My First Battle, Troishka, New Year’s Day 2015

Published in The Greanville Post. »

Left to right: Spartak, Archangel, (Italy) Texac, (USA) Alfonzo (Spain) and Orion (Russia)

“Reem” means “Chrome”, and “Mir” means “Peace” or “Earth”. (Mir’s face blurred for the safety of his family, which still resides in Kiev controlled territory).

Texas on guard duty. The bitter cold makes things even more interesting.

Reem, Poet, and Texas. Poet joined the NAF in Summer 2014. He was 16, told ’em he was 19, they let him in. He served 6 months in Vostok Bn. Artillery, then came to CB in March 2015. He was at the front line Ushi position and Milnitsa with me and also at the hottest of them all, Blisna. We tried to protect him as much as we could, but he still got in the thick of things many times. He was a good soldier, tough and brave. He’s 18 now, and retired. But he’ll come back if we need him. Spetznaz Donbass.

I woke up on New Year’s Day 2015 without a hangover though the night before I had drunk some champagne and a fair amount of vodka. Not a lot, but about as much as I would have drunk on a regular NYE back in the States. I was always pretty careful in that respect, I never got a single DWI. But I didn’t wake up back in the States, I woke up in a convent in the middle of a graveyard in Southeast Ukraine that was a major battlefield in the opening salvos of the Third World War.

Inside my sleeping bag, I was fully clothed in the Russian Army winter fatigues I had bought, along with the sleeping bag, in Rostov before crossing the border into Novorussia. Disrobing for sleep the night before had consisted of removing my boots, steel Class IV armored vest and kevlar helmet and hanging my AK-74 on a hook with my webgear. Across the room from me, in the frozen pitch black darkness, snored the two Italian volunteers, Spartak and Archangel. Below me, Lataishik, the sniper, and in the bunk next to his, Bielka, the PKM machine-gunner. Above them, the only guy on a top bunk, lay Texas, the New Kid on the Block, who wasn’t from anywhere around there. That would be me, your humble narrator…

IT WAS PITCH DARK, totally dark, and it was freezing. The temp was not so bad as long as I only stuck my nose out of the bag. The bag itself was rated for the Arctic, and that, along with my heavy Russian uniform, kept me pretty warm. Except for my nose. The windows were filled with sandbags, to the point that they were almost airtight. They were certainly light tight, and pretty good protection against bullets and artillery shrapnel, which was the main idea. The doors were covered, inside and out by heavy rugs nailed in place over the doors. They too were pretty much airtight. The walls of the building were almost 18 inches thick, including the interior walls and doorways. Airtight, light tight, freezing cold, it was almost like being in a crypt. The only difference was I had to take a piss.

I reached around and felt for my flashlight. Besides guns, food and bullets, a flashlight is one of the most important things you can have at the Front. I’d been in some pretty primitive situations before, and I had an idea about what to bring. I brought three. Two were the kind you wear on your head, and another handheld that could be charged by cranking. I found the one I was feeling around for and turned it on. The wood stove below me was cold and dark. I climbed down and lit a candle, the only source of illumination, besides flashlights. Since I was going outside to piss, I donned my steel vest and grabbed my Kalash. I walked to the end of the hallway and walked down the stairs. There were a few openings in the windows on the first floor, and the dim light of dawn filtered through. Which meant the snipers could see me.

Our position, our building, faced enemy positions on two sides – to the North, straight ahead, the Donetsk Airport control tower raised its head like a ragged viper, 400 meters away. About halfway between was a woodline that was the launching site for the almost daily Ukrop attacks. To the right, to the West, in the direction of Freedom and Prosperity, the New Terminal of the Donetsk Airport was held by the “Cyborgs” a supposedly elite unit of the Ukrainian Army, backed by Pravy Sektor Nazis and Western mercenaries. Our toilet was a small building about 50 meters across open ground, covered by Ukrop sniper fire from the control tower. I asked the guy on guard duty (in sign language, of course) if that was where I had to go to piss. It turned out that I could piss on the floor in one of the downstairs rooms, it was only if I had to take a shit that I’d have to brave the sniper fire. I decided to try that later, and settled for a piss.

That morning it occurred to me that I was among true Freedom Fighters, men who were defending their own homes and families from foreign invaders who were bent on nothing less than enslavement of the locals. These men were not “defending freedom” by going to a foreign country and shooting people there, they were defending their own freedom, literally in their own backyards, and doing it quite well. We faced 150 infantry, Pravy Sektor and Regular Army, armor and artillery, including Grads (rocket batteries). There were never more than 20 of us there at once, usually a lot less. Firefights every night, and almost every day. Thousands of rounds, each way. Artillery every few days, fifty to a hundred rounds, incoming. But we held our own.

I returned upstairs, where things were starting to stir. The first stove to be lit was in the kitchen. Ammo crates were the preferred firewood, and the majority of what we had to burn. Coffee, nyet, but there was tea, “chai” black and strong, with too much sugar. Breakfast was the leftover potato soup from the night before. As the morning progressed, I began to interact with my comrades, and take stock of them, and them of me. The two combat commanders were Reem and Mir (“Chrome” and “Peace”.) The following equation may not make sense to the civilians or mathematicians among us, but combat vets will know what I mean – Reem was worth any 10 regular soldiers, and Mir was worth 5, but together they were worth 30, and there were plenty of times when 30 Ukrops were scared to go up against just those two. They ran the “Utes”, and they ran it heavy. The Utes is a heavy machine gun, equal to the US M-2 50 cal. Reem was the gunner, and Mir was his sideman and spotter. Reem was a big man, but he seemed even bigger. Mir was a short guy, but the scarier of the two.

Reem didn’t say much, and everything that Mir said to me seemed somehow tinged with a threat. When Mir told me he was a dentist, I figured he really meant “dentist” in the mafia sense – he knocked people’s teeth out with his fists for a living. He wasn’t the kind of guy who needed pliers. That evening, over dinner, Mir peppered me with questions, what I knew about Russian history, Russian culture. Well, I knew a bit. Come and See by Elim Klimov, Eta Vso by DDT. The Sacred War. Reem just sat back and listened. He didn’t say much, but like E. F. Hutton, when Reem talked, everybody listened. I did too, of course, but the only difference was I couldn’t understand anything he said. He was that kind of guy, a big, dark Russian with a rumbling voice like the sound of distant artillery that was slowly coming closer. He could say “Merry Christmas” and it would sound like the voice of impending doom. But I could tell he liked me, even if I was pretty sure Mir didn’t. After dinner, Mir invited me back to the Commander’s Room, at the suggestion of Reem. Of course, I went.

Each room, including the Commander’s, had two double bunks on the North and South walls, for a total of 8 bunks in each room, usually with 4 or 5 soldiers in each. Candles were the only illumination, but Reem’s stove worked better than most, and the room was actually warm. We sat down for some Green Tea.

Sitting there, warmed by a wood stove, lit by a candle, listening to the soft, deep and ominous rumble of Reem’s voice, I felt about as far away as it was possible to be from the conventional reality of my friends and family back in the States. I was living like an outlaw cowboy from the 1800’s, but I was doing so in Eastern Europe in the 21st Century. It was crazy, it was weird, it was hard and it was scary, but there was no place on Earth I would rather have been.

We had some tea, a Russian tradition that while not as formal as the Japanese ceremony, had its protocols. I sat in a dark room, lit by a single candle and listened to Reem give combat instructions to the other 3 soldiers who were there, then he turned to me and made me understand it was time to fight. The Ukrops would start their attack within the next 10 minutes. I was to get to my room, don my vest, helmet and webgear with 4 loaded magazines and be ready to work. In Russian military circles, the word “robota”, “to work”, means to start shooting. I did as I was told. In my room, I paused for a moment to say a prayer, then donned my gear and reported to the guys who were setting up near the Utes at the front of the building, facing the control tower. I was instructed to take a firing position on the 3rd floor, along with Arik the sniper. It was about 8PM, and a light snow had started to fall. We took up our position just as the Ukrops began to open fire.

One of the first things you learn, instinctively and without instruction, is to tell the difference between bullets being fired in your general direction and bullets being fired directly at you. The latter have a distinctive “crack!”, a mini-sonic boom as they pass, or else you can hear their impact on whatever cover you happen to be using for protection. The tempo and intensity of fire from the Ukrops quickly increased. There were at least 3 separate groups in the woodline, 150 meters to our front – one on the left and two to the right. Probably between 12 and 20 soldiers, laying down a steady stream of fire. …It was a surreal existence, dark, cold, deadly danger. In a strange language. Operating mostly on vibes. They’d look at me and tell me something important, and I’d have absolutely no idea what the words they’d just said meant, but I could catch the vibe. And I have to say I caught on pretty quick. It only took me two days to figure out I was wearing my body armor backwards. Russians don’t teach you, they let you figure it out. And we all had a good laugh when I did. The trick to doing everything the right way, the best way it can be done, is to do it like they do.

Arik and I would take turns firing out the window, then take cover and await the return fire. I would pop up, fire off 5 or 6 rounds in 4 seconds or so, then get down. Arik would wait about 10 or 15 seconds, then take a position at the window and fire 2 or 3 aimed shots with his SVD. We were effective, and soon came under sustained fire. At one point, a green Ukrop tracer came through the window right between us. And of course, when you see a tracer, there are 3 or 4 more non-tracer bullets that you do not see, coming along with it. We both saw the tracer come through the window. We looked at each other and laughed, then got back to work. It did not take for me to empty my 5 magazines, and I headed down to the second floor to reload. The battle was in full pitch. Reem and Mir manned the Utes, and Bielka had the PKM working from the window to the left of the Utes. Reem had a highly effective method of shooting – although the Utes is a fully automatic machine gun, Reem had perfected the technique of firing single shots. It was a steady drumbeat of fire, about one round per second, each round at a different target. The PKM and other shooters developed a rhythm with the Utes, which created a solid stream of hot lead covering all Ukrop firing positions almost constantly. Though we were outnumbered, we maintained the initiative, and controlled the battle.

I reloaded my mags as quickly as I could, and learned many important lessons in the process. Often, in battles at Troishka, both sides would need to reload at pretty much the same time. Being able to reload quickly is as important as being able to unload accurately. I was pretty slow that first night, but soon learned to get much, much better. I returned to the window where Arik was still working, and took up my firing position. I fired a round, then pulled the trigger again. Nothing happened. I looked down at my rifle and saw the bolt was jammed in a half open position. I tried pushing forward and pulling back, but it was stuck. Fuck…CB-tower-scope2 The Kalashnikov series of rifles are among the best combat weapons ever produced, and their superior quality has always been their reliability. I thought that either a Ukrop bullet had hit my rifle, or a bad bullet had exploded in the chamber. I went downstairs, not relishing the idea of sitting out the rest of the raging firefight with an inoperable weapon. I showed my rifle to Mongoose, the commander. He also tried to get it to function, to no avail. So he gave me an RPK that was in the arms room, and I continued the fight with that. The battle continued for several hours, until the Ukrops finally withdrew back to the control tower complex. We gathered in the arms room to reload and to smoke cigarettes. It was about midnight, and it had been a long night. I left my AK in the arms room, and took the RPK with me to my bunk. I removed my webgear, helmet, boots and vest, and crawled up onto my bunk. The room was still of course freezing cold, no fire in the stove, only a candle for illumination. I slid into my bag, said a prayer of thanks, and went to sleep, with only my nose sticking out. Tomorrow would be another busy day.

The days and nights consisted of taking care of day to day chores while waiting, and being ready, to be attacked by numerically superior forces at any time. We usually had about 5 minutes warning, from radio intercepts or observation that the attack was coming in the next few minutes, or some Ukrop would open fire early, and let us know they were coming. When we hit back, it was hard. Reem and Mir were on the Utes heavy machine gun, and we had an AGS automatic grenade launcher, plus maybe 10 or 12 more guys with rifles. Plenty of ammo. Supplies were delivered every day or so, water, food, ammo. At dawn the car or van would arrive, 3 or 4 of us would run across the open terrain to the relative cover in front of the church. And back with heavy burdens, two or three trips. Firewood was a rarity, though there was a big pile of wooden construction debris about 300 meters away, across sniper scanned fields. And we went and got it there too. Nobody got hit, but in retrospect, it seemed crazy. No matter. Within a few days of my arrival, we were shooting so much ammo we had plenty of wooden ammo crates to burn. Plenty.

One night, I was assigned to AGS duty. The AGS is a machine gun that shoots grenades that will cut any exposed meat within a 5 meter radius of where they hit. But totally ineffective against armor. As the nightly Ukrop attack began, Lataishik, Mas and I unsheathed the monster and prepared for battle. It was pitch dark, and I couldn’t see a thing. We couldn’t use our flashlights because light draws fire, so it was literally touch and go. Lataishik let off about 5 rounds and then turned to me and said “Te agon”, “You shoot”. I felt my way over and went ahead and did. All the while, bullets are impacting within a foot or two of the edge of the window we are firing out of. You just have to ignore them and keep on working. When they shoot at you, you can see the muzzle flash from the rifles. Then you know where to shoot back with a grenade machine gun. I laid some down. I had learned from Mir on the Utes that you never shoot the same target twice, a different one every time, every few seconds, so they never know if the next one’s for them. We ran through six 25 round drums, then it was time to reload. Quickly, because the battle was not over.

Lataishik assumed sniper duty at the window with his SVD. Mas and I headed up to the ammo room to reload. Reloading AGS belts, under optimum conditions is not an easy task. Barehanded in the freezing dark, for the first time, in the middle of a battle, I have to rate as among the toughest things I have ever done. And that’s how it went. OJT, On the Job Training, but I was catching on. I hadn’t gotten killed yet, or gotten anyone else killed, so I was doing pretty good. I did my share of guard duty – on the stairs by the AGS, guarding the entrance against “surprise visitors” in the form of Pravy Sektor commandos stationed half a kilometer away. The other guard post, manned 24 hours a day, was the PKM window beside the Utes. We had a night vision (light amplification) scope for the Utes, and a handheld thermal imager for observation. Beyond bullets, beyond Grads, my biggest fear was that I would drop the thermal imager on guard duty. I t was one of our most important weapons. Technically, “Non-lethal”, but it multiplied the power of every weapon 20 times, because it could show us where to shoot. Remember that when US government hacks talk about non-lethal aid. Some of the most important weapons in war cannot kill people by themselves.

THE BATTLES OCCURRED WITH REGULARITY, pretty much every day, and every night. Battles lasted at least an hour, sometimes many hours, with literally thousands of rounds fired by each side. One night, Mongoose was at the next position, Milnitsa, (“Windmill”) meeting with other commanders when the Ukrops attacked Troishka. It was a heavy battle, and we soon needed to reload. Unfortunately, Mongoose had the key to the main ammo room, and fire was too heavy for him to make his way back. It was not a pleasant situation – We were literally running out of bullets for all our weapons, and it wouldn’t take the Ukrops and Pravy Sektor nazis long to figure it out. 150 meters across semi-open ground, and they would be at the door. We would be fighting with knives against psychos with loaded machine guns.

Fortunately, Orion, who had arrived a few days after me, came up with a solution, not elegant, but effective – a wood-splitting maul makes a passable field expedient door key when your life is on the line, and within minutes, the door was in splinters, and we were opening ammo cans and reloading mags and ammo belts as if our lives depended on it. Which, of course, they did. Reloading is as important a skill as shooting. There are tricks to it, as with everything here. When you’ve loaded up all your mags, you take a big handful of loose rounds and put them in the right hand pocket of your coat. Not the left side pocket, because then you have to transfer every round to the right hand before you put it in the mag, and it takes almost twice as long to re-load. With our mags topped off, we suddenly began returning heavy fire towards the Ukrops who were advancing, much to their surprise and dismay. We owed a debt of thanks to Orion, and after the battle, we all gave him a pat on the back.

Each day was like a week, and filled with learning experiences. I was promoted to a front firing position, to the right of the Utes, my “office” with a small firing port that had been chipped out of the wall. I often shared my office with Mars, the top sniper in the Essence of Time combat unit and one of the best snipers in the NAF.

I was asked if I wanted to train as a sniper, but declined. Sniper is a young man’s job, and I was a bit old, and my eyesight was not quite up to snuff. I was pretty good with the Kalashnikov and PKM, but was reluctant to take up the sniper’s SVD. The war continued…

On the 12th of January, Motorola and Spartak Battalion moved into the Cachigarka position under heavy fire. Cachigarka is halfway between Troishka and the New Terminal. That evening, the Utes was moved from it’s usual position to a window facing New Terminal. We were given a warning order that Sparta would assault the New terminal that night, and we would provide covering fire for their approach.

At 22:00 Hours (10 PM) the attack began. The entire New terminal was lit by muzzle flashes and incoming tracers. Mortar and artillery fire was constant. It was an important engagement with more than a hundred soldiers on each side. As Sparta entered the Terminal on the left, we were instructed to shift our fire to the right end of the Terminal. At about 1 AM, a magazine of green tracer was fired straight up into the air, the signal that the New Terminal had been taken. It was a major victory for the NAF. At 4 AM, I was posted to guard duty at the door. In the last few minutes of my 3 hour shift, exhausted, I started to doze off, only to awaken moments later to Mars standing above me on the stairs, understandably very angry. I would be assigned “robot duty” as punishment for my infraction. Orion would also be joining me. Under artillery attack the night before, he was reporting to Milnitsa, and was saying over open radio frequencies that Ukrop rounds were landing “300 meters to our left.” As Mars pointed out, he was inadvertently acting as an artillery spotter for the Ukrops. So, the next day, Orion and I made our way under intense artillery fire to the Gavin position.

They had a basement there that was to be used as a bomb shelter, but was filled with junk, old food and other miscellaneous debris. Our job was to clean the basement. Although it was a punishment mission, the weather was clear and not too bitterly cold, and we were several hundred meters back from Troishka, in relative safety. It was almost a holiday. We spent a few hours working hard to clear out the basement, then lounged around in the sunlight and clean, crisp, smoke-free air. While we were there, Somali Brigade brought up several tanks and began a sustained fire attack on the control tower. Just after lunch, it was cut down. The ukrops still held the buildings in the control tower complex, but had been deprived of an important observation post, at the probable cost of several of their lives. Another major victory for us. We were kickin’ ass and taking names…

I had picked up a bad lung infection in training at Ysynavada, and I continued to have a serious cough. During my weeks at Troishka, it had not gotten any better. It could not have gotten any worse, because it was already as bad as it could get. The frigid temperatures and dense smoke that were ever-present did not help any, either. It was really bad, but not bad enough for me to ask to go to the hospital. I had not come to Donbass to check into a hospital of my own volition. But on the 14th of January, the Vostok Battalion doctor came to Troishka to visit me. He asked many questions, listened to my chest and noted the lung-crushing conditions of smoke and cold. He did his best to talk me into coming back with him, but I refused. I did not intend to leave before my comrades did. But the next evening, having green tea with Reem, a message came over the radio – I was ordered to be ready to move to the hospital the next morning at dawn, and to leave when the supply van departed. Conditions were very harsh, and honestly, I was very sick, but I was more dismayed than relieved by the order. In my rudimentary Russian, I conveyed to Reem that I did not want to go and had not asked to. He understood.

At dawn on the 16th of January, I bid my comrades good luck and boarded the van back to civilization. After a little over two weeks in heavy combat, my entire perspective on life had changed, and I finally had a realistic idea about what my new life was really going to be like. As the van made its way from combat zone to city center, it was like going from one world to another, though separated by only a few thousand meters. At the Vostok hospital, I was prescribed 4 days of bed rest. Rather than stay at the hospital, I prevailed on my doctor to allow me to stay ay the apartment of my friend Christian Malaparte. Ti was warmer and more comfortable, the food was better and most of all I could communicate in English. Between basic training and combat at Troishka, it had been over a month without a single day off, without a doubt, the hardest month I had ever spent in my life. I was ready for a little R&R, and felt I deserved it. I got to Christian’s apartment, was fed royally, chugged down most of a bottle of Armenian cognac and passed out for the next 16 hours. Meanwhile, back at the airport, Troishka was about to become the scene of one of the biggest and most important battles of the war…

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Hemingway of the Donbass

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The Lesson of Grom and Shiba

Published in The Greanville Post. »

Grom, Volga, and Shiba.

Grom, Svetlana and Shiba in Donetsk.

Shiba gives Svetlana a kiss on the cheek.

In the classroom.

The author with Grom and Shiba.

There’s nothing like facing Death on a daily basis to CB patchmake you understand the true essence of time, and Shiba and Grom (“Grom” means “Thunder”) certainly do. They joined Vostok and EoT in the first days of the war, fought at Saur Mogila, then moved to the airport when we took up positions there in December 2014. They were soldiers, but their main duty was driving journalists from Donetsk city center to the Front, near the airport, which was a very hot area back n the first months of 2015.I know, I was there. On Easter Sunday, April 12th, 2015, in the village of Zhabunki, near the airport, while driving a TV crew in a clearly marked civilian car, the Ukrainian Army opened fire on them with anti-tank rockets. The journalists in back were relatively unharmed, and eventually completely recovered. Shiba and Grom both lost their legs. Both lost both their legs, blown off by a rocket. It’s a miracle that either of them survived. But they both did. They were taken to the Army hospital in Donetsk, and 4 months later to hospitals in Russia. On December 22nd, they returned to Donetsk, their hometown. They brought new legs with them, and they’ve both had smiles on their faces ever since. Because they came back with new legs to kick some more fascist ass. That’s what they like to do. And they’re good at it…

Grom and Shiba did not know each other before the war. Grom was a truck driver in Donbass, Shiba had businesses in Moscow, and had moved there. But as soon as the war in Donbass broke out, Shiba returned to Donetsk and joined the Army – Vostok Battalion and Essence of Time. That’s where he met Grom and Volga, the EoT Commander. They all became fast friends. Grom and Shiba worked together, and they were quite a pair, like Socrates and Hercules, and always with a smile and a joke. Even during some of the toughest fighting of the war, they were unstoppable and unflappable. A pair of super heroes, not like Batman and Robin, more like Batman and Superman.

Vostok and EoT worked at the airport in some of the hottest positions there. All of us who worked there faced death on a daily basis. (By Easter, EoT [a relatively small formation] had already lost 5 guys KIA.) But we all agreed that a prospect worse than death was to be gravely wounded. We all felt that way, but Grom and Shiba proved us wrong. Because they were gravely wounded, and they never showed a single second of self pity or regret. And now they’re back, not just in Donetsk, but in the Army, and they’re going back to the Front, because even if they’re still getting used to their new legs, their trigger fingers work just fine. And they’re smiling all the way. Even before they got hit, they were always joking. It calmed the nerves of the civilian journalists that it was their main job to drive around through combat zones. And it came to them naturally. Even in the face of Death.

Now, they joke more than ever. They are not known as Grom and Shiba, “The two guys who got their legs blown off”, they are not even mostly known as “Those two incredible Heroes”. They are known as “Those two guys who are always joking”. And they are way funnier than Cheech and Chong. Seriously.

HOW DO PEOPLE OVERCOME SUCH CHALLENGES, such tragedies? Well, it takes a strong and heroic nature, of course, but it is almost impossible to do without one other factor – a family that loves and supports you, and won’t let you down. And EoT and Vostok are a family just like that. A REAL family, not just a shared name or a shared Christmas dinner, or a phone call on your birthday. The Human Family, of which we can all be members, if we are willing to do our part.

Grom and Shiba did theirs, and we weren’t about to let them down. Essence of Time, Vostok and friends raised over 1.5 million rubles for these guys, to help pay for care, medicine and prosthetics. But Grom and Shiba did not accept all of the donations for themselves, of course. They also sent some of the money raised for their treatment to wounded kids from Donbass who were also being treated in Moscow. Because what comes around, goes around, and that’s what Heroes do. They know that, and so they do it.

When they were recovering in Moscow, sharing a room, they had a lot of time to reminisce, and one day, trading childhood memories, discovered that one of Shiba’s grade school teachers, Svetlana Drouzhina, had later become a professor and taught Grom in university. Needless to say, when they got back to Donetsk from Moscow, they went to visit her. Imagine the pride she must have felt at seeing these two Heroes, whose magnificent characters she had helped to mold, show up to honor her and her students with their presence and their examples. It gives me goosebumps to even think about it. Men who risked everything to defend those who could not defend themselves, the innocent and the powerless, these men who said we will not just risk all and give all to protect you, we will win, we will protect you from those who menace you and want to enslave you, and we will defeat them. The US-backed fascists can shoot off our legs, but we will return to fight again, and as long as we are alive, we will continue to fight them, and we will defeat them, or die trying. The Nazis can kill us, but they cannot kill us all, so we can never be defeated.

Grom and Shiba gave a lecture on courage that should be taught in every school classroom in the world. Men who have had both their legs blown off defending a righteous cause have a right to say “I’ve done my share, I believe I’ll rest now.” Heroes like Grom and Shiba say “We are still alive, we can do more, so we will.” Because a Hero’s share is simply all he can give, and these guys still have more to give, and they will give it. Because that’s what it takes.

Those of us reading this today may die before the world goes through a horrific transformation as significant as the extinction of the dinosaurs.Then again, we may not. One thing’s for sure, the way things are going now, our children’s children won’t, unless we change things. Which is still possible, and Donbass proves it. Grom and Shiba prove it. We’re talking about the future of Humanity here. Our children. All children. You know what it’s worth to Grom and Shiba. What’s it worth to you?

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In memory of the heroic defenders of Donetsk Airport on January 17, 2015

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So What’s for Lunch?

Published in The Greanville Post. »

“The game is rigged, folks!”

Only 0.0003% of Americans can identify Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler (USMC). Fewer still can remember what he did or said. Accidental? Yet they know what Britney Spears had for lunch.

The manufacturing of American stupidity. It goes on 24/7.

T-party militant proclaiming his political sagacity.

Bravo’s Southern Charm celebrity cast: Unrepentantly frivolous and privileged. Superficiality as an admired way of life.

I was in Dallas the day JFK was murdered, 52 years ago today. I was only 3 1/2 years old, but I remember it. I was always interested in knowing what really happened, and some years later, in my early 30s, I researched the assassination quite extensively. Some of the best information I found was presented in a book and a film by Mark Lane called Rush to Judgement. He interviewed eyewitnesses who were in Dealy Plaza that day. There was a witness, a veteran of WW II, who said with certainty that he heard shots and saw smoke from the “Grassy Knoll” that day. After the Warren Commission cover-up was published, Lane again interviewed his witness, who then said, “Well, I thought I knew what I saw and heard, but after reading the government’s report, I guess I was wrong”. This article is addressed to that witness, and all those like him in the West today…

I have often been asked by my friends and comrades here in Donbass what kind of people live in the USA, asked whether they know or care about what goes on in the world around them. I say there are good people in the US, who care about others and who are smart enough to understand the interconnectedness we all share, that we are all in this together, and that what goes around, comes around. And that is true. For about 2% of the US population. The rest are something else.

The vast majority of US citizens are cowards and fools. The worst kind of cowards, those who are afraid to know the truth, much less actually do anything about it, and the worst kind of fools, those who have deceived themselves, to the point of refusing to consider even the possibility that they may be wrong, even when they are as absolutely as wrong as they can be. That is the truth about most US citizens today, about 98%, by my estimate, based on the fact that only 2% voted for Nader in the year 2000. Nader was the only candidate willing to speak the truth. Only someone who is as described above could have voted for any major party candidate in that election, or in any US election since. I voted for Nader in 2000, I worked on his campaign in Alaska. I’ve never voted since.

Voting in the USA — what a joke. I used to believe in the system. I voted for Ron Paul back in ’88. I ran for US Senator in Minnesota in 1990. That year, I saw an Anarchist newspaper with a photo of Bush Sr. and Clinton. Above the photo, the headline read , ‘SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT PILE”. I thought that was kind of harsh. It took me ten more years to realize they were right. But I did. How about you? US elections can be compared to a fancy and quite expensive restaurant that has a single item on the menu, but with variations. It’s a shit sandwich, nice and fresh and steaming hot, but you have your choice between white Wonder Bread or organic whole wheat. Of course, they offer every kind of sauce – you can customize your sandwich like a Starbucks Double Mocha Frappe Latte Decaf Cappuccino, but it’s still a shit sandwich. And you may not have any choice whether you have to pay for it or not, but you do have one choice, and that is whether you’re gonna eat it or not. By voting, you take that first big bite. Obama is a bigger war criminal and greater shame to the history of the US than even either Bush was. And whoever comes after Obama, Republican or Democrat, will be worse still. If you vote for either of them, my friends in Cuba have a name for you…

When I went to Cuba, in 1995, I learned that the slang name there for citizens of the US was “Come’ Mierdas”, Spanish for “Shit-Eaters”. Not a very kind sobriquet, but certainly honest and appropriate. People in the US consume a steady and unvaried diet of shit – mainstream news, politics, entertainment, and the food, from McDonald’s, to GMOs, to the filth that contaminates the food produced in factory farms, it’s literally shit. If a person eats shit for long enough, they eventually get used to it. If they eat it for too long, they start to like it. That is what has happened to most US and EU citizens today. They eat shit, and they like it, and they are angrily offended by anyone who points this out, and they have exactly zero interest in considering any alternative to the shit they consume on a daily basis.

The social contract in any civilized society, between each member of that society, can only be based on the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And by “good”, I mean the greatest opportunity for each citizen of that society to fulfill their potential as human beings. This is impossible when people don’t have access to food security, adequate housing, meaningful work and decent medical care and education, when 400 people own more wealth than 150 million, as is exactly the case in the USA today. In the USA, the social contract is based on the proposition that “I will pretend to believe your bullshit if you will pretend to believe mine”, a “positive” feedback loop based on mutual and self deception that is reinforced and increasingly distorted with every bogus interaction, whether voting, watching the news, or simply being asked “How ya doing?” and answering “Fine.”

The entire history of the USA is based on comforting, but provable and obvious, lies. The USA was founded on genocide and built by slavery. Howard Zinn’s classic People’s History of the United States is an excellent example of how false the prevailing notions, the shared lies, really are. Which is not to say that anyone who has read Zinn’s History is still not fully capable of creating their own false world view. In fact, in the West, there are as many “shit-eaters” on the Left as there are on the Right (ed: for example, the “imperialist left”). Those on the (fake) Left are just as destructive and deluded as their counterparts, their mirror images on the Right, but personally, I find them even more revolting, and I don’t mean in the revolutionary sense…

For example, I know a full grown woman with a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy. She drives a Prius, jogs, is “passionate” about recycling her garbage, is very politically correct, votes a straight Democratic Party ticket and considers herself to be intellectual and Progressive. She grew up pampered in a wealthy conservative family, went to a private boarding school, studied abroad and then married a rich husband. She reads The New York Times, and thinks she is well-informed. But I have personally heard her say “I don’t want to know.” “I don’t care about virtues or principles.” “I don’t care about other people.” “There’s no such thing as objective truth”. And she certainly meant it. Quite the philosopher, eh? She owns a couple of bars and makes her money selling alcohol to college students, and spends her time writing maudlin poems. She voted for Obama twice, and gets offended if I asks her if she has any regrets about it. She will certainly vote for Hillary Clinton or whatever crypto-fascist the Democratic Party runs, and will consider herself a superior person for doing so.The cognitive dissonance of her phony self and world view, her attempts to convince herself and others that she is a “good” person, while she does actually nothing of any genuine merit in her life, has made her bitter and resentful of anyone who makes a real effort to improve the state of the world. And the more confused and unhappy she becomes, the tighter she clings to her self-deception, the true source of her misery. How do you reach people like that? I don’t know… But I am trying.

I know a man, an arch-conservative, who flunked out of college in his early 20’s during the draft for the Vietnam War. Rather than take a chance on getting drafted and actually serving in a war that he ardently supported, with his words and with his votes, at least until he himself became eligible for the draft, he used his family’s money and political connections to get an enlistment in the Marine Reserves, the surefire way to guarantee he would not have to go anywhere near the actual fighting. Instead, he played soldier one weekend a month and two weeks every summer, safe in the USA. (George Bush, Junior did the same thing. And then there’s Ted Nugent…) This Marine Reservist was highly offended when I pointed out that real soldiers, like myself, from the regular full time Armed Services did not really consider reservists to be soldiers. His self deception, to this day, extends to his wearing USMC logo clothing much of the time, having “Semper Fi” stickers on all his cars and going to and financially supporting USMC events. What was truly an act of cowardice and hypocrisy, he now points to as an act of courage and patriotism. He has fetishized his self deception to the point where he is proud of his “service” and the objects that are truly the symbols of his shame. But he will pretend to believe your bullshit, if you will pretend to believe his…

No one — and we mean no one — has dissected American bullshit better and more fiercely than George Carlin. The most serious comic of his generation, Carlin was perhaps the most incisive underground social critic the US has ever produced. This routine is one of his signature riffs, sparing no one, and leaving no room for cowardly ambiguity. Video on source.

This total inversion of truth and of reality is pervasive among the vast majority of US citizens. It is exactly what Orwell described as “Double Think” – “To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary…. To use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypocrisy you had just performed.” This is the precise mental state of most of the people in The West today, and especially in the USA. It is as dangerous as it is disgusting. People who are capable of such depths of self-deception, such hypocrisy, are not to be trusted. They are not even qualified to have an opinion, much less vote or in any other way attempt to influence the reality they fear and cannot (and will not even try to) comprehend. As Einstein said, “They are hardly worthy of the brain and spine they were born with.”

And the more erroneous, the more false their perception of reality, the tighter they cling to it, the more threatened and offended they are by anyone who even asks them to consider an alternative view. Because as the old saying goes, “It takes a big man to admit he’s wrong”. So, what must it take to admit that your entire world view is not just wrong, but totally 180 degrees divergent from objective reality, to admit that you have a half eaten shit sandwich in your hand? More than most people can muster, apparently. A mistake is not a “mistake” if it is an intentional lie, even if that lie is told to yourself. And if someone does have the courage and integrity to abandon the comforting lie for the hard truth, they are also forced to understand, to admit, that they have a responsibility to themselves and to the future of Humanity to do something about it. But it is so much easier, safer, and more socially acceptable to turn on the TV, pop open a beer and pretend everything is OK and will remain so. Because if you pretend to believe their bullshit, they will pretend to believe yours…

This is the same grotesque depth of self-deception and reversal of reality that allows the Nazis of Western Ukraine to idolize a war criminal like Stepan Bandera, and to try to “rehabilitate” Hitler by saying he was “just misunderstood, and really not that bad”. People who are capable of saying this, and believing it, are capable of crimes beyond the imagination of normal human beings. US citizens who ignore the crimes of their government, at home and abroad (as long as it doesn’t affect them personally) are no better than the “Good Germans” who supported Hitler, and will eventually share their same fate. And deserve to.

Cowards hate the brave, idiots hate the wise, and liars hate the truth. It is a hatred born of fear and envy and gross self-centeredness. Those who are brave and wise and speak the truth are not welcome in the circles of the self-deceived. They are hated there, they are attacked, they are killed. But who can teach someone to overcome their cowardice except the brave? Who can teach a fool how to become wise except the wise? The definition of wisdom is “Having the ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting”. Only the truth can expose a lie. Anything else is just another lie.

The vast majority of US citizens are fools and cowards, and their rulers know this, and act accordingly. The impudence of the rulers of the USA is a measure of the impotence and futility of their subjects. And the rulers are very impudent. Every day, the rulers feel less and less compelled to even try to hide their crimes. Why bother? Obvious false flags like 9/11 or MH17 were executed in a way that shows the perpetrators did not even care if they left incontrovertible evidence behind. The majority of the people will believe what they are told to believe, what it is convenient and comfortable to believe, regardless of the evidence, and they will resent and violently resist anyone who holds the evidence up to the light and asks them to look at it. So they cower in their darkened corners, hugging their chains and licking the boots of their masters, eating their shit, while congratulating each other on their bravery and freedom, snarling at anyone with genuine courage and compassion who tries to help them to see the truth, to do what is right, and to truly be free.

Courage and compassion are the greatest human virtues, but they are not only to be found in the human realm. There are many examples of these qualities being exhibited by animals, so what does that make those creatures, those simulacra of human beings, who are devoid of these very traits? I say it makes them evil. The old saying about “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing” is not true. People who do nothing when confronted with evil are not “good people”, They are complicit in that evil, and they are evil too. What is “evil”? I have been face to face with cannibals and mass murderers, so I will tell you, because I know. Scott Peck wrote a book called People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil. He described evil as “militant ignorance”, as “a willingness to impose suffering on others in order to avoid one’s own spiritual growth”. Both definitions are spot on, and describe perfectly the US government, the majority of the US citizenry, the Kiev regime and their psychopathic henchmen.

Is there hope? Is there an answer? I don’t know. But I will speak the truth, and I will stand up for what is right. I’ve got a brain and a spine, and I’m going to use them, come what may. Even if defeat were to be inevitable, (which I do NOT believe) even if this was the Alamo or Thermopylae, that would never stop me from doing everything I can to defeat this genuine evil that is attacking Donbass and in fact, attacking the whole world.. We are defined by what we do, and what we don’t do. That is what truly tells ourselves and others who and what we really are. Words mean nothing if they are not corroborated and combined with actions. I do not consider myself a “hero”. I am just a regular guy who is doing the right thing. Yes, it is sometimes hard and dangerous, but it’s not that big of a deal. It is also sometimes very cool and very fun, so virtue really is its own reward. But if I’m just a regular guy, what does that make those who have less courage and compassion ( and less grasp of reality) than a water buffalo? It makes them part of the problem. I will help them if I can, with my words and by my example. But I will fight them if I must. There is objective truth, and it is clear to any honest person, who is right and who is wrong here, and elsewhere.

Those who deceive themselves are their own worst enemies, and ours. Our work, our work, speaks for itself, mine and yours, and for us, you and me. We are what we do. If there is hope, it lies with those who are willing to face the truth, and to speak it, and to defend it. And to do something about it. Everybody else is just a shit-eater… So, what’s for lunch?

Homage to the Fallen

Published in The Greanville Post. »

FILIN (the phonetic spelling of Филин, “Eagle Owl”) was an instructor for the Vostok Brigade at Yasynuvata when I joined the Novorussian Army in December 2014. He was only 21 years old at the time, but he was already a combat veteran who seemed much older, despite his baby face. He was someone I respected from the moment I met him. He was a brave and serious soldier and an excellent instructor. He was also a genuinely nice guy. He was from Makeevka, just outside Donetsk. He was defending the land he was born in from foreign-backed Nazis who were coming here to enslave the Russian speaking people of Donbass. He refused to be a slave and was willing to fight and die to protect others. He was a quiet guy who led and encouraged others by his own example. He was brave, kind and generous. He was exactly the kind of guy this world needs more of. Fedorov Ruslan Petrovich, “Eagle Owl” will be missed.

Fedorov Ruslan Petrovich. Not just a friend of mine, or of Novorossiya, this Hero was an example and a friend to all good people in the world. We will build a monument to Heroes like this, hopefully in Kiev after we liberate it.

video on source

video on source

The Serpent and the Crown — My First Combat Position, “Troishka”

Published in The Greanville Post. »

Russell "Texas" Bentleyin the troishka area, daily facing eternity. Like many soldiers before him, defending what seems like an unimportant patch of earth. The image was taken several months after the events in this article; the New Terminal is on the right; Troishka on the left. Two CB soldiers were killed in almost the exact spot where Texac is standing, the day after this photo was taken.

The Essence of Time movement red flag, proudly flying atop the troishka fortifications.

“Ucho” mounted on anti-aircraft tripod.

There are people in this world, men and women, who are born to be Warriors. Hunters, natural apex predators, who are experts at the job of hunting and killing and butchering. Some are good, some are bad, but I am not one of them. Though I can do it if I have to. There are things worth dying for, so there are things worth killing for. And there are things worse than death. And when someone comes to do something worse than death to you and yours, you have a right to kill them. An obligation. Before I came to Donbass, I had a couple of experiences in Mexico. Some guys were coming to kill me, or they were coming to kill me and my friends. They died trying. Self defense. No apologies, end of story. That was the extent of my combat experience before I got to the airport.

New Year’s Eve, 2014, I left Yasynuvata at 4 o’clock in the morning in the back of a dark blue mini-bus. I had two backpacks full of clothes and gear. I had a good kevlar helmet with a defective chin strap, and I had the best type of body armor that I have ever seen anybody wear in the Novorossiyan Armed Forces — Class 4 steel in a slim black vest. Heavy, about ten kilos, but worth it. In Russian, body armor is called “Bronik-gilette”, or just “Bronik”. Your bronik is your friend…

I also had an AK-74 “Avtomat”, and five loaded magazines — one in the gun and four in the web gear I had bought in Rostov. My sleeping bag, also bought in Rostov, was a 3XL bag rated for the Arctic. It was reasonably priced and turned out to be one of the best investments I have ever made in my life. I learned to love that sleeping bag like a beautiful girlfriend. My Avtomat too, like a girlfriend, even if they weren’t always faithful. Everybody at the front has a name for their rifle. Mine was named “Софи”, “Sophie”, after my youngest niece.

The van had ultra dark tinted windows, but it didn’t really matter because they were frosted up on both sides a quarter of an inch thick. As the saying goes, “you couldn’t see shit.” I was crammed in with half a dozen other soldiers, along with so much stuff — food, water, soup, ammo, clothes, blankets and weapons that we barely had room to breathe. The mood was somber, serious. It reminded me of the US Marshal vans I had ridden in, on my way to prison, back when I was doing my bit. Heading into the unknown, where the only thing known was that it was not going to be pleasant.

It took us almost an hour to get to the Airport. 25 km from Yasynuvata to Donetsk, then about 10 km to the Airport. My Russian language skills were so poor, I couldn’t really say anything, and the few comments the other guys made were totally incomprehensible. I had expected Orion to be with me as interpreter, but he was in the hospital with a lung infection. I had the same bad cough, and it was bad, but I’ve never missed a day of work because of being sick, or even hungover, and I wasn’t going to start now. I did not come to Donbass to check into the hospital. Finally, the van came to a stop and the side door slid open. It was dawn on the morning of December 31st, 2014. Still dark, and very, very cold. The driver motioned for me to get out, and I did. I thought we all would, but it was only me and the driver. I looked around…

We were standing in front of what was left of an Eastern Orthodox church that had been heavily, heavily bombed. The roof was blown down, and there was not a square meter of the exterior that did not have several dozen bullet holes or shrapnel scars. 500 meters directly behind the church was the New Terminal, occupied by the “Cyborgs” of the Ukrainian Army. Everything between the church and New Terminal was just an open field. Actually, I looked a little closer and realized it was not an open field, it was a cemetery. A big one, with a couple of thousand graves. It reminded me of the cemetery in the final scene of the movie “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. The scene I was in would be the first in this, my own real life movie, but it also might be my last.

I was standing next to a blown up church in the middle of a grave yard, going to war in a strange foreign country that I had been in for less than a month. I realized I could get killed today, any second, starting right now. It felt like I was standing outside of time, but I knew I didn’t really have time to stand outside of time right then. I was “all in” as we say in Texas Hold ‘Em, and now I had to play the hand I had dealt myself.

Texas offers a view of the bombed church and explains the events in which the site played a pivotal role. Video on source.

We unloaded our share of the supplies in front of the church, and as we did, four soldiers approached from the monastery, where the combat position “Troishka” was located. (“Troishka” because the monastery had three stories — or used to have three stories.) They were regular looking guys, except for the fact they all carried machine guns and wore helmets and bulletproof vests, with ammo clips and grenades festooned all over their torsos, and they were very serious. Very serious. Fortunately, our first conversation was easy. The word for “sniper” in Russian is pronounced almost the same as in English, kind of like “shnaypair”. When they pointed towards the New Terminal and control tower and said that word, I knew exactly what they were talking about. I understood.

It took us a few trips to hump all the gear the 100 meters or so from the drop off point in front of the church to the ground floor of Troishka. The ammo first, then the food and water, then my personal gear. Two backpacks. Before I left Yasynavata, I was told I would only be at the airport a day or two. Good thing I packed. You know the old saying about “I spent a week in Moscow one night”? Well, I spent half my life at Troishka in a couple of weeks. Time is relative. Especially when you’re standing outside of it.

We ran across the hundred yards between the front of the church and the door of the monastery. Every move we made outside was under Ukrop observation and therefore, potentially fatal. So we moved quickly. Once inside the door of the three story monastery, we turned right and went up the stairs, passing a switchback landing with a guard post and an AGS automatic grenade launcher. The door to the second floor was sealed by a sheet of plastic and a heavy rug. Almost completely airtight and light tight. I stepped inside, into almost total darkness, and a thick haze of smoke from the wood burning stoves that were the only source of heat for our quarters and for cooking. Even though the sun had begun to rise outside, the darkness inside was pervasive, due to the fact that all the windows had been sealed with sandbags against the frequent artillery. Only small firing ports were open to the outside. You literally needed a flashlight, even during the day, just to move around. Good thing I had brought three. I was going to need them.

The monastery was a rectangular building, with a north-south axis. Directly to our north was the airport control tower, about 400 meters away, behind a treeline and small radar station only about 150 meters away. The New Terminal, or what was left of it, was about 500 meters to our East. Both the control tower and New Terminal were held by Ukrop Army “Cyborgs”, along with Pravy Sektor Nazis and US and EU mercenaries. Within less than a kilometer’s range, the enemy forces arrayed against us outnumbered us about 10 to 1. There were never more that 20 of us at Troishka, and usually closer to a dozen. Against at least 200 Nazis and Ukrop soldiers. Long odds, but somewhat better than the odds at The Alamo or Thermopylae. Still, we would get plenty of chances to die like heroes here, and some of us would.

Our main positions were on the second floor. The building had originally been three stories, but the roof had been completely bombed and burned off, so the floor of the third floor was now the roof. Needless to say, it leaked. The layout of the second floor was a long narrow hallway with six rooms on each side. The ones on the right were all firing positions facing towards the New Terminal, and our food storage room. The rooms on the left were, from back to front, commander’s room, eight-man room, kitchen, two eight-man rooms and the ammo room, located just behind the forward firing points facing the control tower. There were three firing points; the main one at the end of the hall was for the “Uchos”, a 12.7 mm heavy machine gun, comparable to the US M2 .50 caliber. To the left of the Uchos was a window for observation and for the PKM when there was something to shoot at. To the right was a small room that had firing ports cut through the walls to the north and east. This small room was destined to become my office, and I would do a lot of work there.

After a quick tour of the position, I was taken to the room where I would be sleeping. There were eight bunks, and four guys — Arik, sniper, who never said much, Bielka (“Squirrel”) a local veteran of over six months of fighting, and two Italian volunteers, “Spartak” and “Archangel”. I was placed with the Italians, because I speak rudimentary and imperfect Spanish, and it was considered that Italian was similar enough to Spanish that I could communicate with them. Well, almost At that time, my Russian was so limited as to be of virtually no use at all, and my Italian skills were hardly better. I was going to be operating with sign language and on the basis of “vibes”. Good luck and pass the ammo…

The other soldiers there that day were Mos, Vetter and Krugly, who had arrived the day before and were in my basic training class at Yasynuvata; I knew and liked them. They were good soldiers and I had lent them many cigarettes. I met there for the first time Mongoose, a CB (Суть Времени, Essence of Time) administrative commander, and Reem and Mir, two best friends who were the combat commanders of the position and were the main gunners on the Uchos heavy MG. Eleven of us total, though subsequently, soldiers would arrive and depart on a daily basis. But on that day, new Year’s Eve day, 2014, there was just the eleven of us. About 500 meters to our West, we had a two-man PL/OP called “Ushi” at the Pinocchio Nursery School. 500 meters to the south and behind us was the “Milnitsia” position, a radio hub and communication center, usually manned by between six to ten comrades.

As dawn turned into day, the dull light of grey overcast snow clouds filtered through the few small openings, but the temperature remained below zero. It was very fuckin’ cold. Each bunkroom had a small metal wood burning stove for warmth, and candles provided the light, along with the ever present flashlights that most wore on their heads or around their necks at all times. After weapon and body armor, a flashlight was one of the most vital items for work and survival. The stoves were very important too, but there were two problems with the stoves — first a severe lack of firewood, and second, the smoke. All the stoves were on the same side of the building, facing west. And there was a western wind, strong and cold, blowing most of the time. Blowing the smoke right back down the chimneys. It was smokier than the smokiest smoke-filled barroom you have ever been in, by a factor of ten. I am sure firefighters are the only ones who have been in smokier conditions than we had there. The smoke would drive you crazy, make you want to cry, but you kept the fire going, because it was either that or freeze. All day, every day, 24/7. Of all the things I remember about Troishka, the smoke is always what first comes to mind. I already had a real bad cough before I left Yasynavata, and this smoke situation sure did not help.

And speaking of smoke, I had only brought a few packs of cigarettes, having erroneously been told by Orion before he left to the hospital that I would be at the airport for only a day or two. Upon arrival, I was told the rotation would last for at least two weeks, maybe a month. And there was no going to the store from there. But Vostok Battalion understood how important cigarettes are for soldiers in a combat zone (and they really are), and so we had a big pile of cigarette packs, sitting on a corner of the kitchen table, and take all you want. The cigarettes were called “Prima”, in a red cardboard pack. Filterless and strong, along the lines of French Gauloises or Mexican Delicados, both of which I had smoked before. But the interesting thing I noticed about these Primas was written on the top of each pack – “CCCP”. I wasn’t too good at reading Russian then, but I knew what “CCCP” meant. It meant that those cigarettes had been waiting for at least 25 years to be smoked. And now, we smoked them.

Lunch was pig liver paté (“pashtet”) on hard dry crackers. It was served cold, but at least not frozen, and the tea was boiling hot, strong and sweet. Protein, carbs, caffeine and sugar. A soldier’s diet. Dinner was soup and fresh bread. For Novorossiyan soldiers, bread is a delicacy, add mayonnaise or ketchup to just plain bread, and it is a gourmet delicacy. They were right. It went well with the soup, which was twice as good (or half as horrible) as the soup in Yasynuvata. Front line soldiers are either always first, or always last, in line when it comes to supplies. It depends on the Commander. We had a good one, “Volga”, but there wasn’t a lot to go around, and everybody had to get something, so we didn’t get much, even at the front of the line. The food was sometimes quite meager, and always very basic, but there was almost always tea, and sometimes instant coffee. But there were plenty of bullets, and they brought plenty more every day. And we certainly used them.

As the day progressed, the rumble of (not too) distant cannon and gunfire was constant, but was not directed at us. But we knew it was directed at somebody. On a battlefront, you generally don’t shoot unless you see something. But if you see something, you shoot to kill. And there was a lot of shooting going on around us. Shooting to kill. As the short and overcast day began to fade into night, New Year’s Eve, I was told that for the Ukrops to go a whole day without attacking or at least firing on on our position was quite unusual. That was OK by me. I figured I could use at least a couple of hours to get acclimated. Before I started shooting and getting shot at…

Tribute to the fallen at the Donetsk Airport. If you have a heart, and some knowledge of the conflict in Ukraine, while watching this homage it will be difficult to hold back the tears. These young men died because the enormous forces of US imperialism, cloaked in ignorance and selfishness, are still free to roam the world plotting, funding, organizing, committing, and triggering appalling crimes with almost total impunity. Let us all honor these real heroes for a better world. They stood for a most honorable cause. They will not be forgotten! Video on source.

Dinner was soup and crackers. Vegetable soup, long on the potatoes and short on everything else. It also had some “Tashunka”, canned beef that reminded me of the pieces of cow divided up among the Partisans in the movie “Come and See”. (If you haven’t seen this movie, you should watch it as soon as you finish this article. Seriously.) I found it a bit interesting and amusing that the Russian word for “canned beef” was pronounced almost exactly the same as the Lakota word for “horse”. But I had no idea how to explain this fact to my comrades, so I kept it to myself.

As night fell, what had been the deep blinding darkness of the day became the absolute total darkness of the night, where not a single photon touches the optic nerve. Darkness within darkness. Outside it was a Winter night with low, dark clouds reflecting the almost complete absence of light from the ground. There was no electricity, and to show any light from flashlight or fire was to invite bullets, many and big ones, and that right quickly. So, darkness was the name of the game. Walking down the hallway, you could not see the soldier walking a single meter ahead of you. Not an outline, not any visual indication he was there at all. Only what you could hear and smell, and sense and feel. It was like walking down the hall with my eyes closed, and sometimes I did, and sometimes I could see better that way.

At the end of the hall was a firing port for the “Uchos”, the 12.7 mm heavy machine gun that was our main armament. It sat by the window, which was fully sealed with sandbags except for a small firing port that was usually sealed wih a piece of plywood for light discipline, and only opened when a target had been acquired. About ten feet to the left was our observation post, equipped with a PKM general purpose 7.62 mm machine gun. The PKM was Bielka’s weapon, and not to be fired by anyone else except in emergencies. But it was always there if we needed it. Both the Uchos and PKM firing/observation points faced north looking directly at the Donetsk airport control tower, which was a Ukrainian Army fighting position about 400 meters away. There was also a small radar building and long treeline about 150 meters away, from which the Ukrops would usually launch their attacks. There were always at least two soldiers on guard duty, one at the PKM window, and another on the landing with the AGS guarding the door. The shifts were four hours, and we each pulled two shifts a day. We had a night vision scope for the Uchos, and a handheld thermal imager that was most effective at detecting advancing enemy troops.

Thermal imagers are among the most important weapons in modern combat. We had one, but it didn’t always work. The Ukrainian Army had plenty of them, thanks to the “non-lethal aid” from the their masters in the USA. Every time I stood at the window on guard duty, I wondered if my thermal signature was in the crosshairs of a Nazi sniper’s thermal scope, made in the good ol’ USA. I would bob and weave at the window, hoping I would move enough between the time the trigger was pulled and the time the bullet arrived. The veterans would just stand there, perfectly still, facing death fearlessly.

I learned to emulate what the veterans did. They would communicate what I needed to know, but would mostly say nothing and see how long it took me to figure things out for myself. It wasn’t that they didn’t care, it was simply that they were soldiers in a combat zone and they had other things to do besides babysit me. I had volunteered to be a soldier, so I was expected to look after myself. It was a steep learning curve, but I did my best, and that was good enough. Good enough to keep me alive.

The control tower was the prominent terrain feature and the focus of our attention. To me, the control tower, which had sustained hundreds of impacts from all types of weapons, looked like a serpent ready to strike, with a crown on its head. The Serpent of Fascism had raised its ugly head in Novorossiya, and we were there to prevent it from advancing any further. Or die trying. I was ready, or as we say in Russian, “Gatov”.

At midnight on New Year’s Eve, several Commanders from Milnitsa arrived with a couple of bottles of champagne. We gathered in the kitchen and toasted to victory. The Commanders, Mongoose and Caluchi invited me to the Commander’s room, and a couple of bottles of vodka were shared. I actually got a pretty good buzz going, and was glad I was not on the guard roster that night. I made my way through the pitch dark to my room, where Bielka and the two Italians were already snoring away. I made my way through the choking haze of smoke, hung my rifle on a nail, removed my bronik and boots, and climbed up onto my bunk. I slid fully clothed into my beloved sleeping bag. After a few minutes of hacking, wracking coughs, I began to fall asleep. Tomorrow would be a busy day. New Year’s Day, 2015.

There is no Water in Yasynuvata

Published in The Greanville Post. »

The author on guard, manning a check point.

The New Partisans. Author first on left, standing.

On Monday, the 15th of December 2014, Toro, Orion and I joined the Novorossiyan Army and Battalion Vostok. We arrived at Base 4 on the outskirts of Donetsk. We filled out some paperwork and then we were taken for an assessment by a very strong and serious young soldier. He checked our weapons handling skills, made sure we knew how to field strip the AK and the SKS and had us do 40 push ups. Toro, an older volunteer was having a bit of a struggle, but we all passed. We then went to another room to get our dogtags and IDs.

Everybody in the Novorossiyan Armed Forces (NAF) has a callsign, a code name to be used at all times instead of your real name. I had given some thought to what mine would be, and had chosen the name “Witco” in honor of one of my personal heroes, Crazy Horse. His name in the Lakota language is “Tashunka Witko” and in Lakota, the word “Witko” means “Crazy”. A perfect name, or so I thought. When I said that was what I wanted for my callsign, the soldier filling out the paperwork hesitated and looked confused. Orion, who was doing the interpreting, told me that name would probably be hard for Russians to pronounce, and maybe I should choose another one. I thought for a moment and said, “OK, how about ‘Texas’ “. It worked.

It is pronounced in the Russian fashion, which is very similar to the way the Indians and Mexicans pronounced it – “Tay-HASS”, though sometimes when I get a girl giggling with delight she will change the accent and say “Oh, TAY-hass”. Many commanders and soldiers in the NAF have code names that are geographical places or features – Volga, Baikal, Olkhon. So “Texas” was a good choice, and as someone pointed out, Texas is one of the few states in the US that every Russian has heard of. Good thing I wasn’t born in New Hampshire. It probably wouldn’t be the same…

Shortly afterwards, we loaded ourselves and all our gear into a van for the trip to Yasynuvata, a small town about 20 kilometers from Donetsk. This is where the basic training center for Battalion Vostok was located. As we drove, we passed through several checkpoints and saw signs of recent battles, including a blown up bridge. As we turned off the main road, our driver pointed to the north and casually mentioned we were now in a combat zone and the Ukrainian Army was in positions about 2 km away. Well within range of tank and BMP guns. It was looking like the training we were going to get would be “OJT”, On the Job Training. And it was.

As we pulled into town, we came up to another checkpoint, manned by the new recruits from Vostok boot camp. Three guys with AK-74’s and one with a PKM machine gun stopped all traffic going in and out of town. Checking papers, opening trunks, and generally looking for Ukrop “diversants” (recon/sabotage units). With the Ukrop positions about a mile away, it was serious business. We passed through the checkpoint and shortly came to Vostok Boot Camp – an old train repair facility, surrounded by a stone wall topped with razor wire, with two more armed guards at the gate. We entered the compound and drove to the back. The first thing we saw when we got out of the van was artillery hole from an 82 mm mortar in the roof of the dining hall, and the very first thing we were shown was where the cellar / bomb shelter was. Then we were taken to the barracks.

Army barracks are not generally known for their opulence, and Vostok Boot Camp wasn’t either. In fact, it was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life up to that point, and it wasn’t the training that was hard, it was the conditions. We were crammed into a medium sized conference room that had about 40 ancient Russian Army cots with about 14 inches of space between each one. It was now cold outside, being Russia in December, so the windows stayed closed, and the smell of 40 soldiers who bathed once a week took some getting used to.

The food could only be described as horrible, and it was the same exact thing, every meal, every day – vegetable (and by “vegetable” I mean mostly potato) soup and Kashka, a cracked wheat dish with only a hint of meat. Tea was the constant drink, strong and very sweet. We washed our bowls and cups in dishwater a regular person would not wash their work boots in. It was crazy.

The toilet was a shit-encrusted shit hole of a hole, a hole in the floor that led to a hole in the ground, that was full of shit. An outhouse without a seat that had seen its better days. Like something from a Robert Rodriguez movie. And the smell there also took getting used too. It was outside, cold and dark, and you really had to watch where you stepped. So, I tried to spend as little time there as possible. I would eat only a little of the horrible food, and then have to shit only every 3rd or 4th day.

The bathing facilities were opened once a week – a Russian “Banya” with a steam room and birch branches for flaggelating yourself till you got clean. The Ukrops had bombed the water pumping station and every time we would get it fixed, they would bomb it again, so there was no running water. We got our water from nearby wells in the yards of abandoned homes. And I mean the kind of wells you see in fairy tales – with the little roof, the bucket on a chain and a crank. We got all the water for about 200 people from those wells every day. And carried it back in 20 liter milk cans.

Most of the new recruits were completely flat broke, and every time I went outside for a smoke, I would smoke one and give 5 away. For a while, I thought my new name in Russian was “Dait cigarette”, “Give me a cigarette.” But how could I refuse? These were my new comrades, some of whom I would soon be in battle with, and besides, why not pass them out? I am a Communist. I had about $3,000, and I did not expect to live to see the Spring.

I spent 3 years in the US Army, back in the early 80s, and 3 months of that was basic training. Basic training in the Novorossiyan Army was two week long. I fired a total of 12 bullets through an AK-74, (of which 10 hit the head-sized target from 100 meters.) We did PT every morning, and the first day, I puked 4 times, but I did not quit. I was 54 years old, fat and out of shape, running around with badass Novorossiyan Partisans less then half my age. But I did not quit. There were about 200 of us there, half new recruits, and half veterans who rotated between tours at the airport and training the new guys. December 2014 and January 2015 were the times of the hardest fighting at the airport. The guys who came back from the airport always had that haunted look. The airport was the grinder where all of us were going, but from which not all of us would return.

Our second week of basic training consisted of two six hour shifts per day, (noon to 6 PM, and then midnight to 6AM) manning checkpoints and guard positions. It was pretty serious business. Two guards at a checkpoint about 1 km from ours were found with their weapons gone and their throats cut just a few weeks earlier. We had a 3 man team – Orion, who spoke Russian and English, and Toro and I who spoke English and Spanish. I got the PKM,(1) and I kept it loaded and I kept it close. We spent Christmas Eve, from midnight to 6AM at our checkpoint, the same one we had come through less than 2 weeks earlier. It was getting cold, but we stayed on our toes. The local civilians really appreciated what we were doing, and would bring us tea, pastries, and sometimes a shot of vodka.

One night, a car with 4 guys in it pulled up kind of late. Orion asked the driver for his papers and then said to me in English “They are state cops”. “Cool,” I said, “Let’s have them get out and open the trunk.” And they did, because the guy with the PKM said so. And it was legit, because not all the cops in Donetsk Oblast are loyal to the people of the DNR. But I could not help thinking about how back in my old home state of Texas, the goddamned state police, called the “Department of Public Safety”, often do roadside cavity searches, looking for small amounts of drugs. That shit don’t fly in the DNR. Take a lesson from it. Here, the People’s Army search the cops. And so we did. It was a most satisfying experience.

During my training, I had earned a reputation as a good soldier, and I was approached by a couple of snipers from Суть Времени (pronounced “Soot Vremeny”, which in Russian means “Essence of Time”). Both snipers spoke Spanish. So did I. Alfonzo was from Colombia, and Mars was a Russian volunteer. Both were combat veterans, and Mars was considered to be one of the deadliest snipers in the Novorossiyan Army. Over a clandestine bottle of wine in the officer’s dining hall, we discussed political philosophy and military experience. Yes, I was a Communist, yes, I had military training from the US Army, and yes, I had some combat experience from a couple of incidents in Mexico. Would I like to join Суть Времени? Of course. But it would be a package deal, with Orion and Toro coming too. When I told Orion about it, that a couple of snipers from an elite unit of Vostok Battalion had invited us to join, he was enthusiastic. I actually mispronounced the name, saying “Sud Vremeny” instead of “Sut Vremeny”. “Sud Vremeny” in Russian means “Judgement Day”, which sounded like a cool name. We were all in. I did not know much about Суть Времени when I joined, only that they were highly regarded as warriors, Communist, and at least a couple of them spoke Spanish, so I could communicate with them. And that was enough for me.

(I have since learned quite a bit about the Essence of Time Movement, and am very proud to be a member. I agree completely with their goals and methods and truly trust and admire both the leadership and rank and file members. I truly believe it was destiny that brought me to this group, and I fully intend to maintain my membership for the rest of my life. It is a group that has the potential to change the world for the better. You can learn more about it here.)

During my two weeks at Yasynuvata, I had contracted a bad respiratory infection, a hacking cough with the neon mucous that has that hideous sweet taste when you spit it out. I was given some medicine by the medic, but it had little effect, so I just worked through it. Orion caught the same cold, and his was bad enough to be taken to the hospital back in Donetsk. Mine was just as bad, but I declined the hospital trip. Which meant I was going to the airport within the next 48 hours. I traded in my PKM for an AK-74 and four 30 round magazines. I was asked if I wanted a helmet and bulletproof vest. Well… Hell, yeah I did! I still had no idea what I would be facing at the airport, but I knew I was going to be getting shot at. I was given a marginal helmet with a broken chin strap, and an excellent Class IV steel vest, and told to be ready to leave at any time.

On the night of December 30th, I was told to be ready to go at 4AM the following morning. Orion, my only interpreter, was in the hospital, Toro would remain in Ysynavata for further training, and Alfonzo and Mars would not be returning to the airport for several days. I was on my own. I was going to be spending New Year’s Eve at the Donetsk Airport with a machine gun in my hands, and there were sure to be fireworks.