My BAM. Dusse-Alin, 1980—1982. Alexander Nevzorov

building of the school, where the school itself had gone, I do not know. In the classrooms stood in 2 tiers of bed. The officers lived in a dormitory or rented a house in the private sector.

      I forgot to write about one more, another Dousse-Alin episode. When I just arrived to serve, I especially did not hide that I was engaged in karate. Then it was extremely fashionable. I brought a kimono to my BAM, my yellow belt and was going to intensively continue my studies. Although he visited the sports section only a few months before the army. So, one evening, I was summoned to me by the acting battalion commander, Major Voznyuk. In his office there were already officers of the unit, those who did not leave for Artem. About ten people. Voznyuk held a meeting, he was addressed by some important current issues. Suddenly, at the very end of the working meeting, the deputy announced that I, a newly-minted lieutenant, deputy customs officer of the fourth company, are a karate. And now, right now, at the moment, I will show them all my art. With a mysterious grin, the major climbed under a chair at the entrance and pulled out three bricks from there. Two of them he put on the edge, and tritium laid on top of them.

      “Come on,” he said to me. – Demonstrate.

      For six months of training, I never broke bricks. Of course, I saw how the masters broke them. But to see, this is one thing, but to be able to do it, is quite another. The bricks were red, hardened, where I took them to the bum, I do not know. It could well be that they did not break at all, under any circumstances. What was to be done? Say I never hit bricks? Refuse to “speak”? Probably, it was necessary to do so. But I decided to hit. To beat or not to beat? Beat. And come what may.

      By the way, in 2 years, at the very end of the service, I decided to tell my friends about that incident. And they brought bricks from somewhere too. And everyone began to break them in turn. Only Zhenya Kuzmenko, a dentist, managed to do this, he was the most healthy and engaged in athleticism, as they say now. But I did not break my brick, no matter how hard I tried.

      And then, only having arrived at the BAM, in the company of strangers unknown to me, I stood in front of a brick on my knee. I closed my eyes and called for help all conceivable and unthinkable forces. I swung and struck the red brick with all the urine from the unknown. And he split. Everyone applauded. And I started gaining authority. It was, probably, the only brick in my life that I had broken.

      Artem in the eyes of the soldiers who came from Dusse-Alin, and even the officers, is a fabulous place. Alcohol in shops, young ladies in light dresses on the street. It was summer. On one of the days off (in the Soviet army there was one day off for most of the officers – a resurrection) we went in an organized way to swim. On the Gulf of Peter the Great. Peter the Great Bay in the Pacific Ocean. Have you ever bathed in the Pacific Ocean? But for some reason it was not very warm. The sea was slightly “cool”, although until the fall it still seemed far away. And the sun was somehow not Black Sea, not resort.

      In Artem, I introduced myself to my immediate commander, the commander of the fourth company, Captain Alexei Silushkin, by the way, my fellow countryman from Leningrad. He was a bachelor, short, but very mobile and energetic. I introduced myself to my chief commander, the battalion commander, Major Kurguzov. He was of medium height, stocky and wearing glasses in a large square frame. It was said that our battalion commander, Pope, was the head of the whole Union’s railway troops. So it or not, there was nowhere to check.