I remember the first Russian soldier I treated: a tall skinny boy with blonde hair, wearing filthy clothes, smelling horrible, and infested with bugs. It was hard to tell if he was moaning because he was afraid of us or because he was in pain from the shrapnel wounds near his spine. After I shot him full of painkiller, extracted the shrapnel, bandaged him, and sent him to the ward, he calmed down.
Later when I passed through the ward, I heard him and the Chechen fighter in the next cot discussing their wounds. They were laughing. There is nothing worse than this kind of war- where people who have lived with each other for so long in the same society, who have grown to know each other, often to like each other as individuals, who speak the same language, end up on different sides trying to kill each other
The Chechen fighter's mother, there to look after her own son, also fed the young Russian soldier and gave him clean clothes. She then passed his name to the council of elders, who tried to contact his family in Russia to come and collect him. A few days later there was a report on Russian television about the cruel way Chechens supposedly treat Russian prisoners.
Heaven and Hell,
The First War
The Oath: A surgeon under fire
-Khassan Baiev
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