Chitchat coffee menu full#
Soldiers coming back from the firing range are full of praise for the new construction. We huddle together to see how many of us can fit. By the time we’re finished, our smoking hut is twice as deep, with a neat staircase, and covered with cut branches. The smoking facilities provided at the base aren’t well thought out: pallets dug into foliage, with just a shallow hole to protect you from shrapnel. I’m told half of the first intake has already been killed in action. He asks me what my specialisation will be. He’s being sent to his unit in a few days and has been drinking. I bump into another soldier from the neighbouring bunker. Almost the entire space is taken up with bunk beds. Imagine a hole in the ground with high ceilings and boarded-up walls. “Assault forces? You’re gonna DIE”įor the next 45 days, I’ll be sharing our dugout with two dozen others. Really, I’m fine.Ī soldier from another regiment asks what my specialisation will be. Reconnaissance sounds just a bit too scary, so I choose the assault forces like everyone else. First, I have to pick a specialisation: forward reconnaissance or assault forces – not a great choice. In the meantime, I have other things to think about. The morning begins with a sludge of rice porridge, plastic cheese, carrots, sausage and an apple that has seen better decades.
For the first time in four months I’m overtaken with fear.Įveryone I spoke to before I joined up told me I needed to avoid the assault units. I register only a few words, and I couldn’t tell you the punch line. A senior lieutenant breaks the news to us: “You’re joining the air assault forces, lads.” He cracks some joke about maroon berets. We board a yellow bus for the overnight trip to our new base. There won’t always be showers where I’m heading. In the meantime, I should stock up on wet-wipes for cleaning up “down there”. I’m no longer headed to artillery school and am going to a different military academy in the mountains. The army officers tell me there’s been a change of plan.
Chitchat coffee menu registration#
I hug them in the car park outside the military registration office. I try to find a way of doing it that’s less painful. I tell them that I’m going to be away for a while. I was afraid our goodbyes would be too final, too fast, too brutal. Mental note: take Dad on a trip to Portugal. I tell myself I’ll visit them more often when the war is over. Any sign of emotion or tenderness and the tears start flowing. But he felt compelled to enlist “to stop this fucked-up evil that’s invited itself into our homes”. Before the war he worked in the arts, had a taste for exotic cuisine and swanky clothes – often picked with the help of a stylist – and was averse to “taking orders or dumb-assed machismo”. A man in his mid-30s, he had never seen himself as a fighter. This is the diary of one of these soldiers from his month at a training camp. First-time soldiers have come from every part of the country and every walk of life. When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Vladimir Putin turned life on its head for every Ukrainian – but none as much as for the soldiers themselves, including the many thousands who have joined Ukraine’s armed forces.
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