Shifts to sleep during the day. Life (precarious) in the trenches where everyone is a “family” – Corriere.it

FROM OUR SEND
MYKOLAIV REGION – In the trenches you sleep in shifts, because at night the war is even more frightening. You are on guard or you come out on the attack of those who, perhaps, this time will not see you. It’s hard to imagine them stirring Nescafé. Enemies have something different, some stupidity that brings them closer to beasts, some evil that makes them unbearable. You cultivate hatred in order to kill them. Eliminate them before they eliminate you. It is an essential part of the war: I hate those who try to kill you from afar, cowardly, with a powerful and noisy machine. The same one you use.

A 26-year-old tanker explains that the Russian conscripts “have already arrived on the front” and with a straight gaze says that “they continue to send them to us in groups of 20 and every day we kill 18 and the next day another 20 arrive and then again and again and again ». His name is Ivan. He is a boy, with glasses, long hair the way his girlfriend likes it. He looks like a parish volunteer.

It is that in the trenches feelings become extreme. The newly met comrades become brothers, we all become united like the leaves of the trees around. Ivan is ready to die to defend them and that’s not a way of saying. Every time he gets on the tank he exposes the body to bombs capable of charring it in an instant even inside the steel armor of the tank. Of the university glasses, perhaps a few plastic balls would remain. Ivan from inside the wagon loads, aims and shoots: the enemies deserve the worst of ends. He must be sure that he is doing the right thing. Otherwise those 20 would be killing him.

«By now we know. Even if they already have a drone in flight, it takes five shots for the Russians to figure out where we’re shooting from. So five shots and not one more. Street”.

In the trenches you have to be able to sleep there even during the day and the sleeping bag under the ground is the safest place to stay. You dig at least two and a half meters, then cover yourself so that nothing comes out of the ground. It is better if the ceiling is made of reinforced concrete beams, otherwise the logs have to be enough. Sometimes trees are cut down, at other times light poles or beams from bombed-out houses are collected. There is no door in an underground trench, but blankets to retain the heat of a small wood-burning stove that unloads in the bushes.

To build that underground room, the enormous waste of war is recycled. Boxes carrying ammunition become good for insulating the walls from moisture. One on top of the other they are beaded with lots of decoration: caliber, brand, serial number. THE shells of the explosive charges that push the bomb into the barrels of the tanks are fine to reinforce the steps. The result looks like a cross between a tree house of messy children, a mine and a rave party campsite. There is no time to tidy up. Hopefully, the trench is always provisional. “We will soon win.” Otherwise it will be necessary to step back and this refuge will remain to amaze the children.

Luck also serves to ensure that there is always someone more willing to cook than others. So a saucepan is always hot on the stove. Tomato, cans of meat, beets, potatoes, onions: the ration is something more than a way to fill the stomach, it is a ritual that reminds us of home, it gives a sense of continuity to life as it should be and not as it is now. Sometimes pepper is enough to trigger memories that keep afloat.

In the trenches it is like being in a family, without shame, between different generations. Often the commander is younger than some of the subordinates and things work out if everyone understands that they cannot read, understand and decide as well as he does. But the old people always solve many problems. They know how to do it with shovel, nails and hammer. They are the ones who build the trench, the young people, like in the family, go out more often and risk even more.

Everyone, all fighting groups that take refuge in the trenches have a dog. There are sensors and satellites, but it is still the dog that gives the comfort of the flocks against the wolves that want to devour them. They can be large or small dogs. During the day, they hang around, avoid tracks and are patted and left over. At night they crouch near the sentry and double the number of ears.

The barracks are healthier to avoid them, with aviation in the skies you cannot build tented camps, each trench, like a team of boy scouts, has to think for itself about how to sleep, eat and protect itself. Not everything can be in the trenches. There is no washing and washing, for example.

At the wheel of civilian cars, the oldest and ugliest possible (theirs or those found abandoned or requisitioned) leave the underground chamber and go to the rear. If you are lucky you will find a house with a well, a stove and a bathroom where you can wash.

The villages behind the trenches thus become widespread barracks where the radios or social media on the mobile phone (Whatsapp, Viber or Telegram) keep the connection between the units. Then every month, every two or three months, here’s the real license. Ukraine has the advantage, compared to the immense Russia, of being able to send its soldiers home after a relatively short time of use in the trenches. He can do it because the whole country is not that far from the war. From soup in the trenches to pizza with the family it takes a maximum of 8 or 10 hours. Normal life is so close that we can’t help but fight to defend it. So close it is madness.