The voices and boots of soldiers woke me up.
I had passed out on the floor in between the bunks, cozy as could be in a sleeping bag Rod had used in Bakhmut. Most of the soldiers were already up. They were walking over me to go for coffee and cigarettes. Some even had breakfast.
I scrambled up out of bed with a dramatic stretch and yawn routine.
“Gee! I guess someone’s finally awake! Did you sleep okay on the floor?” One of the guys, Scroll, asked me.
“I slept like a baby,” I replied confidently.
“Was probably all those Revos!” Rod interjected from his bunk.
“Oh yea, you guys were going late last night. I came out to smoke at like midnight, and y’all were still up!” Scroll joked.
“Rod and I used to be pretty wild in our younger days,” I smiled.
When I first came in the night before, carrying a 40-rack of Revos, I got reintroduced to the soldiers who I had met in Ternopil weeks before. Some of the guys were still in training, and had not yet arrived to the front.
Scroll was the first person in the farmhouse to reintroduce himself.
“My name’s Scroll. We met in Ternopil. You probably don’t remember me because I was laid up sick back then,” Scroll continued at a rapid clip.
When I visited Ternopil, the entire unit had been afflicted with lung infections. I bought a huge care package of citrus and vitamin C for the unit, and spent a day smoking cigarettes with sickly souls inside a musty old building with no ventilation that served as their barracks, that felt more like a plague quarter than military housing.
Scroll had been so sick, that he was bedridden and couldn’t talk the last time we “met.”
I was the only one who didn’t get sick.
“Hey, man! Good to see you!” Rico, another soldier who I met in Ternopil, greeted me.
Rico was a white Trumpist Republican from Chico. He even had family in Petaluma, my hometown. We bonded over our mutual California-ness.
“Man, it’s such a bummer about the documentary. I was looking forward to you coming out with us,” Rico said sadly.
“Yea, but there’s more important things than me in the world. And shit is going down,” I explained comfortably vague.
“What is even the reason that they gave?” Scroll asked.
“I guess the unit is on a media blackout. I think some guy gave an interview to French television that’s got everyone freaked out, and the Russian offensive is coming, so they can’t guarantee my security,” I explained, leaving out some key details.
“Who gave an interview?” Rico asked.
“I dunno. Some French guy from the unit,” I shrugged.
“It was probably Pierre,” Scroll figured.
“Yea, probably,” Rico agreed.
“Well, whoever it was, I just think it’s funny because, like, this OpSec shit always comes from people in house,” I chuckled.
Just weeks before a Hungarian guy meant to be Rod’s second, got caught with a grenade in his car during a routine traffic stop, causing headaches for the unit.
“Like how stupid can you be, bruv?” Rod would later tell me.
“So how long are you supposed to be here?” Rico asked me.
“Uh, I guess just for tonight. Rod’s trying to see if he can swing me staying one more night, but we’ll see,” I explained.
Rod came in carrying a small little kitten, interrupting our conversation.
“This is Frog, our unit cat,” Rod explained. “We got her from another house that’s full of cats. She just got attached to us. She’s particularly attached to me.”
Frog purred warmly on Rod’s shoulder.
“We all pitch in on feeding her,” Rico added.
“We call her Frog because her purr sounds like a frog,” Rod explained.
“Oh yea, she climbs all up over me and sleeps,” Scroll agreed. “Hopefully, she doesn’t piss all over my stuff.”
Everyone laughed.
After that, the night went by in a haze of Revo and cigarettes, as I have already relayed to you good people.
The morning came, and life came with it.
“You can just put your bag up on my bunk,” Rod told me.
“Sounds good,” I nodded.
I walked into the dining room after packing my stuff away.
“Hey Zane! You wanna go for a smoke?” Rico asked.
“F*ck it. Why not?” I replied.
“I’ll go with you,” Scroll nodded.
“Well, if we’re all f*ckin’ goin’,” Rod mused.
Outside the farmhouse, the light felt bright even though it was cloudy and cold. The vast expanse of farm and field surrounding us was surreal in the cold grey light of dawn. We walked into the shed out back for a smoke.
“So what’s the agenda for today?” Scroll asked Rod, after blowing out a hazy humid plume of smoke.
“Well, I gotta take the other half of you guys out on the range today, for some shooting and reload drills, since apparently you guys didn’t get f*ck-all with the Legion,” Rod grimaced.
“What do you want the rest of us to do?” Scroll asked.
“You can lead the guys through some reloads,” Rod suggested.
“Sounds good,” Scroll nodded.
“You’ll have to stay here with them,” Rod told me. “The place we’re going to train is like halfway between here and the front, and completely vulnerable to drone attacks.”
I nodded, “No worries, man. Like I said, I’m just happy to be here!”
An awkward silence settled over us.
“Soooo… have you been paying attention to the election?” Rico asked me with a smile.
“Yea…” I admitted.
“So, what do you think about Trump and Biden? I know last time you said you didn’t support Trump,” Rico continued.
“Well, I mean I think Trump’s gonna win. I think that’s just the way the wind is blowing,” I explained. “But you know, there’s just so many black swan events hanging over this election. It’s really impossible to predict.”
Back when we were in Ternopil, Rico found himself a lonely man when he declared his casual, yet ardent support for Trump in a room full of Britons and globalists.
“But what do you think about Biden?” Rico asked.
“I think Biden is really eating it on the Gaza conflict. It’s not doing him any favors,” I went on. “It’s just so stupid because the people who vote on Israel are already mostly against Biden, and the people who support Palestine are his most critical base.”
Rico nodded, “Yea, I don’t get the whole Israel-Palestine debate. I just think we should stop supporting all these foreign wars.”
We went back inside the farmhouse. I sat down and poured myself a coffee. Rod was buzzing to-and-fro checking in with different soldiers and preparing for the training.
“Some of the upper brass are apparently coming to watch me train these guys,” he had told me.
Scroll, Rico, and I sat at the table talking about geopolitical struggles and general life experiences, a storied vice of mine.
“Well, I just think that the United States could be doing a lot more for this country. That’s part of why I came here,” Scroll told us. “You know, I had no family or friends to keep me there, and I started feeling more and more useless. Then an old army buddy told me about fighting in Ukraine. That’s when I made the decision to come here.”
Rico nodded.
“For me it was similar. I was in law school, but I didn’t really feel like I belonged. I was so out of place there,” he explained. “People there are like from another planet. And I feel like they resented me because I was a veteran. And I was struggling in school, and just really unhappy. So I decided to drop out of law school and come to Ukraine.”
I chuckled.
“I totally forgot that was what you did before here,” Scroll spoke quickly.
“My family’s not too happy about it,” Rico admitted.
“Do you think that a lot of veterans are kind of seeking redemption in Ukraine from what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan?” I asked.
“Definitely. People are definitely workin’ through some of their issues,” Rico answered quickly.
“I mean when it’s what you’ve trained your whole life for, and you don’t have any other skills, being back home just makes you feel useless,” Scroll reminded us. “And like Rico said, a lot of people look down on veterans. I mean, I was in Iraq for years. A lot of shit went down, you know? And it’s hard to come home and just pretend to be normal after that.”
Rico corroborated Scroll’s story, “Yea, I just feel like people in America look down on us, like we’re violent and crazy, like we’re gonna go psycho at any moment and kill a bunch of people.”
I nodded.
“Basically, Ukraine is a place where my skills matter, where these skills can do the most good, and it’s the same for a lot of the people who come here to fight,” Scroll explained.
“Do you feel like this is a ‘good’ war?” I asked.
“Well, I was in Afghanistan, in some of the hottest AOs,” Rico informed me. “And yea, I mean, I don’t know how much ‘good’ we did there, but I believed in the mission. We had people to protect, even if they didn’t want us there.”
Scroll agreed, “Absolutely. Did we achieve what we wanted to achieve? No. But we believed in the mission. As for Ukraine, I think for a lot of people it has more to do with giving us an outlet for our skills than some kind of redemption.”
Rod and the movement of soldiers in full-kit interrupted our conversation.
“Okay, boys! We’re headed out to the range. Scroll, make sure to run them through reloads, and make sure to help them work through what they’re struggling with. Obviously, Rico has a busted ankle, but he still has a lot he needs to work on,” Rod announced.
“Will do. I’ll let you know how it went when you get back!” Scroll waved.
A little while later, Scroll had the 5 soldiers under his command lined up for reloads in full-kit and rifles in hand.
From left to right, there was Dima from Kazakhstan, Roland from Switzerland, Marc from Hungary, Rico from California, and Henry from Britannia. Scroll stood stoutly in front of them shouting orders.
I paced around inspecting their form with Frog the kitten on my shoulder. After Frog kept jumping onto reloading soldiers, I took it as my duty to keep her under guard.
While most everyone had AK-47s, Rico and Marc had RPKs, the larger Soviet-era machine gun with a longer barrel and magazine than the AK. A few of the guys were missing their dump pouches, where soldiers are trained to drop their magazines during a tactical reload.
For all intents and purposes, there are two standard types of reloads in modern warfare: tactical and speed reload.
Tactical, as the name suggests, is the type of reload you do when you have extra time to do so. During a tactical reload, soldiers are supposed to reload their weapon with a new clip while tossing the old one in their dump pouch as efficiently as possible. Sometimes that magazine may still have some ammo remaining, and the purpose of the reload is to get a fresh magazine in the weapon before returning to combat engagement.
Speed reload is what soldiers do during active engagement. The objective of a speed reload is to get a new magazine into their weapon as quickly as possible, discarding the old magazine on the ground. Speed reloads are often done in tandem with live shooter training and buddy drills, where soldiers practice infantry movement and tactics combined with shooting and reload drills.
In this case, we were just running through the basics with a focus on doing drills standing, sitting, and prone; while being able to move from one position to another with tactical awareness and efficiency. Everyone unloaded their clips and rifles before showing them to Scroll to confirm everything was kosher and not going to kill anybody.
“Ready…” Scroll called out. “Reload!”
The soldiers scrambled to unload and reload. Dima from Kazakhstan was the fastest gun in the west just about every drill. He would usually be followed by Roland from Switzerland, then Marc from Hungary or Henry from Britain. Rico was almost always the slowest, but part of that was because of his RPK. Even Marc, who had apparently been the fastest the day before, struggled with the size and weight of the RPK. The long banana clip was particularly troublesome for quick reload times.
“Okay! That was better. Now let’s switch to tac reloads!” Scroll announced after half an hour or so of speed reloads.
“For those of us who don’t have dump pouches?” Henry asked.
“Just put it in your vest somewhere. I gotta get you guys dump pouches when we go to the village,” Scroll admitted.
“Rod said you guys are going to the village tomorrow. It might be your last chance to get things for a while,” I said full-well knowing that that would be their last day before being deployed to the frontline.
“Well, anyway, let’s just do these drills. Okay. Ready?” Scroll waited. “Retain!”
The tac reload was much more of a struggle for everyone. Except for Dima of course, being the fastest gun in the west. Lacking dump pouches, RPK users Marc and Rico particularly struggled.
While Scroll kept everyone running through drills, the water truck came to change out the tank. The farmhouse, as a forward operating base, received daily deliveries of supplies, such as food and other essentials, with a new water tank being brought in once a week or so. Two Ukrainian men jumped out of the truck and proceeded to get to work with the tank.
“Privit! Tak! Ti! Ti!” One of them pointed at me.
“Me?” I asked pointing at myself.
They nodded emphatically.
“I’m not even allowed to be here,” I chuckled to myself.
It became clear they needed help carrying the old tank off its wooden pallet. I brushed Frog off my shoulder, and she landed on the ground with a little pitter patter of paws on moist earth. Then I rushed over to help them. Once we had the empty one off the pallet, we carried the full tank sloshing with probably a thousand gallons or more of water, and eased it onto the pallet. Then we put the empty one back in the truck.
“Dyakuyu!” They nodded to me as they left.
“Bud laska!” I replied with a wave.
The guys went through the reload drills for a while before moving into practice with prone, sitting, and standing. After Scroll felt that he had gotten them as good as he could for the day, he decided to join the fray.
“Hey, Zane! I’m gonna jump in there! Can you call out the drills?” Scroll asked.
“Sure… no problem!” I answered.
“Thanks man!” He nodded before jumping in.
“Speed reloads?” I asked.
“Yea!” He replied.
“Okay…. Ready?” I asked a little unsure at first.
The soldiers nodded as they entered shooter ready positions.
I waited for a moment.
“Reload!” I called out.
They all scrambled. The usual suspects did their usual performances, but Scroll had been slow on the draw.
“Damn, maybe I need to warm-up,” he laughed.
I continued calling out the drills for a good 15 minutes.
“So, are we going to do the competition?” Dima asked Scroll.
“Is that what we want to do?” Scroll asked the general audience.
“Sure, why not?” Marc answered.
“I think it’s time,” Henry nodded.
“I’m ready if everyone else is,” Roland replied.
“So… slowest does the dishes?” Rico asked sheepishly.
“Yup,” Scroll confirmed.
“Okay… Ready?” I called out confidently.
I barely waited a second.
“Reload!”
Dima finished first.
Then Marc.
Then Scroll.
Then Roland.
Then Henry.
Rico finished last.
“I guess I’m doing dishes again,” he shrugged with a smile.
It was an elimination game, so Rico was out of the race.
“Ready?” I called out more confidently.
I waited a little longer than last time.
“Reload!”
Dima finished first.
Then Scroll.
Then Roland.
Then Henry.
Marc finished last.
“Marc! What happened? Yesterday you were the fastest!” Scroll exclaimed.
“I dunno. I’m just not feeling it today, I guess,” Marc shrugged.
“I mean the RPK users are kinda f*cked,” I laughed. “There’s a clear disadvantage.”
“Well, I mean yesterday Marc won it, but yea, they’re definitely slower,” Henry added.
“I think they just take time to get used to,” Dima theorized.
“Okay. Let’s go! Ready?” My voice boomed loud and proud.
This time I waited for an eternity.
Everyone’s eyes twitched.
Their muscles trembled.
Their stomachs turned.
Their fingers wavered expectantly.
A dead silence hung over the air.
“Reload!” I shouted.
Dima was first.
Then Scroll.
Then Henry.
Roland finished last.
“You can’t win them all,” he smiled.
“Damn! Dima’s fast as hell!” I exclaimed.
“Yea. I can barely keep up with him,” Scroll shook his head.
“I think it’s probably gonna be me this time,” Henry admitted.
“Okay! Let’s get to it!” I declared.
“Ready……..” I elongated each syllable.
A moment went by.
“Reload!” I called out.
Dima was first.
Scroll was second.
Henry was last.
“Yup. That about does it for me,” he shook his head.
“You’ve improved though, Henry!” Scroll consoled him.
“Okay. This one’s for alllllll the marbles!” I narrated.
“Yea, give me a sec,” Scroll said, shaking out his head and hands.
“I’m ready when you are,” Dima replied with his Russian accent.
“Okay…. Ready?” I called.
I waited and waited and waited.
Our beards grew with expectation.
Our fingernails grew out from their tips.
Our teeth decayed from neglect.
“Reload!” I boomed.
It happened so fast you couldn’t even see it.
Dima and Scroll had finished in a dead heat, a perfect tie.
“Holy shit!” I commentated.
“Who won?” Dima asked.
“It was tie!” Rico answered.
“That was crazy,” Henry added.
“I’m sweatin’ over here!” Scroll exclaimed.
“Yea, it was a perfect tie. Run it again!” I shouted. “Ready?”
Dima and Scroll returned to shooter ready.
They side-eyed each other expectantly.
Fingers flirted in position nervously.
“Reload!” I called out, quicker this time.
Like lightning legends, their magazines flew out of their AKs and onto the ground, all while seamlessly transitioning in fresh ammunition. This was the work of professionals.
Again, a dead tie.
“F*ck me that’s fast!” I laughed.
“Did we do it again?” Scroll asked.
“Yea, man! Another tie,” Rico informed them.
“Haha, this is crazy,” Dima chuckled.
“Okay, okay. Let’s do one more round!” I told them.
“Hopefully one of us will win this time!” Dima joked.
“Ready?” I shouted seriously.
In an instant I called, “Reload!”
The sound of empty mags falling on the ground and full mags jamming back into rifles filled the air.
Dima and Scroll were both taken off guard by the blitz, but Dima recovered quickly, while Scroll still fumbled.
That fumble was fatal.
Dima finished first.
Scroll finished last, less than a second later.
“Fastest gun in the f*cking west!!!” I cheered at Dima.
The mood became vivacious and celebratory.
“Man, you are f*ckin’ ON today!” Scroll congratulated him.
“Thank you. Thank you!” Dima nodded graciously.
“That was awesome,” Rico smiled.
“Congratulations, Dima!” Henry saluted him.
“You are really fast,” Roland admitted.
“Next time I will be ready,” Marc spoke starkly.
“I’d like to see how fast you are with an RPK,” I joked.
“Yea! You know I’d like to see that too, Dima!” Scroll agreed.
We did a few more rounds of the game without any challenge, with me calling out the reloads, before we decided to see what would happen between Marc and Dima if they switched weapons, Marc taking the AK and Dima taking the heavier RPK.
Scroll called that one out.
Dima still won every time.
Commentaires