Emergency department nurses in hospitals in Afghanistan. Afghan sunburn: life and death through the eyes of a military nurse

Do you know how many Soviet women participated in the Afghan campaign? Lenta.ru military columnist Ilya Kramnik reminds us of women whose service society prefers not to notice.

Basically, the image of a woman in a warring army in our minds is associated with the memory of the Great Patriotic War. A nurse on the battlefield near Moscow and Stalingrad, a nurse in a hospital, a sniper in no man's land, a pilot of a female bomber regiment, a traffic controller on the streets of defeated Berlin. However, with the end of the war, the history of women in the ranks of the Armed Forces did not end at all - after 1945, women made up a significant part of the personnel of the USSR Armed Forces, especially in non-combat positions - the same medicine, communications, some administrative and staff positions.

Women soldiers and civilian personnel of the Soviet and Russian militaries participated in many post-war conflicts, including Afghanistan and both Chechen wars, but a detailed history of women's participation in these and other wars has yet to emerge.

There is not even an official figure of how many women served in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other hot spots.

In any case, for the 1979-1989 Afghan War this number is in the thousands, with leading estimates hovering around 20-21 thousand. It is known that more than 1,300 women received awards for their service “beyond the river”, and about 60 died in this war.

The vast majority of them are civil servants: nurses, paramedics, employees of political departments, employees of the military trade department, secretaries. But a war without a front line made no distinctions.

Dorosh Svetlana Nikolaevna, serving in the Soviet army, sent to war by the Ministry of Defense

Nurse.

Born 07/12/1963 in the village of Slavyanka, Mezhevsky district, Dnepropetrovsk region of the Ukrainian SSR, Ukrainian.

She lived in Dnepropetrovsk and worked as a nurse at an ambulance station.

Voluntarily 02/19/1986 through Amur-Nizhnedneprovsky RVC of Dnepropetrovsk was sent to work in Afghanistan.

Lykova Tatyana Vasilievna, a serving member of the Soviet army, sent to war by the Ministry of Defense

Born 04/01/1963 in Voronezh, Russian.

On November 13, she was enrolled in the military registration and enlistment office for service in Afghanistan, and in Kabul she was assigned to the position of secretary of secret records management at the headquarters 15th Special Forces Special Forces of Jalalabad and died on November 29 in a plane that was blown up while flying from Kabul to Jalalabad (that is, only 16 days had passed since the date of receiving the referral from the military registration and enlistment office).

She was awarded the Order of the Red Star (posthumously) and the medal “To the Internationalist from the grateful Afghan people.”

Strelchenok Galina Gennadievna, warrant officer, paramedic

Born 05/18/1962 in the town of Begoml, Dokshitsy district, Vitebsk region of the BSSR, Belarusian.

Lived in the Minsk region and worked as a manager paramedic-midwife point in the village Balashi, Vileika district, Minsk region.

She was drafted into the Armed Forces of the USSR through the Minsk RVC 10/18/1984
In Afghanistan since December 1985.

Killed in battle on December 29, 1986 near Herat while repelling an attack on a convoy.

Awarded the Order of the Red Star (posthumously). Awarded posthumously by Decree of the President of the Republic of Belarus A. Lukashenko dated December 24, 2003 No. 575 in the Minsk region “On awarding internationalist warriors medal "In memory 10th anniversary withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan."

These are just three paragraphs from a long list of women killed in Afghanistan, compiled by Alla Smolina, one of the participants in this war, who served for three years in Jalalabad as the head of the office of the military prosecutor's office of the Jalalabad garrison.

In addition to shelling of convoys and mines along the roads, Afghan women, along with men, were exposed to all the other dangers of being in a warring country - from car and plane accidents, to crimes and serious illnesses. At the same time, in 2006, civil servants of the Ministry of Defense who served in the Afghan war were deprived of veteran benefits granted to military personnel by the law on the monetization of benefits (No. 122-FZ of August 28, 2004).

The new law excluded “civilians” of both sexes, despite the fact that the civilian personnel of the Ministry of Defense who served in Afghanistan were exposed to dangers no less than the military personnel who served there in non-combat positions.

Unfortunately, there is practically no systematic data on the service of women in the Russian army and air force in Chechnya. At the same time, the network is full of “horror stories” about “Baltic snipers,” which obviously excite the imagination.

Today, about 60 thousand women serve in the Russian army, of which about half are civilians, and the rest are about 30 thousand soldiers and contract sergeants and about 2,000 female officers.

The set of positions has not changed fundamentally - communications, medicine, administrative and management positions still remain the main ones. There are also those who serve in combat positions, although compared to the Armed Forces of the United States and Western Europe, their number is still small. In some places there are still no women at all - for example, service on warships and submarines remains a male prerogative. Only as an exception do they appear in the cockpits of combat aircraft. The question of whether it is necessary to achieve the same broad representation of women in combat positions, as has already been done in the United States, remains open, and there is no clear answer to it.

But one thing is clear - women who have already chosen this path deserve respect at least for their willpower: not every man can withstand the service, which often turns into a daily test of “weakness”.

The wound of the Afghan war will not heal for a long time. Over the 10 years of the active phase of the armed conflict, losses on the part of the USSR amounted to more than 15 thousand people. Experts say they could have been much larger if not for the dedication of military doctors. We found such a person: Glafira Gordyunina first saw the war with her own eyes at the age of 19, and during her service, the fragile girl managed to save dozens of wounded soldiers. However, first things first...

Glafira (right) with a colleague in a rare quiet moment between operations.

Sudden call

She was born in Kletsk into a friendly, simple family. She and her twin sister are the eldest of seven children. Parents instilled hard work, honesty, justice, and respect for elders.

Glafira was often sick as a child. And she was admired by people in white coats, who more than once restored her health. She grew up and graduated from Minsk Medical School No. 1 with a degree in medical laboratory assistant. At the Vitebsk Central Regional Hospital she was warmly welcomed after school. They helped with the dormitory and gave me the opportunity to work extra. Glafira thought that a year would pass and she would enter medical school, but a sudden call to the military registration and enlistment office changed her plans.

- They offered military service in their specialty in a separate medical sanitary battalion of the 103rd Guards Airborne Division, - recalls Glafira Anatolyevna. - In October 1980, I was called up voluntarily for military service. I knew that the division was already in Afghanistan. But some of the individual units, including the medical battalion, were still in Vitebsk. My soul is restless. They began to bring in the first dead and wounded. A month later, we, five girls, were appointed to nurse positions in the division’s medical battalion units and announced a business trip to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. We were convinced that we would be there temporarily. Everything will calm down, and we will return back. I couldn’t refuse; I was only 19 years old at the time. I was especially worried about my mother; I was afraid that my patriotic act could shorten the years of her life. After such a decision, something very similar to a hive was happening in our large family...

The awards, although not military, are well deserved.

And so on November 13, 1980, in front of the medical battalion, clutching a machine gun in her hands, Glafira took the military oath. The medical battalion where she served was located in medical tents at the Kabul airfield. For the first three months there were no basic living conditions. There were no beds; we slept on a tarpaulin and covered ourselves with it. Infectious diseases gradually spread. Then the dead and wounded appeared. In short, the doctors had plenty of work to do.

She does not have the most rosy memories of the beginning of her military service:

“I’ve never had to live in a tent before, but here we have problems with fresh water, heating, washing, and poor food supplies. My weight was quietly melting away. Food parcels sent by relatives helped out. But all this went to another level when I saw the wounded soldiers for the first time and spent more than four hours on my feet in the operating room. Everything was mixed up in my head, as if I found myself there, among the heroes of books about the Great Patriotic War, about which I read a lot. It was necessary to preserve his health in order to save him later when he was wounded. In war, a person quickly gets used to everything and adapts. Personal problems fade into the background.

The main task was to provide assistance to the wounded and sick in a timely manner, in a short time, day and night, and return them to duty. The fighting gained momentum every month. And the doctors were in the operating room day and night.

- A call from the airfield and the shouting voice of the duty officer or orderly: “Girls, to the operating room!” - have become so familiar, as if you were being invited to some kind of spectacle. Often difficult situations arose when the life of a young officer or soldier was decided in a matter of minutes. And I had to get up, open my eyes, walk, crawl into the operating room. One surgical team performed 10-12 complex operations per day, not counting minor ones. It happened, unfortunately, that someone who seemed destined to survive died, and vice versa, the doomed person miraculously survived.

She often had to accompany the seriously wounded and sick to the Kabul hospital. In ambulances with armed guards they moved through foreign land. And it was even hotter in the hospital. The wounded were delivered there by helicopters from the sites of all the battles fought by formations and units of the 40th Army.

And how many “200 cargoes” she saw with her own eyes when they were loaded into “black tulips” to be sent to the Union! It was a silent final farewell to those who can no longer be helped.

Now Glafira GORDYUNINA is a senior paramedic laboratory assistant of the highest category in a clinical hematology laboratory.

Glafira Anatolyevna served in Afghanistan for a year. After returning, I couldn’t come to my senses for a long time. The war did not let me go. I dreamed of guys in hospital beds, eyes that begged for mercy and help. The soldiers wanted to live and return home. She understood and realized that the war continued, cruelly breaking and destroying destinies. These experienced days and nights, like fragments of grenades, sometimes hurt in her soul. The pain subsided, but did not recede. It's just an unhealed wound...

Having calmed down a little and rested, I began studying at the full-time preparatory department of BSU in order to enter the Faculty of Chemistry. I couldn’t finish, I was used to being with sick people. She worked as a procedural nurse at the Snovsky military hospital. In 1986, she was sent to one of the military hospitals in the Southern Group of Forces in Hungary. There she was a nurse in the emergency department and a head nurse in the infectious diseases department. There she met her other half and married Lieutenant Alexander Gordyunin. They already have adult children. And my husband eventually became a colonel, now he is in the reserve, teaching at the Military Academy.

The head of the clinical laboratory diagnostics department of the 432nd Order of the Red Star of the main military clinical medical center of the Armed Forces, retired colonel Vladimir Doronin, talks about the senior paramedic laboratory assistant in the hematology laboratory:

- Glafira Anatolyevna is a very responsible and qualified specialist. A wonderful woman. Very kind, caring. He will never pass by someone else's misfortune, he will always lend a helping hand, assist in word and deed. You meet her in any situation, always invariably friendly and welcoming. You see the smile on her courageous and spiritual face - and it becomes easy in your soul that there is a shining example for everyone of how to live and treat people.

Leonid PRISCHEPA, retired colonel, member of the Belarusian Union of Journalists

The participation of Soviet women in the Afghan conflict was not particularly advertised. Numerous steles and obelisks commemorating that war depict stern male faces.

Nowadays, a civilian nurse who suffered from typhoid fever near Kabul, or a military saleswoman who was wounded by a stray shrapnel on the way to a combat unit, are deprived of additional benefits. Male officers and privates have benefits, even if they managed a warehouse or repaired cars. However, there were women in Afghanistan. They did their job properly, bravely endured the hardships and dangers of life in war and, of course, died.

How women got to Afghanistan

Women soldiers were sent to Afghanistan by order of the command. In the early 1980s, up to 1.5% of women in uniform were in the Soviet army. If a woman had the necessary skills, she could be sent to a hot spot, often regardless of her wishes: “The Motherland said - it is necessary, the Komsomol answered - there is!”

Nurse Tatyana Evpatova recalls: in the early 1980s it was very difficult to get abroad. One of the ways is to register through the military registration and enlistment office for service in the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary, the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Mongolia, and Poland. Tatyana dreamed of seeing Germany and submitted the necessary documents in 1980. After 2.5 years, she was invited to the military registration and enlistment office and offered to go to Afghanistan.

Tatyana was forced to agree, and she was sent to Faizabad by the operating room and dressing nurse. Returning to the Union, Evpatova abandoned medicine forever and became a philologist.

Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs could also end up in Afghanistan; there were also a small number of women among them. In addition, the Ministry of Defense recruited civilian employees of the Soviet Army to serve as part of a limited contingent. Civilians, including women, were contracted and flown to Kabul and from there to duty stations around the country.

What were women tasked with in hot spots?

Women military personnel were sent to Afghanistan as translators, cryptographers, signalmen, archivists, and employees of logistics bases in Kabul and Puli-Khumri. Many women worked as paramedics, nurses and doctors in front-line medical units and hospitals.

Civil servants received positions in military stores, regimental libraries, laundries, and worked as cooks and waitresses in canteens. In Jalalabad, the commander of the 66th separate motorized rifle brigade managed to find a secretary-typist who was also a hairdresser for the soldiers of the unit. Among the paramedics and nurses there were also civilian women.

Under what conditions did the weaker sex serve?

The war does not discriminate by age, profession and gender - a cook, a salesman, a nurse, in the same way, came under fire, exploded in mines, and burned in downed planes. In everyday life we ​​had to cope with numerous difficulties of a nomadic, unsettled life: a toilet booth, a shower from an iron barrel of water in a tarpaulin-covered fence.

“Living rooms, operating rooms, outpatient clinics and a hospital were located in canvas tents. At night, fat rats ran between the outer and lower layers of the tents. Some fell through the old fabric and fell down. We had to invent gauze curtains to prevent these creatures from getting on our naked bodies,” recalls nurse Tatyana Evpatova. - In the summer, even at night it was above plus 40 degrees - we covered ourselves with wet sheets. Already in October there were frosts - we had to sleep in straight pea coats. Dresses from the heat and sweat turned into rags - having obtained chintz from the military store, we sewed simple robes.”

Special assignments are a delicate matter

Some women coped with tasks of unimaginable complexity, where experienced men failed. Tajik Mavlyuda Tursunova arrived in western Afghanistan at the age of 24 (her division was stationed in Herat and Shindand). She served in the 7th Directorate of the Main Political Directorate of the SA and the Navy, which was engaged in special propaganda.

Mavlyuda spoke her native language perfectly, and more Tajiks lived in Afghanistan than in the USSR. Komsomol member Tursunova knew many Islamic prayers by heart. Shortly before being sent to war, she buried her father and for a whole year listened weekly to funeral prayers read by the mullah. Her memory did not fail her.

The instructor of the political department, Tursunova, was given the task of convincing women and children that the Shuravi are their friends. The fragile girl boldly walked around the villages, she was allowed into the houses in the women's quarters. One of the Afghans agreed to confirm that he knew her as a small child, and then her parents took her to Kabul. When asked directly, Tursunova confidently called herself Afghan.

The plane in which Tursunova was flying from Kabul was shot down on takeoff, but the pilot managed to land on a minefield. Miraculously, everyone survived, but already in the Union Mavluda was paralyzed - she was caught up with shell shock. Fortunately, the doctors were able to get her back on her feet. Tursunova was awarded the Order of Honor, the Afghan medals “10 Years of the Saur Revolution” and “From the Grateful Afghan People,” and the medal “For Courage.”

How many were there?

To this day, there are no accurate official statistics on the number of civilian and military women who participated in the Afghan war. There is information about 20-21 thousand people. 1,350 women who served in Afghanistan were awarded orders and medals of the USSR.

Information collected by enthusiasts confirms the death of 54 to 60 women in Afghanistan. Among them are four warrant officers and 48 civilian employees. Some were blown up by mines, came under fire, others died from disease or accidents. Alla Smolina spent three years in Afghanistan and served as head of the office in the military prosecutor's office of the Jalalabad garrison. For many years she has been scrupulously collecting and publishing information about heroines forgotten by their homeland - saleswomen, nurses, cooks, waitresses.

Typist Valentina Lakhteeva from Vitebsk voluntarily went to Afghanistan in February 1985. A month and a half later, she died near Puli-Khumri during shelling of a military unit. Paramedic Galina Shakleina from the Kirov region served for a year in a military hospital in Northern Kunduz and died of blood poisoning. Nurse Tatyana Kuzmina from Chita served for a year and a half in the Jalalabad medical hospital. She drowned in a mountain river while saving an Afghan child. Not awarded.

Didn't make it to the wedding

The heart and feelings cannot be turned off even in war. Unmarried girls or single mothers often met their love in Afghanistan. Many couples did not want to wait to return to the Union to get married. A waitress in the canteen for flight personnel, Natalya Glushak, and a signal company officer, Yuri Tsurka, decided to register their marriage at the Soviet consulate in Kabul and left there from Jalalabad with a convoy of armored personnel carriers.

Soon after leaving the unit's checkpoint, the convoy ran into a Mujahideen ambush and came under heavy fire. The lovers died on the spot - in vain they waited until late at the consulate for the couple to register their marriage.

But not all the girls died at the hands of the enemy. A former Afghan soldier recalls: “Natasha, a military trade employee in Kunduz, was shot by her boyfriend, the head of the Special Department from Hairatan. He himself shot himself half an hour later. He was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner, and an order was read about her in front of the unit, calling her a “dangerous currency speculator.”

Incomparable Valentina Alexandrovna! We wish you to preserve the wonderful properties of your soul, remaining as beautiful and unique.

This recognition was addressed to our fellow countrywoman, Valentina Aleksandrovna Popova (now Gordeeva), who served in a military hospital during the Afghan War. Warm words showed general gratitude for the inexhaustible female kindness. Thanks to people like Valya Popova, nurses in white coats, merciful and caring, hundreds of our young soldiers were saved and put into service.

I was born into a large family in the village of Semenovskaya, Tarnogsky district, Vologda region on September 19, 1957. Father - Popov Alexander Ivanovich - participant in the Great Patriotic War. Mother - Popova Galina Evgenievna - a home front worker.

In 1975 she graduated from Zaborsky secondary school. She left for Leningrad, where she entered medical school. In 1977 she graduated and began working as a nurse in the surgical department of a city clinic. In January 1980, I received a summons from the military registration and enlistment office, since I was liable for military service. I urgently needed to go to the military commissar.

From him I learned that the Leningrad Central Military Hospital No. 650 was being formed, which was recruiting experienced doctors and nurses. A limited contingent of Soviet troops was introduced into Afghanistan at the end of 1979 to provide assistance to the friendly people of Afghanistan. And we learned that there was a war going on there, they were shooting, shells were exploding, and our guys were dying when we started working in the hospital.

That's how my military service began on January 20, 1980, first with paperwork. So as not to worry, I wrote to my parents that they were sending me on a business trip to the Caucasus. They found out about everything about a year later. Mom was very worried about me.

From the military registration and enlistment office we were taken to form a hospital in a military unit in Uglovo near Leningrad. We lived in barracks, beds in two tiers, about 150 people.

On a frosty winter day on January 28, they loaded into the carriages to the music of a military orchestra, it seems they were playing the march “Farewell of the Slavyanka”. We brought all the medical equipment for the hospital with us. Let's go to Termez. Mostly we traveled at night and stood at some station during the day. We arrived about eleven days later. For two months, we lived there in tents for 20 people, with the same bunk beds and a potbelly stove to protect ourselves from the cold, at which we took turns keeping the fire going around the clock. And on March 30, on a huge AN-22 plane, together with hospital patients We were sent by car to Afghanistan and dropped off in Kabul.

They brought us to the outskirts of the city, where a tent hospital was located at the foot of the mountains. They immediately got to work, as the fighting was going on. Doctors and nurses provided assistance to the wounded and sick. The surgery and infectious diseases department were overcrowded. The most severely ill patients were sent to the Union, and the rest were treated on the spot. It was scary and painful to watch all this. Wounds, blood, burns, hepatitis, fevers, typhoid fever... The wounded often died.

In the summer it was hot, 60 degrees, and there was not enough oxygen due to the high altitude. They drove across the city to get water to the other end of Kabul, sometimes returning with nothing.

They were constantly shelling, and medical workers shared the hardships of war along with the soldiers. We worked seven days a week. But youth took its toll. We noticed the snowy tops of the mountains, poppies blooming in spring, and rejoiced at the artists who rarely came to give concerts. Eight months later, everyone was moved to barracks of 60 people each. Some are off shift, some are on shift, some are sleeping. They spoke in a half whisper.

I worked as a nurse in a therapeutic department with an intensive care ward, where patients were in coma, mainly liver coma. The wards were huge, many patients were on crutches. They learned to walk again to get back on track. Sometimes the flow of wounded was continuous, and major military operations were underway. The hospital had difficulty coping with the volume of work. There were even bunk beds in the corridors. All the medical staff were donors - they donated blood for the wounded. I also gave in, sometimes they called me at night.

We had the central hospital of the 40th Army of the TurkVO USSR Ministry of Defense. The wounded were brought from everywhere. Our task was to restore the health of the military personnel, which was successfully accomplished by doctors and nurses. We had great respect among the wounded.

In our free time, we organized get-togethers with songs and guitar. There was even a wedding. A friend married a soldier. We signed at the embassy in Kabul. They went into the city in groups of several people, since they could shoot from any peaceful shop. AWOLs were strictly suppressed. No matter how difficult it was, life was interesting. Not everyone returned from our recruitment, two died, almost all got sick, some with hepatitis, some with typhoid fever, and some with both.

For my work in the hospital, I was awarded certificates of honor, a badge for labor valor, and was included in the honor book of military unit 94777. I returned home in May 1982, by plane first to Tashkent, and then to Leningrad. I immediately went to the village to visit my parents for a while. Having healed herself with her native fields, forests, air and silence, she returned to the city.

I started working in the medical unit in the cardiac intensive care unit. After working there around the clock for nine years, she went to work during the day at a day hospital, where she worked until retirement. Now I am on a well-deserved rest.

Many years have passed and much has been erased from memory, but once every five years we meet as a whole hospital. Many are no longer alive, but we rejoice at our every meeting. For us, every colleague became family. I have great respect and love for all Afghans, especially my fellow countrymen. To all those who have walked this difficult path. I wish them health and long life.

Prepared by Irina Shirikova.

Alexander Vasilyevich Nazarenko was in Afghanistan for almost two years. He rescued wounded soldiers and officers from the clutches of death - he worked as a surgeon in a field hospital. Today Nazarenko continues to operate, but at “ citizen" - at the Kirov interdistrict hospital. And although this war ended for Soviet soldiers 25 years ago, in the minds of Alexander Vasilyevich, like hundreds of thousands of other soldiers who passed through this hot spot in all respects, Afghanistan is still raging. In the form of nightmares, split into two parts of life - before and after.

Afghanistan for the guilty

Colonel of the Medical Service Alexander Vasilievich Nazarenko worked as the head of the surgical department of a military field hospital in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1986. As the surgeon himself says, all of his service took place in the rear, so he does not have a certificate of combat participation. But he still dreams of war.

Before Afghanistan, Nazarenko served in Kuibyshev (now Samara) as a senior resident in the emergency surgery department at the district hospital.

As Alexander Vasilyevich admits, he was sent to Afghanistan because of a conflict with his boss - a widespread practice at that time. The head of the district hospital was one of those who in the army are called “marathoners.” Every morning he called the senior resident to report the situation. Naturally, Nazarenko, as a doctor who is primarily interested in the health of his patients, reported on the condition of the patients. But the boss interrupted the subordinate and demanded something else - a message about whether the territory was cleaned, whether the grass was painted, etc. One day Nazarenko could not restrain himself and said to the tyrant: “I thought that you were interested in the fate of the wounded and sick.” The vain military man did not forgive his subordinate’s insolence: he immediately went to the personnel service and ordered Nazarenko to be included in the list of those sent to Afghanistan.

Later, Alexander Vasilyevich learned that almost everyone who found himself in a hot spot were outcasts, just like him. No volunteers were sent there. The Soviet leadership thought that the volunteers were heading to Afghanistan in order to escape abroad from there.

Hospital at war

After two weeks of training at the district hospital in Tashkent (TurkVO), Nazarenko was sent to Afghanistan. The field hospital was deployed on the basis of the medical battalion, where doctors and general surgeons worked. But when the wounded were brought in, they had to be dealt with by military specialists. Therefore, when military operations were underway in a field hospital, reinforcement groups were created (units designed to strengthen medical posts when the volume of work of the latter exceeds their regular or professional capabilities - Note edit .). There were five surgical reinforcement groups in the hospital where Nazarenko served: thoracic - wounds in the chest, abdominal - in the stomach, neurosurgical - in the skull, traumatological - in the limbs, and urological.

“I graduated from the Military Medical Academy with the rank of captain and was sent to operate in the abdominal reinforcement group,” recalls a participant in the Afghan events. - We stood in operations for several hours. Turntables (helicopters) land and bring soldiers. I operate on one, and on another table the next one is given anesthesia. I’ll operate, hand it over to an assistant to stitch up the abdominal wall, and then I’ll open up the other one.

Army bureaucracy

Not only the Mujahideen fought against our soldiers, but also the climatic conditions - above all, the unbearable heat.

It was so hot that the oxygen cylinders were heating up,” Nazarenko recalls. - And then there are complications for patients - pneumonia one after another. We think it’s summer, it’s hot, what kind of pneumonia could it be? The anesthesiologist put his hand under the stream of oxygen - and it was hot. It got so hot in the sun that the wounded suffered burns to the upper respiratory tract. They began to dig dugouts directly under the surgical department and store oxygen there. Because of the heat, ours agreed with the “spirits” not to shoot from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. And so they fight until 11 o’clock, then they collect the wounded and dead. They are brought by helicopters to the hospital. It's lunch break at this time. All departments go to the canteen, and we, surgeons, radiologists, our staff, the emergency department, work. We are finishing, and the dining room is already closed. At 16 o'clock the war begins again... And there are mountains, the sun sets early. At 7 pm the wounded are brought in again. Everyone goes to dinner, and we go back to the operating room. You will only leave there late at night. There is a kettle of boiling water, a can of condensed milk, a can of stew and a brick of bread - that’s your lunch and dinner. The wounded also arrived at night. A soldier comes and shouts: “Nazarenko!” Someone wakes up and says: “He’s sleeping in the corner of the tent.” He pushes me away, and I operate again. That's how they worked. For many hours without a break.

Due to the heat, the epidemic situation was difficult. Therefore, there were sanitary requirements: the toilet had to be located 200 meters from the hospital. This played into the hands of the dushmans, who managed to plant a mine on this two-hundred-meter trail at night. And people were undermined. But the sapper was not kept in the unit. It wasn't supposed to.

The bureaucratic attitude of the top military leadership aggravated the situation of the military on the territory of the Afghan Republic. When the war in Afghanistan began, soldiers were sent there in the usual uniform: officers in ChSh (pure wool), soldiers in PSh (wool blend), chrome or cowhide boots. The clothes, to put it mildly, are unsuitable for hot climates. The officers changed their uniforms to soldiers' uniforms. But with boots it was worse - my feet swelled so much that the shoes didn’t fit...

And the fact that Alexander Vasilyevich today calls himself a “rear rat”, and the fact that, in fact, according to documents, he is not a participant in the fighting in Afghanistan, is, of course, unfair. After all, two years of stay there are not only endless operations. Although the hospital was carefully covered on all sides by Soviet units, shells reached it as well. In Kabul, a nurse's legs were blown off by a shell that flew into the hospital grounds. Many times over two years, Nazarenko had to fly from one point of the country to another, running the risk that the helicopter could be shot down. There were also invisible bullets, which often hit personnel more than real ones.

Just imagine: our infectious diseases hospital consisted of six departments: typhoid fever, malaria, hepatitis, amoebiasis, and just dysentery,” says a military surgeon. “Today a soldier goes on a mission, gets wounded, and tomorrow, lo and behold, he turns yellow.” He is an infectious patient. It cannot be left in the general postoperative ward; everyone will become infected. We have to transfer him to the infectious diseases department, but he is wounded. You also go to the infectious diseases departments and bandage your wounded.

But Nazarenko’s most difficult memories are associated with the fact that he, a military surgeon, had to autopsy corpses in order to prepare them for shipment to their homeland. What have I not seen...

What is behind Afghanistan?

Today, assessments about the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan are extremely contradictory. However, the majority of people believe that this was a gross mistake by the Soviet leadership. But there are also opinions that in this way the country of the Soviets tried to protect its borders from the United States and NATO. The war in Afghanistan became a convenient excuse for the creation of American military bases from which US and NATO armed forces could destroy Soviet nuclear facilities at close range with their conventional forces.

Purely from a human perspective, I think that these 9 years of war and 15 thousand dead - young, healthy guys - were in vain. And how many were crippled both physically and psychologically, and how many died from diseases! But you look on TV: every year up to 40 thousand people die on the roads, and they are also young. We had tank regiments and an anti-aircraft missile regiment in our garrison. And when I came to check on the medical service of the regiments, laughing, I asked: “Why are you standing here, ZRP? Doesn’t the enemy have aviation?” They answered: “Our task is to block the Persian Gulf.” But all the oil in the United States came from there, it was transported by tankers. Technology without oil, without gasoline is dead. And the same goes for tank regiments: what can they do there in the mountains, there’s nowhere to even turn around. I think their task was the same. Apparently, there were strategic plans that we don’t even know about. Maybe it was important to keep the international situation in order,” Nazarenko suggests.

Now many researchers of the events of 1979-1989 in Afghanistan are trying to discredit our soldiers, presenting them as invaders. However, our troops entered this country after repeated requests (21 requests) from the Afghan government to do so.

At first, the local population greeted the Soviet troops with flowers and loved us,” says Nazarenko. “We built them roads, airfields, found water in their mountains, and did all this for free. And other countries, especially capitalist ones, did not help in any way, because they did not want people to live normally and the country to develop. And then the enemy began to harm us - they began to slip drugs to our soldiers. There were also mistakes by the Soviet leadership: they tried to send people there from the orphanage, some of whom would either go to prison or the army. Our troops began to misbehave and made mistakes in shooting. For example, on a tip from the Afghans (random or not?), instead of militants, a village with a civilian population was destroyed, and the population became embittered because of this.

Mercenaries and traitors

Perhaps other facts provide indirect evidence that the war in Afghanistan was not entirely civil. Alexander Vasilyevich recalls how an entire regiment of dushmans during the truce went over to the side of government troops only because they stopped paying them. Then, when money appeared, these same people were bought back. There were quite a few mercenaries who were not of eastern origin.

There were caves in the mountains, karizs (used by the Mujahideen as bomb shelters) - says Nazarenko. - There were snipers in them - women, world champions in bullet shooting, one was French, the other was Italian. And so they aim a sniper rifle. They look through the sight: a soldier has entered the store, but the price for him is low, so he is not worth a shot, they let him through. They looked - the colonel came there too. Killed. Because of this, at the end of 1984 we were given khaki uniforms without identification marks. But the age of a person is visible through optics, so the mercenaries still identified and killed the officers.

There were many mercenaries from the enemy side,” the military surgeon continues his story. - One day I was returning from vacation. The plane was flying from Kabul to Shindand. I made a stop in Kandahar, where the fighting was going on. I did surgeries there for a while. I saw mercenaries there. They were in great shape - all young and healthy. They wore black camouflage, absolutely black. And how wonderfully they ran! From stone to stone in flight it shoots three times, one bullet always hits the target.

According to the interlocutor, there were traitors among the Soviet soldiers. The division's intelligence chief thought that he would be promoted, but this did not happen, and he defected to the enemy. And since he had maximum information about the actions and plans of our troops, for another two years after his defection to the enemy, the military unit suffered defeats.

There was one sergeant,” says Nazarenko. - A very good grenade launcher. What didn't he like? He went to the enemy's side. And he started hitting our tanks and cars with a grenade launcher. They are not visible from the mountains, he sits and destroys his own. So the spirits gave him as many as a hundred people to accompany him, and he received a lot of money for each downed object. Did a lot of damage.

The sergeant was caught and court-martialed. But there were more of those who could be called heroes. The helicopter brought young guys, and the demobilized guys were supposed to be taken back to their homeland on the same flight. And if the reconnaissance group reported at that time that a gang had been discovered, the “old men” stayed and went instead of the young ones to neutralize it. Some died. Experienced soldiers carried the wounded young from the battlefield.

The statistics were approximately as follows: for two killed, five were wounded. Those. If throughout the entire Afghan Soviet army the Soviet army lost a little more than 15 thousand soldiers, then there were about 75 thousand wounded.

Alexander Vasilyevich Nazarenko operated on about a thousand people during his two years of service in Afghanistan. Among them were not only soldiers and officers of the Soviet army, but also the injured civilian population of Afghanistan, and wounded from government troops, and even prisoners of war.

They wanted to nominate Alexander Vasilyevich for the Order of the Red Star, but the chief of medicine said: “Do you see my Red Star? Until I get it and you won’t have it either.” But Nazarenko still has military awards: the Star “For Service to the Motherland, 3rd degree” and the Afghan Order “For Bravery” (something like our Red Star). He does not have any benefits other than payment for travel, since on his military ID he only has the note: “served in Afghanistan.”

He received the rank of colonel and the position of leading surgeon several years after returning from Afghanistan, when he worked in a hospital in Kazan. In 1994, when he turned 50, Alexander Vasilyevich left the Armed Forces. In 1995, together with his wife and son, he moved from Kazan to the village of Sinyavino. He has been working as a civilian surgeon for almost 20 years now.

The consequences of any war are terrible because its wounds do not heal after years and even decades. And not only those people who returned from combat points wounded and maimed. For soldiers who have been to war, its trace remains forever in their souls and memories.