I was given a helmet today. The donor was very drunk, and in a fit of drunken generosity he said that he wanted to give me a "hat". He rummaged for a long time in the closet, and then took out a real tank headset.

The helmet was for some reason wiped and burned as if from the sun outside, but clean inside. How can this be? With leather straps, sheepskin and really heavy. I asked: "Trophy?" And everyone laughed together. I walked through the city with a real tank headset in my hand, as if with a bag, and passers-by looked at me, experiencing a certain break in the template: a man in plainclothes walking around the city carrying a tank helmet in his hand, like a shopping bag.

I think the war went through so many of us, an indifferent and ruthless ice rink. There is no war "just", even if you do not have almost no attitude toward it, as it seems,. Just yesterday the guy told me that a year ago his mother was killed near Millerovo - the driver fell asleep at the wheel, 6 passengers of the minibus were killed, all were traveling through Russia to Ukraine in a raid for pensions, they were driven just by his mother - the organizer of this trip.

Now this guy and his girlfriend are waiting for the baby. "I managed to introduce my mother to my girlfriend," he says..

Is it about the war? As if there were not. But it is this story that comes to my mind first.

A pleasant young woman told me somehow simply by the way, as if it was not at all about this, as a year ago I was wounded with a burst of a machine gun from a roadblock near Alchevsk in a bus passing by. She was sitting behind, she always sits there. Shards fell on the shovel, she was operated on, treated. She really can not say why the queue was allowed on their bus, she travels every day to work:.

"They were just given a salary, the one that shot was drunk".

I traveled a year ago many times this route and well remember that checkpoint. Up to a hundred buses rides by every day. Why it was so "lucky" - an operation, a long treatment, recovery, consequences.

"Only I was not lucky in the whole bus. I always sit down in these places ... "Today, local customs officials remembered an episode of how they detained a family who found a military grenade in a backpack of a three-year-old child. They began to search when my father became nervous.

"We were taken to Russia as a gift".

They say that now there is a powerful trench of weapons - for sale from here. All that's here, a "trophy" that burns a pocket, that you need to attach it somewhere, preferably with profit ... A year ago our precinct told me:.

"Are not you afraid that neighbors will throw you a grenade at night?".

It was about a conflict with neighbors, which I myself could not resolve, and my wife, contrary to me, called the precinct. And oddly enough such a monstrous phrase sounded quite logically from the lips of an employee of "law enforcement agencies" - as consideration of all possible outcomes of the conflict: remember the case, otherwise you will be worse. From these same neighbors, I heard threats that the guys will come and "talk", "the husband works for the" MGB "(" Ministry of State Security ") and other. As in the 90's, when it was fashionable and necessary to have your own "roof".

Just yesterday, I heard that for such references to working and serving relatives are punished - for a year the local "army" became like a slightly frightened and very expensive by his place nabriolinennogo office clerk. The hasty and quiet "military" in the morning and in the evening rush to "work" and from work. Someone finishes the contract, someone found himself in all this and is quite happy that this system for him. And for someone it's just an experience, what happens in life hundreds. And this one of them, no worse than, it seems, many experienced. I am amazed at those quiet guys in uniform who give interviews from a local TV channel. Such sensible, exemplary - movie heroes. Where are all those who shot from the machine on the public bus, crashed into a tank in the crowd at a crossroads, crushing to death, who drove the mattress on an APC and bragged with animal skulls on passenger cars? The local "army" is like a powerful millstone, grinding everything in its path. I could lean forward, accept, obey and change - you will stay, no - you will drop out like falling out of the trains on the run. And no one's merits are needed. Neither courage, nor that from the first day, nor injury. It is important to clearly fulfill someone's established order, diligence, readiness to accept without a murmur and silently into the tail, and into the mane.

This is a strange transformation. Nobody expects patriotism - you need commitment and patience. And in such a modernized "army" there are fewer old residents, those who came there in May 2014 and stayed until today. They just were not needed. Nobody satisfied the ambitions, did not appreciate the merits of the merits. And those who are not included in any way in the "service" are often simply not ready to be grateful for being defended, saved, defended ... I wonder if I was "defended" a little less, probably the school near our house would still work.

I listened not so long ago to a speech in front of students of local "military". And there was such an episode there as during a sudden terrible battle that took the life of his comrades-in-arms, along the road next to everything that was happening was the Zhiguli. He was stopped, asked to turn around and take the wounded man to the city. They asked:.

"What are you doing here at all, the battle is ten meters away, people are dying!".

And the driver said that he was going to visit his dacha ... The narrator remembered this most of all - as during the battle someone just went to his dacha without knowing anything about.

All civilians who are not connected with the local army, like that driver of a Zhiguli woman, live their own lives, planning and implementing something ... And the war is often in parallel with our life, next to it, touching it so shockingly, suddenly, with jerks ... Editorial site does not carry Responsibility for the content of blogs. The editorial opinion may differ from the author's.

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