At 3:30 a.m., we were taken to a place that reminded me very much of the game Stalker. It was something like a large bomb shelter.
Vitalik, two of our colleagues who were traveling with us, and I were placed in one of the rooms with bunk beds.
There were only a few people here in total.
I woke up at 9:00 a.m. and wrote to the recruiter. After training, we are now being supervised by Alisa (name changed for security reasons) instead of Vika. I said that we had arrived at some kind of basement.
Alisa probably didn’t quite understand where we were, because she asked if we had already been registered. I repeated that it was some kind of basement, that it wasn’t headquarters, and that there were only a couple of people here who didn’t know anything themselves.
At around 12:00, the same man who had driven us here at night finally arrived.
And then we left… We drove for a couple more hours. To put it briefly and without naming any specific locations, the place we arrived at was about 30 km from the front line, from zero.
It’s a place with quite beautiful nature, I liked it. I appreciated the wonderful landscapes.
We unloaded our things. We filled out some more documents. It seemed that I had finally been assigned as a clerk. That reassured me.
In the evening, when Vitaly and I were quietly having dinner at the end of the day, a man suddenly looked in. I don’t remember his call sign, so for the sake of secrecy I will call him Analgin. Analgin looked in with a worried expression and said, “Guys, we need your help urgently,” “We need to evacuate two fighters. Don’t be afraid, there’s no more artillery fire there.”
Then he asked where our body armor and helmets were. We said that we hadn’t been issued any, that we had only finished training yesterday. He was disappointed and said that it would be better if we had body armor and helmets.
There was a slight commotion, everyone started walking around and doing something. Analgin said a little nervously to the driver who was going to take us, “Just please don’t kill the guys on the first day.” A woman, a clerk, ran up and said emotionally, “What are you doing! They’re clerks and operators! Where are you sending them?!” Analgin replied gloomily that there was nothing to be done, those were the orders.
We got into the car, and a few more people asked us where our body armor and helmets were. One asked where our weapons were. We replied again that we hadn’t been issued anything yet. The driver began to explain to us that weapons could be captured. Then he began to explain which weapons were better to capture and with which accessories.
To put it mildly, this surprised and confused me. I sat there thinking, “What do you mean, loot weapons? Are you kidding me?!”
We drove off. He was driving very fast. To be honest, I was very tense. Various thoughts raced through my head. Of course, I thought, “How can this be? What are they doing?” But I immediately realized that such thoughts would not help, so it was better to dismiss them.
There were thoughts, or rather hopes, “maybe this isn’t real? Maybe it’s just some kind of test?” But then the thought came to me that the “tests” were in training, and this was real war.
I began to recall the instructions of the psychologists from the training center and tried to check if my breathing was normal. I moved my legs a little to check if I was numb.
For the rest of the way, I tried to calm down and concentrate, not letting my thoughts wander.
When we arrived, something began to dawn on me. At first, it wasn’t clear. We didn’t arrive at the landing site, as I had thought, but at a residential courtyard. Before getting out, the driver asked himself somewhat theatrically which weapon to take. And I saw a slight ironic spark in his eyes. I didn’t pay any attention to it.
And when we got out of the car, he said with a smile that the three of us were going to storm the landing zone. And then he smiled and said, “Calm down, guys, they just want to meet you and talk.”
That’s how it was. That’s the kind of humor they have in the Armed Forces, folks :). That was basically the end of the day. My first day as a serviceman.
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