Tomcat's Army Report
The last days
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Outsiders can hardly understand the "whining" of a soldier about the number of
his days left: oh my God, will it ever end. 262 days, what's that, would the
civilian say, but just until he has to take those nine months. However,
everything ends someday, there is a time when only twenty or even less days
remain, and the soldier becomes a very old matushalem. Being so old is funny:
the old soldier is the ruler of the base, and the old scribble, especially
if they're satisfied with his work, is the emperor. Have I told that if
someone does a good job for nine months, and receives his superiors' approval,
then he will be allowed to do this and that when he's old? I was given this
gift. For example, once I got bored of wearing boots, and I put my civilian
sports shoes on. Lt.Col. Andrekovics stopped me, he was the officer on duty
that day.
- Wwhy a-are y-you w-wearing th-th-this shoe?
We rested. We were idling in the canteen. We organized washups. For example, we tried what it looks like if we spread an entire box of Ultra on the corridor, plus pour another box into the pipe of the firehose, then open the tap. The result was a deep foam that reached our waists, the pipe spilled white foam for at least five minutes. Soon we started an ice hockey tournament, using brooms and an empty flacon of detergent. We held "fire security training" for the baldies. First we gathered them all on the corridor. I've already written about the metal grate closing the end of it. So we February soldiers lined up on one side of this grate, while the May guys built "training formation" on the other, which meant they formed a large U, facing the trainer, in this case, me. I put a little shoe paste on the grate, which is very flammable. - Perhaps you know, soldiers - I started with serious voice - what fire security is. Fire security is very important. Never underestimate the value of such security regulations, someday you'll perhaps find them important, if they don't save our lives immediately... And I pushed the bullshit, while they were listening very seriously. I kept on talking, then I said: - Let's see fire itself. Fire is dangerous. Like this... And I ignited the tiny spot of shoe paste. It burnt with a pale blue flame, size of a match light. - This is fire. This has to be exhausted. The correct way of exhausting fire will be now demonstrated! Suddenly two men appeared with two buckets of water, and dashed them on the tiny flame. As the baldies were standing right behind the grate, they received most of it. Neither of them thought about jumping away when seeing the buckets swinging towards them... We were sent to another night shooting. But now we were the oldies. We travelled by truck again, but this time we told the driver: one jolt with the car and we wuld feed his liver to the guard dogs. This time there was no forest rally. The usual show was going at the shooting field: five tracer and fifteen regular bullets to be shot at a table. (The tracer bullet is just like a regular bullet, with some phosphor in the tip. If you shoot a tracer, it will be visible as a bright, flying dot.) The bullets were given by Sergeant-Major Milos, whom I once had done a favour. Now it was time to ask for payback. - Sarge, could you please give me thirty tracers instead? Yes, he could. I loaded them all and went to the shooting position. A captain was there, giving the orders, but I decided that I could't hear him with the ear protector on. The result was like:
- Target is the...
He was yelling something, but I liked those nice, colorful tracers so much that I shot all the thirty to the field and the night sky. Who the fuck cares about the targets? The captain was angry, but who cares. A tired voice from loudspeaker in the observation tower announced that my result was "acceptable". During the entire shooting there was only one problem, a tracer ignited something in the hillside. Sergeant Margitai rushed there with the fire brigade, charming like a freight train. Upon arriving they figured that they were carrying an empty extinguisher, so they started bashing the flames with their spades. I didn't feel like going to guard the road again, so I hopped into a truck, on which several others were already sitting. We travelled in great mood, we first sang old communist military songs, then, when we reached the city, we were having fun frightening the cars following us, we sometimes suddenly pushed the canvas away, and pointed our rifles to them. We were disappointed, not many of them shitted in the pants, however, the truck didn't look like a military one, it was a plain truck, no one could have expected guns appearing from it. However, there were two blondie chicks who immediately kicked the brake as they saw us, the ones behind them could barely stop in time. There was a rich, bald bastard with a full-extra Mercedes, who gave us the finger and tried to outspeed us, but one of my mates got angry, swinged his gun at its strap, and broke the car's side with it. Later an Italian camion drove behind us, its driver just laughed and pointed his pistol back on us. And the last guard duty came. Who else could have been the officer on duty and his subsidiary than Major Brody and Captain Hogwash? This last duty was also the funniest, with several adventures. It started with Captain Hogwash trying to frighten the guys during the morning briefing. He told about what he had learned from TV, that "the Serbs are preparing something", and "there might be a terror assault during the night". Some plain village boys really got scared, and if Endez and I hadn't calmed them down, they might have even shot their own mates dead when they climbed the fence during the night. This Hogwash was a true asshole. (Our story takes place in 1998, if you remember, and it is September. The Serb paramilitary troops were actually moving those days, and their intentions were not clear yet. However, the smallest chance was that they would try to attack Hungary, which already was a NATO member.) We still had ten days left. The May guys were already rubbers, the August baldies had arrived. For some reason they never gave any duties, not even Battle Alert Duty, because Mihalyi had heard somewhere that it was against the regulations before they would finish the basic training. Quite strange, no one had cared about this rule when I was a baldie. I met the guy called Radar the first time. This was the nickname of the new guard dog caretaker. He was an August baldie, with huge ears, hence the name. This Radar face made his introduction immediately. We were standing at the ammo dump, waiting for the officer on duty, who was late from the morning guard checking for some reason. Radar came to me and said:
- Hey, show me that machinegun on ya' back!
Now that was too much, I removed the clip from his hand and replaced it to the rifle. The officer soon arrived, we changed the guard dog at the dump, everything was in order. We were walking back to the guard room, when Radar shouted after me:
- Hey! Do you dare to shoot me?
In fact I was close to shoot him for free. There ARE weird people for sure! Captain Hogwash was on the stage during the evening dog change. Fortunately it was not Radar who changed the dogs this time, but another baldie, who was a great dog fan, just like me, later we talked a lot about dogs. He brought the big Alsatian guard dog on lead, while Hogwash said: - Ah, this is a good dog. I know this - and tried to stroke the dog. Perhaps the dog didn't know him, or they were enemies, but the dog immediately broke out, and jumped on Hogwash ferociously barking and growling. The captain immediately started an improvised folk dance and karate show, but all he managed was to receive some hits by the dog's steel muzzle. Finally, when we had enough fun with the dog leader, we removed the doggie from the sucker, who kept on kicking the air for some seconds, then said: - Errm, yes. This is a good guard dog, yes. We then went in to the ammo dump to check the seals on the doors. The dump was a regular looking storage building, rounded with a barbed wire fence, behind which the guard dog roamed freely. It was pitch black night, I had a pocket lamp. The light cone showed a ramifying piece of dog mud, just in the way of Captain Hogwash.
- Careful, sir - I warned him - there's a mine!
Well, yes. He was stinking all the way back to the guard room. Sometimes he asked who was farting so badly. When we returned, we measured how fast Major Brody would send him outside to wash his boots. Twenty-three seconds. Good. During one of the shifts I said that we should really shoot into the loading stand, because I was bored of just carrying this gun, but never shooting it. The loading stand was a small, wooden stand, with a cover filled with sand. When a guard loaded his gun before going to the tower, he had to place it into this stand, with muzzle upwards, lock it with a chain, and then place the clip into it. If it was accidentally fired, the roof, which was lower than a man's head, would have stopped the bullet. Before inserting the clip, the weapon had to be cocked, then the trigger pulled - thus making sure that there is no bullet in the barrel - and then insert the clip.
- Nah, you're crap - my patrol mate said - you'll never do that.
Your mother might be crap, I thought. Tau bet me a piece of chocolate that I wouldn't dare to shoot my gun. During the seven o'clock shift in the morning I decided to be tired enough to switch the steps of the loading process. I first inserted the clip, then cocked the gun and pulled the trigger. BANG !!! I won a piece of chocolate. However, you haven't seen all the effects. First, the poor baldies brooming the leaves around threw the brooms away, they hadn't yet got used to Kalashnikovs firing just some steps from them, in the very morning. The patrol behind me got frozen from the shock, and, besides, from thinking over the possible outcome of this joke. However, there was no outcome, they gave me another cap instead of the wasted one, and I wrote in the guard diary that "I haven't found any signs of deliberation", as I was the shift leader, and my task was to overview the process of weapons loading. However, a captain later said that all the officers said as one that I am the second most impudent soldier in the history of the base. The first was when someone simply drove out the gate with a jeep, and sold it in the city. Lt.Col. Andrekovics was just receiving his office key in the duty room, just some steps away from the loading stand, when I fired the gun. When I went to the officer on duty to report the "weapons incident", he was sitting on a chair with cold legs and pale face, he almost got a heart attack from the sudden shot. How brave soldier! But our duty was still not over, the morning guard change was coming up. The last patrol was led by the old and the new shift leader together, as always, as the new shift leader had to check that every lock and seal on the protected buildings are intact. This also happened at the ammo dump. We went in, while Radar took the old dog, and he was expected to come back with the new dog once we'd have left. But when we finished checking the seals, and returned to the fence gate, we found it locked, and we were together with the guard dog. Well, hi, doggy... Radar was nowhere. The dog was staring at us, showing its teeth sometimes, and we stood stiff not to irritate him. We were waiting to see if that asshole would realize that the patrol was not coming, and come back for us. He had to be sent back by our patrol mates, whom we had left back to let us out. He returned, opened the gate, and suddenly said to me: - Stupid, don't stand still, because the dog will attack you this way! Now it was really hard to stand punching that prick. However, I phoned the oldies of his company about the case, and asked them to do something to educate the guy. Perhaps he might do the washup alone, in a gasmask. I became a corporal for my last two weeks - hooray - and I received my second star along the two strips for the last three days! In fact every lance corporal had been promoted to corporal in the base, except for our company, because Lieutenant Mihalyi had forgot to promote us! When Major Brody asked him about this breaking of the regulations, he said that it was MY fault, because I hadn't warned him about the base commander ordering the promotions. He again managed to make all the other officers laugh at him. Fun lasted even to the last day. I cut my hair to punk style for the last day, and I walked along like that, without a cap, wearing green mon-x glasses, my tunic hanging loose. A captain from Alba almost got a heart attack when seeing me, but sir, please detent me if you wish, while I leave tomorrow. I was walking like this all the day, when they told me that some military attorney woman from Budapest was here, wanting to talk to me, so would I please go to Major Hermann's office. Mother. With this hair to the Pentagon? All right. I went to the office, reported as in the regulations: "sirmajorcorporalpolgarishereonyourrequest" - this has to be told with one breath, or it's not by the regulations. The woman was a lieutenant colonel. She was calling me because a bullet had got lost during a guard duty, several months ago, when I had been a shift leader, and they now thought they would be able to find it.
- Corporal, would you remove your cap?
What a face! She had been a military investigator for twenty-five years, visited all bases countrywide, but never seen such a hair. The interrogation ended rather fast, the woman handled me like a weak minded, until she checked my roster sheet, on which was written: "Profession: Informatics engineer." I had a little fight with a sergeant major from company 32/B. Perhaps some of you know the tradition of "cutting the centi", which is known in most armies worldwide. The soldier gets a taylor's centimeter tape when he has only 150 days left. According to the tradition, this has to be bought by his girlfriend, or if he doesn't have one, his sister, or if he doesn't have a sister either, then his mother. He cuts one centimeter from this tape every day, so it's always as long as the number of his days left. I also had such a tape. But there is another, less known tradition, the "centi funeral". The pieces of the tape are collected in a small coffin, and they hold a military funeral on the last day. I had my pieces collected in a plastic chocolate box. On the last day the box was already full, sealed with duct tape, and a piece of paper sticked on it told that it was the tape of the soldiers who had been here from 11th February, 1998 to 29th October 1998, having lived 262 days. The funeral's planned time was in the evening. But Sergant-Major Brosko spotted the box on my desk.
- What's that, Polgar?
He tried to get the box, but I grabbed it away.
- Sorry sir, write the certificate first.
I glanced in Koronczai's office while leaving, he was already holding his head from laughter. Yes, I can also only laugh at such a primitive person who finds fun in confiscating a conscript's centimetres. This was bad luck, I wouldn't have given it even to General Ferenc Vegh, the commander of the army. So we held the funeral in the night. We invited all the oldies from the entire base. Most of them were drunk, but who cares. We buried our days at the edge of the formation ground. The August baldies formed a line, each with a candle in the hand and cried. I delivered a short speech, then Andersen gave the key to the formation ground to the May soldiers, it was a huge, old iron key. I hope this became a tradition later. The tombstone was a white shelfboard, on which we scribbled stuff with an alcohol marker. Like: "Here lie the centimetres of glorious February soldiers. Lived 262 days." This centimeter burial is a nice memory for me. It was a great ending of our service. The officers held some lame speech next day, about being proud of our army and country, and something about history that meant nothing to me. This funeral was the true goodbye for me. Endez kept the text of the speech, so you can read it now. I don't know how he remembered keeping that piece of paper, since he was so stoned that he hardly remembered the funeral itself. "Highly respected demobilizing February soldiers - highly respected staying May soldiers - highly respected rookie August soldiers! With this little ceremony we say goodbye to you, your memories will live forever in our hearts. Be good soldiers, like those described in the General Regulations of the Hungarian Home Guard, section lt/6 by the clever generals. Spend a lot of time in the kitchen, be on guard diligently, because that's good for the brains. The clown clothes you're currently wearing costed the taxpayers a lot, so don't disappoint them by wasting them. Never forget what we taught you. If the officer on duty leaves to check the quarters, the guard commander should immediately phone up. Be careful, the middle fence pole at the dog house is loose. And never, never forget: Captain Hogwash always counts the wall scribbles in the towers, as this is his only entertainment! We say thank you yo everybody who deserves. Like: - Republic of Hungary, which loves us so much that it built this beautiful base for us. - The thousands of soldiers being here before us, who put this base into its current state. - Again the Republic of Hungary, which thinks that this base and this army are all right the way they are. - Our officers, who gave us lot of freedom. - Those very few, who really gave us that. - The supply company for always stealing our food. - The May soldiers, who did the washups for us. - The August soldiers, who will take care of the seals from now. - And everyone else who came to this funeral. And now I ask Private Gyorgy Nyuli, as the representative of the February bunch, to give the key of the formation ground to the May... OLDIES! And now, you can all piss on the grave, assholes!" In fact we wanted to hold some little goodbye party at the quarters, inviting the officers who deserved. We planned to have a cake, sandwiches, some champagne perhaps, as it was a celebration. The idea failed, even though only a thousand forints were needed per skull, the niggard Borsod guys said they wouldn't give any money, and would only come to the party if there was going to be cheap canned wine, and if everybody was going to be dead drunk. There were only ten of us who were willing to sacrifice a thousand forints, so the party got cancelled. I left the base on 29th October 1998, and I finished my military service. They registered me a reservist corporal, I did not become a sergeant as expected, because Mihalyi forgot to arrange this with the appropriate administration office. Not like I would be bothered by this. tomcat^grm |