The magic forest. Front line at the Svitlodarsk outskirts.
The magic forest. Front line at the Svitlodarsk outskirts.
“The magic forest” is staring emotionless at us. Wind is throwing snow at our faces. The soldier walking ahead of me squats down on machine gun sound, I am following him. That was far away and not aimed at us, we are rising up and go on walking. Crippled trees all around us, icy cold and pain. Trenches meet us with slippery clay and damp. A flock of sparrows is settling up in the bushes as if there is no war around. Here and there around the trenches we see helmets and other ammunitions left over. An aged soldier picks up a helmet from the above ground and puts it back to the trench. The helmet is pierced twice by bullets so I realize that the fortnight-ago attack was fatal for its owner. We are now on the positions recaptured from pro-Russian separatists. The mines are coming up all night through, lying closer or further from the trenches. Sometimes the AGS grenades explode noisily. It is about 200 meters to the enemy and soldiers are shooting the mid-land occasionally just for safety reasons. Sometimes the shooting fights explode. The guys tell me this is nothing in comparison to one-week ago artillery shelling when their trenches were shells of all possible calibers came over. A small stove in a shaky bunker is quickly eating away ammunition boxes, plastic bottles and lumber picked up around the trenches. The warm air is sneaking away through the holes and fighters try to keep warm with tea and condensed milk which run away quickly. Happily, there is enough food. Quite a number of food ratios are left over by the previous hosts of the positions, and I can get familiar with the menu of the Russian army. The new day brings some quiet. An electricians team works somewhere in the fields so the no-fire agreement has been reached until night. The night comes anxious. The shift team is coming. I am squatting down among mutilated trees together with the soldiers waiting for the chief. I cannot get rid of the thought that once we get under fire of a large-caliber machine gun „Utios” there will be nowhere to hide. Minutes drag away like eternity. At last we leave, covering almost at running speed the spaces open to fire, and with every minute, and every step away from that place I feel better. Legs as if bring me flying, faster and faster. That’s it. We are almost safe. I feel some guilt: I was only a quest here, and the guys are to go there again the next day.
We are in Luganskoye. The machine guns fire and mine bursts are heard all the night through. The fighting is right over there, on the positions we have just left. The tracing bullets are crossing the sky behind my back. A large-caliber machine gun „Utios” fire over my head remind me of the danger.
