"Mikhail Evstafiev. Two Steps From Heaven " - читать интересную книгу автора

interludes would follow later. He would swear that this was true love, but
that he could not stay behind even for her, beautiful though she was. Before
going to sleep he would sigh: "A blonde....and not for money, but for real
love, with me..."
They never did find out who brought the infection into the company.
"The fuck you'll sort it out," said captain Morgultsev dourly,
sweepingly classifying the drooping "elephants" as malingerers.
Any commanding officer would be at his wits' end in such a situation.
Is this a company, or what? Are these paratroopers, or what? The troops were
issued tablets, some were packed off to hospital.
The strange appellation "elephants" caught on among the troops long ago
and for a rather unusual reason. It arose from their training in case of
chemical warfare, before Afghanistan. The officer would shout: "Masks!" and
the men would drag gas masks out of the green bags on their backs, shove
them over shaven and unshaven heads: their eyes would stare out from behind
the glass, which would soon mist over, and long tubes extended like trunks
from the masks to the filter in the bag. Very soon, a joke started doing the
rounds about a commander of unit X whose small, capricious daughter demanded
that Daddy show her some elephants running around outside, otherwise she
won't go to sleep, or eat, and stood there stamping her tiny feet angrily.
Anything for peace! So Daddy issued an order: "Company, ten-hut! Gas masks!
On the double!" And the "elephants" had to run around and work up a sweat,
choking and cursing everything on earth until ordered to stand down.
Maybe someone picked up the bug in the mess hall, or drank unboiled
water, or ate an unwashed fruit from the town. Or maybe the disease had come
from the nearby village, brought in by flies, or a cloud of dust, which
would hang in the air for a long time after the passage of any vehicle.
The regiment had long shielded itself from the Afghans and anything
connected with them. Fenced itself off with barbed wire, minefields,
trip-wires, flares, machine gun nests, trenches, parapets, watchtowers, tank
armor, mortar and artillery positions. Sentries kept a sharp lookout to
ensure that the enemy or some Afghan from the neighboring village could not
come close. But the enemy did not come, made no move to attack the regiment.
Dysentery, hepatitis, amebic dysentery and typhoid struck instead.
"Go take a rope and hang yourself!" joked the company commander
watching senior warrant officer Pashkov's diarrhea-induced sufferings. "At
least you'll die like a man and not a shit fountain!"
Pashkov was the first to fall ill, and for some time it was suspected
that he had been the vector. However, it turned out that three soldiers from
the last contingent of newcomers had been afflicted for several days now.
Rookies Myshkovsky, Sychev and Chirikov had simply kept their mouths shut
out of military stupidity and ignorance of local diseases.
From their arrival in Fergana, efforts were made to instill elementary
rules of basic personal hygiene into the thick workers-and-peasant skulls of
the recruits but as a rule, with meager results. Only after having gone
through the furnace of hepatitis, typhoid and dysentery does the rookie
understand that hands must be washed with soap, and not just once a day,
that only boiled water should be drunk - and if that's not available, it is
better to remain thirsty. That it is not advisable to use someone else's
spoon, that mess tins should be scrubbed until they shine, that if an Afghan