One Soldier's War by Arkady Babachenkov

Over the summer, and especially at Camp Ahmek up north, a book engrossed me, taking me on a wild ride through the horrors of the First and Second Chechnya conflicts that entrapped the world’s largest country. One Soldier’s War by Arkady Babchenko was that novel. The story of a young law student drafted into the Russian Army to fight in one of the worst conflicts to rock the World Island, Babchenko drags you through the killing, disease, starvation and torture of two years of the worst fighting in Europe since WWII. Then, four years later, he goes back as a volunteer to fight in the second conflict, with more stories of horror flowing off the pages. The stories never seem to be in any sort of order, instead, it seems that Babchenko throws in stories of fighting alongside stories of him and his brothers in arms getting in various sorts of trouble. Throughout the novel, Babachenko reveals the lighter sides of comradeship in arms and a soldier’s brotherly love to his fellow allies. But also, he darkens the setting by adding horrible tales of children used as human shields, fellow soldiers tortured by orders from a higher rank and, of course, death, death, death. Death seems to play a prevalent part in the storyline, as it should, seeing as the setting is in the middle of a battlefield. This book is fluently and wonderfully written, and should defiantly be on anyone’s wish list.

Naturally, the character that one pays the most attention to is Arkady himself. He explains how he changed from a young man with a bright, promising career in law into a soldier scarred from the events that he witnessed while holding an AK-74. Ranging from killing unarmed civilians at the orders of a major, to watching men crawl out of a flaming tank and friends blown up by land mines, these stories are gripping, horrifying, and give you a good example of the true nature of the “war-loving” Russian soldiers. Without missing a beat, Babchenko can take you from hatred to peace to love to friendship to jealousy and back again. The language is descriptive in ways that engross you and make you never want to leave Arkady and the story alone.  

The main reason I loved this story was because of the fact that every single word of it is not fiction; this actually happened to someone. At first, I found that I couldn’t believe that these tales of death and misery could happen, especially in a European nation. Then I began researching the war and it’s aftermath. Imagine my shock when I found out that every word he wrote was complete truth, and there were facts to back it up. This story enlightened my views of the Chechnya conflicts, and the Russian people in general. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to truly understand the grueling horror of modern warfare.