Zinky Boys by Svetlana Alexievich

overtakes you.
    It would be easier to shoot men than watch and hear them sobbing, begging for death and release — the ones who’ve got enough strength to do it. Others lie there with fear creeping over them, their hearts faltering, shouting, calling. You take their pulse — it’s normal so you aren’t too worried. But the brain is waiting for that moment when a person is most relaxed: you’ve hardly left the boy’s bedside and he’s dead.
    You don’t forget things like that so soon. And as these boy-soldiers who survive get older they’ll relive it over and over again. They’ll see things very differently. My father was a World War II pilot but he never talked about it. He didn’t think it was anything very special; that was something I could never understand. Now just one word, just the slightest reference, brings it all back to me.
    Yesterday I read in the paper about some soldier who’d fought until his last bullet and then shot himself. What does that really mean — to shoot oneself? In battle it comes down to a simple question of survival: you or him? Obviously — you. But you’re alone, covering your comrades’ retreat, either because you were ordered to or else because you volunteered (knowing it meant your almost certain death). In that moment, I’m sure, it’s psychologically not difficult to shoot yourself. In such a situation suicide can be seen as the normal reaction of many men. Afterwards they are called heroes. In everyday life suicides are considered abnormal, in the old days they weren’t even allowed to be buried in the cemetery … Two lines in the newspaper and I can’t sleep all night, the whole thing comes up and swamps me all over again.
    No one who was over there wants to fight another war. We won’t be fooled again. All of us, whether we were naïve or cruel, good or rotten, fathers, husbands and sons, we were all killers. I understood what I was really doing — I was part of an invading army, let’s face it — but I don’t regret a thing. Nowadays there’s a lot of talk about guilt-feelings, but I personally don’t feel guilty. Those who sent us there are the guilty ones. I enjoy wearing my army uniform, I feel a real man, and women go crazy over it. But once I went to a restaurant in my field-uniform, and the manageress stared at me in a very hostile way, and I just longed for her to make trouble. I would have told her: ‘You don’t like the way I’m dressed? Too bad! Make way for a hero!’
    Just let someone even hint they don’t like my field-uniform! For some reason I’m looking for that someone — I’m spoiling for a fight.
    A Mother
    My first was a girl. Before she was born my husband used to say, girl or boy, he didn’t mind, but a girl would be better because she’d be able to do up her little brother’s shoelaces! And that’s the way it turned out.
    Second time round, my husband rang the hospital.
    â€˜It’s a girl.’
    â€˜Good. That’s two we’ve got.’
    Then they told him the truth: ‘You have a son, a little boy!’
    Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!’ That showed his true feelings.
    The first two days the nurses brought the babies to theirmothers, all except mine. No one said a thing. I started crying and ran a temperature. The doctor came. ‘Now, Mum,’ she comforted me. ‘Nothing to worry about. You’ve got a little giant there. He’s still asleep and he won’t wake up till he’s hungry.’ But I didn’t calm down until they brought him to me, unwrapped him and let me see him asleep.
    What name to choose, that was the next thing. Our three favourites were Sasha, Alyosha and Misha. So my husband and daughter came to the hospital and Tanechka decided to draw ‘lotths’ — she couldn’t say ‘lots’. The bit of paper with