“This was interesting and one of the most important days” sais the reporter of Informator.lg.ua Anton Goloborodko who continues to tell about everyday life of a volunteer soldier…
Day 6. August 19
The training started. So far there are introduction classes and theory. It looks terribly boring. In the modern world when you are surrounded by high quality media products everywhere it is very boring to listen to a teacher who is reading the lecture from his book. There are a lot of things that look natural, but you need to listen and remember. I am sure that in real life it will be necessary (I was sleeping during one lecture to be honest). 5 lectures 1 hour and a half each everyday… that is pretty hard.
It’s irritating that teacher switch to some unrelated subject very often.
Today on the 6th day I had an opportunity to go to the city, so I got my sleeping bag and did my haircut.
I spent one hour in the city. Free people, I am looking at them now and it’s a little strange to see how they walk in the streets without limitations.
I had a chance to use the sleeping bag right away as one of the guys from our platoon still hasn’t got his warm clothes. I gave him my and will be sleeping in my dear sleeping bag for now. The nights are cold, half of the platoon already got sick, 4 men are in the medical unit.
Today our platoon was on duty 1st time. “Zamok” is the commander of the platoon (we chose him among other soldiers of platoon), he is a great guy, he was on duty first and respected for that. I doubt somebody would try to avoid the duties now.
By the way, how we chose him… On the second day one boy, he is the youngest in our platoon, 22 years old, asked to give him that position. Everybody was skeptical about him. And when started to look for men for cleaning something, everybody was irritated by that. All platoon just run away from him. And same day, it was funny as that was spontaneous, we went to the oldest guy in the platoon and asked him to become a commander. That man is already almost 50 y.o. with big belly and luxurious mustache. He listen to us and asked to give him time till the morning to think about it. In the morning he was already commanding when we lined up. And everybody are grateful to him for that. He is Zamok (means “Lock” in Russian) for three days already. He supports those who needs that and can shout at somebody if necessary. Yesterday I found out that he’s retired police Captain. Here he has a rank of sergeant major, he got that after his service in the army after he got de-mobilized.
We got more men in our platoon. +4 soldiers. One of them was veterinarian and they assigned him to medical unit right away. As we joke here, only veterinarian can treat such animals as we are
Day 7. August 20: first week passed
Training, training, training… Wires, clamps, panels… Today we had an opportunity to touch everything and feel what that is.
At the end of the day we even made our first phone line with 2 callers. As in movies about the war, you are turning the handle on one side and it rings on the other side. And you can say something like “First, first, I am second”.
You may be skeptical about that old wired way of communication, but teachers say there is nothing more reliable than wire yet. Radio can be jammed, satellite can be intercept and they enemy will know what you are talking. And wired communication will work.
If you remember I wrote about Sasha from Kremenchu who joined the army because he had no money to live. He is in medical unit since yesterday. Today is his birthday. We all gave 10 UAH each for him, so now he has money for cigarettes. He is happy… So this is how 10 UAH can raise fighting spirit.
Day 8. August 21: important day
This was interesting day and I think one of the most important days. Today we had medical training. Learnt how to stop blood, evacuate wounded people from battlefield. Learnt how to do 1st aid. Everything that may really be needed. Our instructor is former volunteer, now he is mobilized. This man has knowledge and real experience. He gave us more in one day than what we got in the previous 3 days. This is not like writing down the lecture. Everything he says he shows right away and gives us an opportunity to try ourselves. And the training was on football stadium, everybody were on the ground like in real life.
If everybody was teaching us like that, we would be coming out like real monsters that can set up communication using the stuff available , but tomorrow we will get back to our classes.
The day passed by like one hour.
Another important thing is bath. Warm shower is just a miracle. In one week this is first one. You can stand under warm water and relax. We have shower where our platoon is stationed, but it only has cold water. Friends, you can’t even imagine, how great it can be when you have warm water
There is another thing which is very annoying and I ask myself WTF?
20-30 minutes before breakfast, dinner or supper we line up and go to the dining. And after that we wait another 20-40 minutes in a line. Is that really had to schedule for different units, so one unit arrives 15 minutes before and another one 15 minutes later? I don’t understand. And there is nobody to ask about it here.
Day 9. August 22
If you are ill, you go to medic unit.
I was coughing for a week, on Saturday I gave up. They gave me pills and day off. One day I was sleeping well and everything is beautiful
Day 10. August 23, Sunday: The Day of Flag, day off
They put a flag in our cockpit. So everybody started to take photos with it
For celebrations we just lined up and raised the flag. After that just relax and sleep.
Friends! Congratulations to everybody of the Day of National Flag! Millions of Ukrainians gave their life for this flag to become State flag of Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes! And now we should defend it together!
Day 11. August 24: how you should and how you should not celebrate the Independence Day
After short official celebrations we got excellent present – day off!
In the last 11 days it was 1st time when I went to the city alone. My parents, aunty and brother came to visit me. I flew to the checkpoint and here is it… happiness and freedom!
Starting from 10 am till 6 pm you can be anywhere around the garrison without limitations!
It’s hard to express this feeling! You walk around city, people are smiling, children see you in the uniform, run to you and say “Glory to Ukraine!”
It will be hard to forget this day. Just walking around city like many times before, and in Poltava also, but this time it’s something special – freedom!
The only thing that ruined my mood a little was drunk guys in the uniform! I walk around Poltava and see like police stops a soldier. I come closer. It’s a reflex, when I see cops stopping someone, I ask them why they bother that person. And here I see Roman from my platoon… But this quiet boy can barely walk. Cops also didn’t want to waste their time on him, they saw that I am not drunk and that I know that guy and gave him in my hands and asked to hide somewhere.
I was babysitting him for 2 hours. Couldn’t just leave the guy. My parents react with understanding. And I gave him to other guys from my platoon after that. They were babysitting him for few more hours and even quietly brought him to our unit location.
So you passed by all patrols, got out of police, came through checkpoint, just go to your bed and sleep! No! This idiot started screaming at Company Commander! As a result he got to spend 3 days at Military Service Law Enforcement facility and pay 1200 UAH fine. And he will get salary in the middle of September and that’s going to be around 500 UAH. What is he going to do tomorrow? He will call his parents and will say that he needs money to buy first aid kit or new boots. And after that he will go to the front line and will be playing idiot there! And after evening check we found out that there were two guys like that in our Company! I don’t know how to comment that… It would be better if they just found a way to avoid military service.
But I want to finish the story with something good: my parents brought a lot of snack, all guys from our cockpit were grateful for my mother for chops and to my aunty for pies. This was another holiday
Day 12. August 25: «typewriter» and «scary» training ground
Learning the telegraph. They gave me “typewriter”, that’s telegraph machine. They gave me task and said to learn to type without watching. Now I type on PC. But there are not enough computers in the training center. So you should learn like that and it doesn’t matter that 10 letters don’t match the position on PC keyboard.
After dinner we found out that tomorrow we are going to the training ground. We will spend about 2-3 weeks there. They gave time to pack. This is the end of our stenographer’s course.
This is another story how they told us that great news. Ensign officer comes and starts to scare us like there are going to be mosquitoes huge like dinosaurs, it’s cold there and no comfort, and most important no days off. But those who want can stay here at the training center, we need to fix the roof on the barrack. Even all platoon can stay. I went to Company Commander and asked him what it means. It appeared that ensign officer was exaggerating. Everything is ok there and days off too. And there is no need to fix the roof.
This is army
Going for 2 weeks. I got so many things here (what I got here and from home) that can’t put everything in my 40 liters backpack. I had to pack two backpacks
We go tomorrow at 8am. I hope that the training ground will be more useful experience.
Anton Goloborodko for Informator.lg.ua