LONELY and SEPARATE planet

Civilians often ask me what soldiers talk about at the front or when returning from the trenches. They often ask what soldiers think about politicians' decisions or other geopolitical processes. And it is very difficult for me to explain to them that soldiers at the front are in a separate planet, that life there is completely different, as is the flow of time. Very often you hear from them the question: 

“Hey, what day of the week is it?” or “What date do we have today?”

At first, I didn't understand the question; it seemed to me very strange; how can somebody not know this? They go to the trenches and carry out operations, so they must know! Until I began to lose my own sense of time and days.

“You go into the basement on Wednesday, you come out and look around, and it's already November,” my regiment's psychologist once shared his sense of time with me, and that is probably the best description of time there. They speak little there, and when they do, it is mostly about everyday businesses. If they complain, it is laconically. It lasts as long as it takes to smoke a cigarette. And who would they complain to? All of them -they are all in the same pot: everybody’s health is ruined, all of them are scared and afraid of death. All of them had experienced horror, but not all having survived.

That time, when I arrived in the “Kursk direction” - that is how soldiers refer to their locations to outsiders, trying to give as few details or place names as possible - the enemy is watchful and exploits every smallest reference, detail, or mistake, especially on social media, the mood back then was particularly bleak. 

“We have all here tickets to one direction”, one soldier said to me, very soon after we met. At that time, he felt especially bad; he had health problems, that was even clearly visible from the outside. But, as always, he complained about nothing, so we were only exchanging a brief “how are you today?” and only days later he mentioned to me, that he had been through a concussion.

While talking to a soldier, I’m always afraid to get too close, to hurt him with my questions. There is no room for that there, the death machine runs there at full speed, taking soldiers one after another.

But that evening, as we talked, he took me into the deepest recesses of his soul. Even for me, having accompanied them in the war for so many years, the magnitude of their personal sacrifice is still not always fully comprehensible, and they pointedly don't show it to us, and don't talk about it much.

I thank the Media Support Fund for supporting the post series “War in Ukraine: The Gap Between the Military and Society”