally at every step—the main thing is to keep a fresh eye. And, preferably, to have the opportunity and, above all, the desire to be amazed.

There was a guy in our company named Mamed. Whether it was his last name or first name, nobody remembered anymore; everyone just called him Mamed and Mamed.

He was a very colorful character. His entire appearance seemed to validate the premise of a glorious shepherd who had spent his entire life without leaving the mountains, until he finally came down for some salt—whereupon he was snatched up and sent into the troops.

He was maybe a meter forty tall, or maybe all of a meter forty-five... A rather substantial belly cinched by a soldier's belt with a tarnished, greenish buckle. A perpetual drop hanging under his nose, inflamed half-closed eyes. A perpetual stubble. A gait that looked as though at least a bucket of potatoes had been stuffed into his long johns, and salt poured into his boots. His legs barely bent... When asked if he had ridden horses, he would shake his head no, but to say his legs were bow-legged was to say nothing at all. Apparently, he started walking too early in childhood.

Mamed was a sight to behold. But the main thing in a person is not appearance, but internal qualities.

Mamed could casually drop a heavy load right into his pants at the squad table during lunch. Complete with all sound, olfactory, and visual effects. It was totally normal for him to search for collar liners among discarded ones, pick footwraps from grease-stained tractor rags, or scavenge in the mess hall, picking at eggshells with remnants of whites sticking to them.

On top of everything, the man suffered from constant hunger and, possessing the practical nature of a hoarder, hauled scraps and leftovers not just anywhere, but straight into his bed—under the mattress. The peak of his great hoarding talent was placing herring gut fillets wrapped in soldier underwear under his pillow. The entire company couldn't breathe for a whole night from the stench, and only toward morning did we discover the source of the foul odor.

His duties mostly consisted of cleaning up. There were, however, exceptions—a detent broke on a motor grader, and gears started slipping out; Mamed worked as the detent for about three days—holding the gearbox stick in gear.

But what I remember most was Mamed's group shave.

It must be said that among southern peoples, the problem of shaving is quite acute—you shave in the morning, and by lunch, the stubble is already half a centimeter long.

Our Mamed had that exact issue. Combined with a total lack of money, it turned into torment. He managed to scavenge a chewed-up safety razor somewhere, but had nowhere to get blades. And so his morning would start with a hunt for a razor blade.

His signature spot was the washroom, which doubled as a urinal. Used blades were thrown underfoot, into the dirt and urine; those were the ones Mamed collected—and somehow even managed to shave with.

One day, his search was unsuccessful—he couldn't find a blade, and the orderly on duty had tossed his private stash.

Consequently, the company caught flak for the unshaven Mamed, and we decided to shave him ourselves. With a footwrap.

Of course, a merely unkempt soldier can often be shaved with a regular waffle towel, but there wasn't a single towel in the company that would harmonize with the magnificent, rich color palette of Mamed's face.

Therefore, his very own footwrap was chosen as the shaving tool, one of quite venerable age, by the way. The barber put on winter mittens—so as not to catch bubonic plague or cholera from that footwrap.

The technique is simple—the soldier sits on a stool, the barber stands on a stool behind him, resting his knee against the back of the shavee's head.

Then the footwrap is wrapped around the chin, and the barber starts rapidly sawing the footwrap back and forth, keeping up the pressure. If the hairs are long enough, they come out with the roots, and the shaving problem disappears for a fairly long time. Unfortunately, the coverage isn't 100%, and the chin, once it starts growing back, looks moth-eaten.

Indeed, literally: "You'll go bald and grow back crooked" (c) not mine.

To be fair, such a remarkable method has its side effects, just like any medicine. The barber's skill lies in rolling out the hair without peeling the skin off like a stocking. Still, in any case, quite nasty burns remain.

The footwrap is also chosen as the tool because it causes quite a substantial amount of microorganisms to enter the hair follicles, turning into pimples and causing the rejection of the hair along with its root.

Which, after all, aligns with the main objective.

Mamed, as I recall, walked around with a swollen mug for about two months after that shave, and took certain pimples back home with him to his homeland—to breed them among the natives.

Mamed was discharged in festive fashion—he washed the whole company barracks with detergent, especially the washroom. For his dembel, he was ceremoniously gifted a pack of "Neva" razor blades (for those who don't know—they were already called "utility blades" back then because shaving with them was impossible). And on top of that—Triple Cologne!

I nearly teared up.

Mamed left for his dembel cleanly shaven.

__________________________________________

Dmitry Ibikus 2:5004/16.111 27 Aug 97 23:10:00

About the Railway Troops.
__________________________________________-

Vignette Nine: "Heartburn"

O you, who spent your whole life beside a kind mother and a plump wife, relishing since tender years grandmother's pies and aunt's dumplings, chasing all that culinary magnificence with rich yeast pancakes, washing it down to your heart's content with rich milk at first, and crystal-clear vodka and dark, good ale called beer afterward—have you ever pondered the true value of what you swallowed and drank?

On the day of the final, "herding" summons to the enlistment office, my mother woke me early—around four o'clock. She heated up some soup, a full deep bowl of magnificent meat borscht with country sour cream.

However, since I had fallen asleep quite late before that, and after rather heavy drinking, I simply couldn't look at that borscht—without even finishing three spoonfuls, I dropped the spoon right there: "Don't want any more."

My father, who had gotten up to say goodbye to me before heading off to work—he had a heat scheduled at the foundry that day—looked for a long time, shifting his gaze from me to the bowl and back.

"Many a time will you remember this unfinished borscht," he said, and left for work.

The prophecy turned out to be true—many times did I remember that borscht, as well as a similarly full plate of macaroni with pork lard—it kept haunting my fevered mind.

While riding to the regiment, we ate "mom's pies." That is to say, pretty well.

At the regiment, we received our dinner—a mess tin of grey vermicelli stuck into a single lump with no salt, and half a mug of sugarless tea each. Naturally, after the abundance of food on the train, nobody touched it—except perhaps out of pure curiosity.

We didn't eat properly for another week—only picking at things. About a soldier during this period, they say: "He's still shitting mom's pies."

And then the deficit kicks in.

A nekhvatchik (the chronically starved soldier) is a very notable figure in the army; almost everyone goes through this phase. It’s not even about the quantity of food, but its quality—just like in the joke: a soldier can't eat 2,000 kilocalories worth of rutabaga. And truly—he really can't.

A nekhvatchik is perpetually hungry; he is constantly looking for something to eat. His large pockets will always contain an uneaten, crumpled, sticky crumb of black bread—fit more for polishing boots than stuffing one's stomach, judging by its color. And its taste.

After the company marches out, flocks of nekhvatchiks scurry around the mess hall, scheming where to feast on some leftovers. They get caught, they get punished, but in the duel between the brain and a starving stomach, the latter always wins.

So, let's examine the standard menu of a cadet in a training regiment.

Breakfast.

Pearl barley porridge ("shot No. 16"), millet, or oats—smeared across the plate.

Bread—two slices each of white and black bread. And while the white bread can somehow still be eaten if you ignore the sawdust, the black bread is a work of art, or rather, a raw material for one—it would be far more suitable for a sculptor as clay. It possesses absolutely the same properties as well-kneaded potter's clay: plasticity, moisture, and taste.