Afgantsy

The Russians did not of course stay perpetually on the defensive; they took the war to the enemy as well. In September 1983 Colonel Rokhlin, the commander the 860th Independent Motor-rifle Regiment in Faisabad, was sacked for mismanaging a major operation against a concentration of mujahedin which cost fifteen killed and seventy-eight wounded, and went down in regimental legend as the ‘Bakharak Massacre’. He was replaced by Colonel Valeri Sidorov, a well-connected officer whose father taught in the General Staff College and whose mother was a member of the Supreme Soviet. Sidorov was not popular. He was courageous and led from the front, but his soldiers found him hard-driving and ambitious, careless of their lives as he devised ever more ingenious and dangerous operations to enhance his career. The shadow under which the regiment was living after the ‘Bakharak Massacre’ spurred his ambition still further: he would, by his deeds, restore its reputation.

His first big operation, in January 1984, was aimed at rooting out the guerrillas around the village of Karamugul, a few miles along a gorge from Faisabad. The whole regiment would be involved, including the cooks and drivers. The grandfathers who were expecting to go home in a matter of weeks were particularly unhappy at the news: it was a rule of thumb among the soldiers that courage begins to run out as the prospect of survival draws closer.

After a rousing speech by the colonel, they moved out early in the morning. An hour later they were clambering up on to the plateau on the western side of the gorge. The temperature was just above zero, it was raining, and by two o’clock they were soaked. Because of the weather they had no air cover.

By five o’clock in the morning Karamagul was effectively blockaded. The temperature had fallen to between minus fifteen and minus twenty degrees, and officers and men were huddling together for warmth. The soldiers from the reconnaissance company—the razvedchiki—went into Karamugul at six. The village was empty by then, though the stoves were still warm: both the villagers and the insurgents had got out in good time. There was no point in hanging about and at eight o’clock the troops began to withdraw. They were immediately set upon by mujahedin. Only the razvedchiki managed to get to their BMPs and pull out.

The third platoon covered the retreat on the plateau. They were more heavily armed than the mujahedin, but the latter had the advantage of numbers and mobility. The cooks and the drivers, together with some wounded and men from the mortar battery, were ordered straight back to the regimental base under a praporshchik, Sandirescu. They started off across the plateau, but after they were caught in crossfire Sandirescu took them down into the gorge which led to the base, hoping that would be the quickest way home. The rest of the battalion managed to disengage at the cost of a few lightly wounded, but when they reached the edge of the plateau overlooking their base, they once again came under fire. They slid down the snow-covered slopes on their behinds and eventually worked their way home.

When the roll call was taken, it was discovered that Sandirescu and his party had still not returned. The razvedchiki, who were still comparatively fresh, set off in their BMPs to find them. They returned at five o’clock in the evening, with the body of one of the cooks. They had picked up six more soldiers stumbling back to base. Sandirescu was one of them, but he was too shocked to say what had happened. Two others turned up during the night: a cook who had lost his boots and whose feet were cut to pieces; and one of the drivers, nicknamed the ‘Moldovan’, whose weapon had to be taken by force from his frozen hands. All he could say was that the rest were dead, except for one soldier, Pashanin, who had been taken prisoner.

Colonel Sidorov realised he was in trouble. He would be castigated for not waiting for better weather and a helicopter escort; the village was known to be well defended; his force was too small for the job; the cooks and drivers had been hopelessly unsuitable for battle. How was he to explain to his superiors that no one knew what had happened to the missing men? The exhausted soldiers were asked to volunteer to go out to find them. During the night—something unprecedented in army life—a grandfather and five new recruits stayed up to clean their weapons, get them dry clothing from the store, and dry their boots. The next day, swearing mightily, the volunteers set off into a cold clear dawn, a light snow falling, escorted this time by helicopters.

While half the soldiers climbed back on to the plateau to cover them, Ponomarev and his men were sent to the gorge along which Sandirescu had tried to withdraw. They found some landmines and some piles of spent cartridges. The river was frozen and they systematically broke the ice in case there was something beneath it. Almost at the end of their strength, they eventually found the frozen, mutilated, and emasculated remains of seven soldiers.

It was clear what had happened. Under fire, the wretched cooks had rushed as fast as they could towards their base, instead of taking up a defensive position and calling for help. The Moldovan and Pashanin, the two oldest soldiers in the group, had covered their retreat as best they could. The mujahedin had attacked the little detachment from both ends of the gorge. A third group had mowed them down from above. After running out of ammunition, the Moldovan had saved himself by jumping into the frozen river. Pashanin had refused to follow and was captured. The regiment later heard through their Afghan agents that he had been castrated and a ring put through his nose. He had been dragged naked through the villages and finished off a month later.

Six months later a scruffy small boy came to the base and offered to show them where Pashanin’s body was buried—for a price. The corpse was unrecognisable. The soldiers buried the body and for good measure slapped the small boy about a bit. In the absence of positive identification, Pashanin was recorded as missing in action.

Undismayed, Sidorov decided to mount another major operation. The direct route from Kishim to Faisabad —the Old Kishim Road—ran for about twenty miles. But it went over the Argu Pass, which was firmly controlled by the mujahedin. The only other available route was the New Kishim Road, which wound by a roundabout way for over sixty miles. The journey normally took three to four days, since the convoys, escorted by armoured vehicles, sappers, and the reconnaissance company, moved at a walking pace: quite literally, because the sappers had to go ahead on foot, looking for mines and roadside bombs. Even so, there were usually two or three explosions each time a convoy went out. If a column was fired upon, it would destroy the nearest village to deter further attacks. By the end of 1983 the New Kishim Road was lined with ruins.

Sidorov decided to reopen the Old Kishim Road and thus free for offensive operations the two battalions now immobilised by guard and escort duties. The whole regiment would take part in the operation, leaving only small garrisons to guard the regimental and battalion bases.

The operation took place at the end of May 1984. The evening before it began Sidorov gave another fiery speech to his men, calling on them to be worthy of their fathers and to fight to the last in the pursuit of victory. This time the temperature was forty degrees in the shade and several men fainted before he had finished.

The task force moved off the following morning in a cloud of black smoke, its engines roaring. At first things went well enough. But after the operation had been under way for several days it was decisively brought to an end by an avoidable accident.

Sidorov’s command vehicle got stuck in a river crossing. His driver was unable to get it going again. Sidorov hauled him out of the driver’s hatch, sent him on his way with a few well-placed blows, and slid into his place. As he did so, a grenade he was carrying snagged. The fuse ignited and in the few seconds remaining before the grenade went off Sidorov was unable to get rid of it. In the last second, he tried to shield the other men in the vehicle from the blast. He himself was killed.

The operation was immediately called off. That evening all the officers of the regiment got drunk. They fired off their guns and signal flares, and for good measure four tanks let off a salvo at the nearest kishlak so that the locals too should also have something to remember Sidorov by. The soldiers got no vodka, but they were given extra helpings of meat and fried potatoes. The new recruits were detailed off to mount the guard for the night.

The mutilated body was put back together in the regimental morgue and dressed in Sidorov’s parade uniform. The next day the regiment paraded to honour his coffin. The guard of honour was mounted by the regimental officers, all with hangovers. The regimental band played as the coffin, loaded with Sidorov’s medals, was carried to the helicopter to begin the long journey back to a grave in Moscow’s Kuzminskoe Cemetery.⁴⁰

The Sledgehammer