Post by bazooka on Oct 24, 2019 15:56:26 GMT
“Yesterday I murdered a girl. I suddenly felt sick and didn’t know what to do about it. There was nowhere to beg forgiveness. I had murdered them and it was irrevocable. Now I would be a child killer my whole life. I would have to live with this. Eat, drink, raise children and be happy and sad, laugh and cry, be ill, love and...and kiss Olga. Touch this pure and radiant creature with hands that had murdered. Touch her eyes, face and lips, so tender and vulnerable and leave greasy traces of death on her clear skin.
These hands, these damned hands. I should cut them off and discard them. I will never get them clean now. I stuck my hands between my knees and started to rub them on my pant legs. I understood that this was psychosis; madness, but I couldn’t help it. It seemed my hands had become sticky. Like when you’ve eaten food in a dirty cafe under the sun. Murder had stuck to them. The vilest kind of murder, and I couldn’t get it off.
Olec handed me a tin of food. I took the tin and ate the contents. I said, ‘Remember how the Chechens hit us yesterday? It turns out we killed a girl when we fired back. An eight year old girl and her grandfather.’ Olec said, ‘It happens. Don’t think about it. It’ll pass. If you’re going to put yourself through Hell every time it happens you’ll go out of your mind. People here kill and get killed. They kill us, we kill them. I’ve killed too. It’s just war. Our own lives are t worth a thing here, let alone someone else’s. Don’t think about it. At least not until you get home. Right now you’re still too close to her. She is dead and you’re alive, but you’re both still rotting in one place. Only she is below ground and you’re above it, and the difference between you may only be a single day.”
-Arkady Babchenko, Russian Army, First Chechen War. - He describes his feelings after directing tanks to fire on a building he thought occupied enemy soldiers, but housed an eight year old girl and her grandfather.
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These hands, these damned hands. I should cut them off and discard them. I will never get them clean now. I stuck my hands between my knees and started to rub them on my pant legs. I understood that this was psychosis; madness, but I couldn’t help it. It seemed my hands had become sticky. Like when you’ve eaten food in a dirty cafe under the sun. Murder had stuck to them. The vilest kind of murder, and I couldn’t get it off.
Olec handed me a tin of food. I took the tin and ate the contents. I said, ‘Remember how the Chechens hit us yesterday? It turns out we killed a girl when we fired back. An eight year old girl and her grandfather.’ Olec said, ‘It happens. Don’t think about it. It’ll pass. If you’re going to put yourself through Hell every time it happens you’ll go out of your mind. People here kill and get killed. They kill us, we kill them. I’ve killed too. It’s just war. Our own lives are t worth a thing here, let alone someone else’s. Don’t think about it. At least not until you get home. Right now you’re still too close to her. She is dead and you’re alive, but you’re both still rotting in one place. Only she is below ground and you’re above it, and the difference between you may only be a single day.”
-Arkady Babchenko, Russian Army, First Chechen War. - He describes his feelings after directing tanks to fire on a building he thought occupied enemy soldiers, but housed an eight year old girl and her grandfather.
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Battles and Beers does not support or glorify war crimes. Terrible things happen in war, and we believe these stories, and the thoughts soldiers have about them should be told.