"Valery Gorban. The taste of war " - читать интересную книгу автора

membrane. Then right through his pants and into the muscle. Damn, I botched
it! His thigh is in spasm; it's as hard as a rock. I inject half a tube of
the drug, and the needle breaks.
"Give me more promedol!"
A hand with a small white tube appears at my side. A second injection.
A second tourniquet surfaces before my eyes. It goes above the knee.
"Now, hold on!"
Straighten out the leg, put the bone into flesh, and set the ends
together. No, you can't use an ordinary bandage to hold it.
"I could use a splint!"
I hear a crack next to me, and strips of wood from a case of beer come
into view by my hand. Great! Now, apply sterile bandages to both sides -
it's a lacerated wound that extends all the way through. The splints go on
top, then more bandages. Yes, we have them!
The heel of his other leg is shattered. The tendons are sticking out,
and the bone is growing pink. Once more - only this time without promedol!
The drug has taken effect, and this guy is limp.
But brawny! He looks to be 40-45 and as hard as nails. Anyone else
would either have passed out or screamed his head off as he faded, yet his
guy is only gritting his teeth and stammering:
"Why have they maimed me? I'm not fighting in this war - I just came to
buy a carburetor, and they opened up on me with an automatic weapon!"
As we work, one of my assistants recounts the story to me: "The Uazik
came under fire from a house. They didn't understand, just jumped out, then
someone shouted: `Drop!' So everyone did, but Umar took too long, and they
shot him in the legs. He hadn't done a thing! They just shot him from the
roof!"
It was a familiar story, and you can't blame those guys. It takes a lot
of crawling around under fire before you learn not to lash out like a fool
in response to every shot, but to work a specific target. Still, sometimes
even the most experienced professionals suffer a breakdown. They are on
edge. Here in Chechnya, if you want to live, you had better shoot first -
you can see the results later. And all sorts of things happen. There are
times when, amidst the confusion, you even fire on your own troops. Nearly
everyone here has experienced it. This is a place where you take fire from
everywhere - from "green areas," houses, and ruins. And gunmen concealed in
a market crowd have shot and killed more than one federal trooper. In this
case too, someone just gave the signal to the ambush and aimed in on the
Uazik... Yet our rulers and purist legislators, having initiated a
full-scale war, didn't even declared a state of emergency! They could hardly
care less. They're making money, while we here wreck our nerves and spill
our blood - ours and that of the other side. So, my friend, don't blame
those who pull the trigger. Rather, condemn those who unleashed this
carnage.
Done. His second leg is wrapped. Now I can take a deep breath and raise
my eyes. I have long felt that someone was covering me on the left, where
the bullets were whizzing, but there was no time to look.
What I see now touches and warms my heart.
My brothers!
No, you won't hear words of affection or gratitude from me, the