I am 300
Knock-knock, open it,
It's me - your heart.
They locked me behind the door
Behind the seventh castle,
A fool, barefoot, completely...
Blood with milk.
It's me - your heart.
They locked me behind the door
Behind the seventh castle,
A fool, barefoot, completely...
Blood with milk.
"I am three hundred"! ... This phrase is often heard on the radio during an assault. And if not on the radio, then the soldiers simply transmit along with the call sign: “Topol - three hundred.” This means the person is wounded. That means it's a total disaster. And this also means that after some time (sometimes very soon) this person will come to us, doctors... To me.
And now I myself am “three hundred,” a common thing in war. A well-known case. I’m sitting in a car park... Driving along a highway that is as smooth as my mood (both are a rarity these days). I'm going to the hospital for further treatment. It doesn't hurt at all anymore. The composition “Knock-Knock” by the group Comedoz is playing in the headphones... And somehow it resonates very much with my mood. Memories and thoughts are knocking on my head mixed together... And they pull and pull me into the recent past.
Knock-knock, open it,
It's me - your conscience:
The unread story
With burnt pages
With indifferent faces
Somewhere beyond the borders.
It's me - your conscience:
The unread story
With burnt pages
With indifferent faces
Somewhere beyond the borders.
Yes, “three hundredths” are different. There are some like this among them. Hiding your eyes to the floor. “Crossbows”... The man became so afraid that he shot himself in the arm or leg rather than go into battle. No, I don’t judge them, judge not and be not judged, but I still feel some disgust (and I’m not alone in this). It’s not good, I’m a doctor and I should treat everyone with the same compassion, right?.. What’s interesting: they understand perfectly well that they’ll go to jail for this, there are a lot of methods to identify a crossbow, but they still do it. Some people admit it was scary. And others swagger, insisting that chance is a lie... Such “patients” are especially unpleasant.
One was completely original, didn’t shoot himself, just injected himself with a syringe tube of Promedol and passed out in a snowdrift. Of course, it’s not scary if you’re passed out. It came to us in the form of ice, 90 percent of it. They barely saved the weirdo, and most likely he will be left without toes: he has frostbite. But, thank God, there are only a few of them.
Knock-knock, open it,
It's me - your happiness:
Dismantled for parts
Let's pick up the pieces...
It's no use looking for a needle
On a bookshelf?
It's me - your happiness:
Dismantled for parts
Let's pick up the pieces...
It's no use looking for a needle
On a bookshelf?
I'm lucky to have survived. It's lucky they got it. Fortune loves the strong-willed. It's corny, but true. We're really picking up the pieces. We wrap what is left of the leg or arm to the body and send it further. The surgeons will sort it out. But what remains must be preserved. At least into flaps, so that later there would be something to cut the stump from.
There are, there are real heroes. I couldn't do that. I remember a short, stocky sergeant major. Spent three days in a trench with leg bones sticking out: open fractures. They couldn’t pull us out - the adversary wouldn’t let us, he threw everything he could at our positions, all types of ammunition. But in the end they pulled him out, and there was already a putrid smell, necrosis, possibly gangrene, that is, minus the legs... And he, the poor fellow, silently demolishes everything. He won't make a sound or scream. On the contrary, he tries to help carry him, persuades him not to stand on ceremony.
Or here’s another snapshot from my memory: we’re taking a guy for an emergency evacuation, he’s positive, he’s telling jokes, but instead of a leg below the shin there are scraps. And what is typical - without pain relief. He rides on pure willpower. He just endures. God bless you guys, God bless you.
Knock-knock, open it,
It is I who am your grief:
Painted sea.
Deep to the bottom
Don't reach, don't fall behind,
Don't rebel, don't scroll through.
It is I who am your grief:
Painted sea.
Deep to the bottom
Don't reach, don't fall behind,
Don't rebel, don't scroll through.
And it also happens... I treat a person’s legs. From the continuous wearing of army shoes, it’s terrible what’s happening there. And I cure. He thanks me cordially before leaving for the mission. And on his first day on a mission, one of his legs is torn off: he stepped on a mine. We joke, they say, one could not have been treated, the ointment would have been saved... The fighter grows gloomy. “I gave my daughter a birthday present,” he mutters as I shake him. Woe...
They immediately bring in another, our head of sappers, Grozny (all call signs have been changed). A strong, self-confident man, whom I met in the last B.Z. “raised” after a concussion and severe pneumonia, and it seemed that nothing could take him. Wherever he went, he carried out all sorts of adventurous tasks, but come to think of it: he didn’t escape his fate. For some reason he looks guilty and says: “I fought back, Ilyukha.” Grief? Grief. But the main thing is that he is alive. The main thing is that he is alive.
Knock-knock, open it,
This is me - your truth.
There will never be tomorrow:
Yesterday will come to us today,
Like an evil pimp
In one underwear.
This is me - your truth.
There will never be tomorrow:
Yesterday will come to us today,
Like an evil pimp
In one underwear.
When the assault begins, the wounded come in a stream and this is true.
The winters here are mild, the temperature constantly dances around zero, and depending on its dance, the “three hundredths” tumble into our honey. the dugout is either in the form of lumps of mud or in the form of ice conglomerates and this is true.
Our floor is plank and not very clean: they constantly apply earth from the street, but at such moments bloody bandages fly on it, blood flows and shreds of the uniform we cut fall, and this is the truth.
During the assault, the dugout resembles some kind of crush: there are no people to turn around, one is bandaging, another is holding, the third is preparing injections, the fourth is writing down the wounded person’s data in a notebook, which the fifth shouts loudly to him, at the same time calling the car on the radio, the sixth is already putting on a bulletproof vest and helmet and grabs an emergency kit to accompany the wounded further, and this is true.
And at the same time, in the same dugout on the upper bunks, the next shift of doctors is fast asleep, habitually not paying attention to the bustle and noise around. The guys need to regain their strength. Because they may be needed at any moment. Because at the appointed hour they will get up and replace us, and we, in turn, will fall exhausted on our bunks, and so on until the end of the assault. And it is true.
Knock-knock, open it,
It's me, your honor.
Bed at the doorstep
With clean soles in the den:
And thank God. Why so many,
When is everything available?
It's me, your honor.
Bed at the doorstep
With clean soles in the den:
And thank God. Why so many,
When is everything available?
There are newcomers at the front. And there are already those who have been fired upon. Sometimes they work together. I have been with both of them on missions. I saw how the first ones turn into the second ones. It's such a spectacle, to be honest.
And it’s easy to distinguish newcomers. Among other things - in relation to doctors. This is a condescending attitude, sometimes even with slight contempt: after all, we, doctors, do not storm. We don't go under bullets. We don't risk ourselves. According to their newbie understanding, of course. From time to time you hear: “keep in mind, I was sculpting, sitting in the dugout won’t work.” It’s unpleasant, of course, but I’m in no hurry to be offended. I remain silent and smile with Confucian calm.
Because I already know: all this - before the first battle, before the first artillery shelling, before the first "roll-up". Because THERE they will see us, doctors, in action. They will see me, a bespectacled fifty-year-old man, on a seven-kilometer forced march carrying, in addition to a bulletproof vest and a machine gun, another twenty kilograms of “medicine.” They will see how we, spitting on possible “arrivals,” jump out of the trenches and work with the wounded, since no medical activity is possible in them: they are too narrow and shallow. And if, God forbid, someone gets to us as the “three hundredth”... It is difficult to be lenient towards the one who “collects” you.
And I also know for sure that there will not be a single soldier left in our platoon who, after the mission, will not come up to shake my hand.
Knock-knock, open it,
It's me, your memory,
I have to melt now:
This planet is too hot
There's little light here
Some secrets.
It's me, your memory,
I have to melt now:
This planet is too hot
There's little light here
Some secrets.
The chief medical officer of the neighboring regiment, Vagus, a jowled major of the medical service, worn out by war and life, with the sad eyes of a biblical prophet, crunches a cucumber and says: “Each of us, Ilya, has our own personal cemetery. And you will have it too.” Then it dawned on me what he was talking about.
Indeed, when two or more “heavy” people are brought to you at the same time, and you understand that if you take care of one of them, you will absolutely lose the rest, this is a very, very difficult choice. Both the responsibility for him and the memory of him remain in your soul forever... Forever.
Now my memory obsessively shows me the already middle-aged face of a fighter with the call sign Hussein: he was dragged to my dugout, he tried to shoot down a kamikaze drone with machine-gun fire, the drone turned out to be more agile. The result is a fragment in the chest, in the area of the heart.
He has no more than a minute left to live, I can see this clearly, but I still put an occlusive bandage on the wound. A strange expression froze on the bloodless face: a mixture of concentration and some kind of surprise in the eyes. These eyes already see something inaccessible to me, and the pupils do not react to the brightest light of a flashlight aimed directly at them... That's it.
I close Hussein’s eyelids. And it seems like it’s not my fault, I couldn’t help in any way, but still my heart is heavy and I’m stupidly ashamed that he died in my arms. And there is no way to get rid of this heaviness.
This is probably what it is. My personal cemetery. Plus one.
Knock-knock, open it,
It's me, your death!
I'm tired of waiting outside the door
I want to enter: according to belief,
All in white feathers.
You'll gather along the way,
Time to go.
It's me, your death!
I'm tired of waiting outside the door
I want to enter: according to belief,
All in white feathers.
You'll gather along the way,
Time to go.
And here it is, my last appearance on LBS. Or rather, the extreme one, here everyone becomes superstitious. Early morning. We are at the beginning of the “forest belt” (forest belt). It is full of trenches and littered with rubbish. Previously, the enemy was entrenched here. Now he is at its far end. Much was left abandoned. I find two folding tactical medical beds, high-quality, European: they will come in handy.
Our honey dot
The guys move on to the assault, and we stay behind to prepare the honey. point. Three capes - in one hitch. Stretch it on paracord cords between the trees. At the top is the maskset. Under the canopy there are bunks (they came in handy) and a couple of shell boxes; on them, lay out everything you need so that it is at hand. While we are doing this, we can already hear about three hundredths on the radio. As soon as they finished, they brought it to us first...
And then the terrible conveyor turns on. The guys stepped on mines. Plus, the far end of the forest fence began to be covered with mortars. I have never had so many breaks in one go. We are working. Let's go. Let's burn it. We clean the wounds.
They drag in the big guy Stepasha, a desperate fighter with whom he has already completed more than one battlefield. Stepasha's leg burst. But not completely. It hangs on a thin piece of soft tissue. Stepasha screams, despite the pain. Stepasha has a weak reaction to analgesics. His foot looks ridiculous and wild, tied with the sole up to his own knee...
With the first batch of wounded, my partner leaves in an armored personnel carrier to accompany them to the next evacuation point. He leaves at the wrong time: the second “wave” has begun. One by one, several legless people are dragged in. And also Mel, our platoon commander, a two-meter tall, powerful man, a smart commander and a good person. Looking at him, I understand that this is bad. Very bad. The regulations instruct us to tackle the easy and medium ones first. Heavy - last of all. I can't do this. I persuade the guys to wait, especially since they are all lit up and on anesthesia, I checked.
Mel is placed on the bed. Mel doesn't have a shoulder. That is, not at all. Instead there is a hole with broken bones. The mortar attack happened nearby, and the fragments there were quite large. But it’s a miracle: the major arteries are not affected, otherwise the platoon commander simply would not have been reported. And his nerves work, he moves the fingers of his broken hand. Theoretically, the hand can be saved.
It is an even greater miracle that he is still alive: severe traumatic shock, and the blood loss is still enormous. Breathing is shallow. The pulse is threadlike. The face is waxy, with pointed features, the same “mask of death” that I have already learned to recognize. The lips are not even blue - they are white. This is truly Chalk. I understand that he has only a short time to live.
But damn it, this time I can at least try to do something!
Medicines and dressings. On the left you can see the same backpack with saline solution and everything necessary for work
I gutted the backpack, it contained saline solution in plastic bags... And again a miracle: out of five bags, two did not freeze. I make a wire hook, hook the bags, and quickly equip the dropper. I push the catheter into a barely visible vein. I mutter mechanically: “Venous access has been obtained,” that’s how it’s supposed to be, regulations are regulations. I connect the cannula. I see the solution has started, good. The main thing now is to fill the circulatory system with fluid. Well, support me with medication. I break the ampoules with a crunch. Dexamethasone, Tranexam, Nefopam, all this with a syringe in a bag with saline solution. The second package contains aminophylline and calcium chloride.
Minutes drag on, shells are exploding somewhere not very far away...
And so, the lips turned pink, normal breathing appeared, the moaning stopped, thank God. The “mask” has disappeared from my face. The fighter came to life slightly. With the help of the guys, I lift him into a sitting position, pack the wound (although you can’t call it a wound), tightly bandage my arm to my chest, bending it at the elbow and exhale: now, we’ll get there. This means that it is already possible and necessary to deal with the legless...
The next day at the location honey. points, targeted arrivals of cassettes began. Two doctors were injured. One died.
Our stay in the forest belt is finally over; another unit enters. Arrivals have become more frequent. Therefore, we wait, dispersed in the landing. Finally, the radio command is to advance to the loading point. We go out onto the concrete. We move in a chain at intervals. After 50 meters there is an exit from the road into a field. There, in the field, two infantry fighting vehicles are already visible, they are heading towards us. People approached the loading point and it was unacceptable.
And as if he was croaking: a sound that cannot be confused with anything - a hysterical squeal drone-kamikaze! The drone crashes into the crowd. Explosion. Screams. I run up and see that the people were cut into small fragments, it blew by, count it. I find one relatively heavy one, I drag him into a ditch (a natural fold of the terrain), he has a shrapnel in his head plus a concussion, he doesn’t hear anything, doesn’t think, but he’s always trying to go somewhere, and I have to hold him back. I treat the wound, knit a “Hippocratic cap” on his head, and hand it over to the tow trucks.
The infantry fighting vehicles stopped before reaching them. The command on the radio is to go to them, urgently load and leave. Halfway there was another damned sound, and again two kamikazes, this time straight into the cars... And we no longer have infantry fighting vehicles.
Obviously having guessed the moment, the adversary launches cluster munitions. Arrivals sound. They sound characteristic: the sound of cutting air, then a small explosion, a two-second pause and a chaotic cannonade, like fireworks. When the supply reaches its target, it goes off and scatters a couple of dozen bombs, which in turn detonate, flying into hundreds of fragments, killing and maiming. Here they are, these bombs, and they sound like fireworks. Deadly fireworks, I must say.
This time I manage to get my bearings when I hear the first explosion and fall. My ears were a little blocked and... Wow! Something stung me on my right thigh... It looked like it was hooked. Immediately I understand that the wound is nonsense, God saved me. But the guy walking next to him didn’t have time to fall. Later I found out that fragments flew into his arm and leg, crushing the joints and getting stuck in them: it takes six to a year to recover.
It’s a miracle, but there are no two hundredths. It’s a miracle that we didn’t have time to board the armored personnel carrier before the kamikazes arrived... From the radio, a new order from the battalion commander was to move across the field on foot to the “piece of iron”, they would pick it up there. We feel uneasy: we clearly understand what a great target we are for drones and cassettes. But an order is an order. We move as quickly as possible. Sometimes we fall into craters and deep ruts when the next cassette arrives. They don’t hit as accurately anymore, and this saves.
I feel something flowing down my thigh. I look and see: my dark trouser leg is heavily soaked down to the very bottom. The first second I'm scared - where is there so much blood? Then I’m surprised - the spot is dark yellow. Then it comes, and I curse in relief, laughing. Or I laugh and swear. In a pouch on my side I had a plastic bottle of Betadine (this is iodine, but not in alcohol). So, another fragment hit him, saving me from another injury. The doctor was saved by iodine. Symbolic.
We approach the railway. There I find out that there were two more kamikaze hits on our guys (while we were walking, the group was quite stretched out, and we didn’t see the vanguard). But everyone is alive. Yes, the enemy took revenge for taking the forest belt.
An infantry fighting vehicle approaches. God bless! Let's load! Twenty minutes of the roller coaster and we are at zero. Almost home, one might say. They give you 10 minutes to get ready. I throw the essentials into a sleeping bag cover, leave my armored armor and machine gun in the dugout. BMP again. They are taking us to the regiment's doctors. A bandage is applied to the wound and sent on. We are traveling in a medical "kung". In the evening we arrive at the evacuation hospital. There they take out the fragment. Hurt. But we can bear it. I slept for five hours. Night. They'll wake you up. Let's move on. Again, an evacuation hospital, located in a former sanatorium, in a marvelous forest area. We'll stay here for two days.
Shock. A completely different world. There are beds here! Toilets! It turns out that porcelain tableware is not science fiction, it exists! And people eat sitting at tables covered with white tablecloths, and not standing anywhere... And outside!.. You can move to your full height. Move calmly, and not in short dashes. No shots or explosions are heard. Therefore, it seems that there is a ringing silence all around. But no. The forest is noisy. Still, it’s unusual. .
As if in a dream I was walking along the main alley... An empty stage with posters. There are children's faces on the posters - apparently in the summer there were holiday camps here, a trade union sanatorium. Beneath them, wheelchairs froze like ruffled birds: a sad neighborhood. I approach the monument to the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War. I stand for a long time. I read the names. It’s strange, as if I met my own... Although, what’s strange here? Who are they if not our own? The very best. We remember about you guys, and we remember about your deeds. And we honestly try to comply...
Not far from the monument, our temporary shelters were lined up in a strict line: pneumatic frame modules.
Pneumatic frame module. Behind is a monument
These wonderful inflatable houses add a fantastic touch to the landscape. I live in one of them. Inside it is warm and light, even cozy. There are bunk beds, well, you’re not used to that. From time to time, an orderly with a swearing bag cruises nearby and calls out those whose turn has come to be sent. The moment comes when he calls my last name. Well, that means we’re on the road again... There’s a deep rear here. And so the usual groove takes us further. A khaki-colored army car on an unusually smooth highway.
I return to reality. We are entering the city. Hospital and treatment soon. The song played in the headphones. The playlist is over. Memories too. What lies ahead is unknown. But there is hope. To a peaceful sky. For the triumph of reason. To the truth, which is strength. And for the love that “never fails.”
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