Monuments of the Afghan war

You've never seen it, son,
How a fuel truck burns,
When the column is under fire
Burned in screams, but without tears.
…
EFREMOV D. From the poem " Conversation with my father»

The Afghan war is not the best pages of our country's military history. And these are not the most pleasant memories of those who were able to return from there. On the scale of this conflict is not comparable to the great Patriotic war-there was present and fought a limited contingent of Soviet troops (OKSV), but many were more than enough. Dry statistics are one thing, but personal, hard — won, and experienced are another. None of the former "Soviets" doesn't like to talk about his past. They only remember it when they hear songs about that war. When they come to meetings, anniversaries and funerals of colleagues. And during the third toast, which is drunk standing, silently and in one gulp.

In contrast to the heroic cinematic pathos, the truth about the war is usually ugly and sometimes frankly ugly, but Afghanistan... Someone said that this country is similar to the red planet named after the God of war – Mars. The scorching sun, thin air, and dust storms are "Afghans" raising columns of prickly sand. Endless purple mountains, desert, rocks and rare Islands of "Zelenka".

There is no twilight: night does not come, but "falls" like a big curtain. Villages with clay duvals, dukans, where at that time it was possible to buy "firm": jeans-"varenki", tape recorders-cassetniki "sharp" and "Sony", where barefoot curious "bachata" run and a lonely old man with a donkey wanders. And there's a different culture, different customs, different life. The East is a delicate matter…

Through the prism of the modelling of the Afghan war is usually the choppers Mi-8 "Bee" ("flits" from airfield to airfield, as the bee from flower to flower, and looks similar) and Mi-24 "Shmel" (bumblebee not every flower is an airfield can take, plus a heavy "bumblebee" in the rarefied air sometimes had to fly "an aircraft", the so-called "Afghan" rise), an-12 "Black Tulip" (the name of the funeral company, the main cargo is "two hundredth"), "box" of the T-62, BTR-70 and BMP-2 infantry armor, armored columns, running along the mountain slope or gorge.

And the Afghan is the charred carcasses of damaged cars lying on the slopes. Monuments of the Afghan war.

But for some reason, I have never seen among the models on the theme of Afghanistan machines that performed their tasks on a par with others and were part of almost every column. These vehicles had no weapons or protection, so they were often the target of ambushes by the dushmans. I'm talking about trucks carrying food, ammunition, and fuel. These were mostly onboard KAMAZ 5320 or KAMAZ 5410 ("scows"). KamAZ trucks with a fuel tank were called "tankers". The Urals also met, but much less frequently.

Many of these vehicles were lost in the Charikar Zelenka, the Panjshir gorge, and the Salang mountain pass. Cars exploded on mines and land mines, were fired from RPGs, and came under sniper and machine-gun fire. And destroying or immobilizing a single vehicle often meant blocking the entire column. Therefore, the wounded and dead were evacuated, and the damaged equipment, if it could not move, was pushed off the road to make way for the column. As a result, almost 10 years of war left entire cemeteries of abandoned equipment in Afghanistan.

The song of Colonel M. M. Kalinin – Kolonna is dedicated to the memory of these vehicles, fallen soldiers and veterans of 14 OTB 276 otbr.

COLUMN

The engine on the rise is roaring,
As if the thin air is angry.
The column is, the column is –
Tired trucks, wheels and faces…

The column goes past the mountain peaks,
Meadows and fields in multicolored patches
And past the skeletons of burned cars,
That were columns, too, once.

Let in the back only gasoline and flour,
And how are the mountains painted in the picture,
But his hand froze on the machine,
And the world is focused in the field of view.

Chorus:
Here on the bowl of one sugar, salt and flour,
And gasoline, and cartridges, and bread…
And on the second bowl (what can I do?) – while
Our souls and body armor.

KamAZ-hard worker and runs hard,
And, like a shutter, the nerves are distorted…
On this road, so it happened,
We'll have to shoot second, not first.

The air above the hot concrete is shaking,
And a new KAMAZ grows out of it…
To pass the road is to live through life,
And life is not enough for everyone on the road.

There is no other way in the mountains,
And you can't find a better target than columns…
But we will go, we will go!
And themselves on mines enter, and in sights…

Chorus.

And a flash on the slope, breaks and ringing
Windshield glass of the front car.
Through the roar of gunfire, a muffled groan,
And the barrel of the machine gun goes long.

And smoke fumes, flaring up, KAMAZ,
Diesel fuel and blood on hot concrete…
And squinting evil through the sight of the right eye,
And the stones crumble from the explosions on the slope…

Who is with us, who is wounded, who is alive, who is killed –
All this is not above the other limit.
The column stands... After all, the column is standing!
And the bullets are big enough your body!

Chorus.

And death would have tightened the circle,
There are such guys behind the wheel!
The burning KAMAZ swayed and suddenly
He crawled toward the cliff on steaming ramps.

And, having passed through a round ledge,
He, as a man, on the last strength,
Froze for a second and rushed down,
The Exodus column was given from the grave…

And in the world there was no more evil in everything
To stop us, to force us back.
The column went. Yes, the column went!
And the second, and the sixth, and the eighth, and the tenth!

   Chorus.

PS. As illustrations photos of models Gennady Zavrazhnov, photos from the personal archive of the author, and also a photo of unknown authors from the network.