About One Dagestan (A Tale of a Reserve Officer)

In 91 he served in district warehouses. Military unit in Moscow. He was on duty on the part when they called the CPS with a message that they brought two new recruits to us.
I come to the CPP – accompanied by an officer, two Dagestan soldiers are sitting. They are sent to us for urgent service. I anticipate a bunch of problems in connection with these guys, I take the documents for them from the accompanying officer, I go with the papers to the commander of the unit.
He grabs his head and starts calling on the phone. From one Dagestan he managed to refuse, and the other remained with us.
He was the only Caucasian in the part, and he had to bite the trouble. We saw his blues several times, and one day even his jaw was broken in the barracks at night.
I say to him, “Tell me who.” We will immediately bring him to court, and you will be removed from the party. I need another translation. And the Dagestan always says, “It’s me. He fell from the table.”
I pretended to separate him from the rest of the staff. I ask :
What can you do? What type of construction work do you know?
He says:
I know construction. Everything I needed at home was built by myself.
Can you stitch?
I can.
Show him the warehouse. The building is a pre-revolutionary building. 400 meters in length.
Could you make a façade alone?
I can!
I told him then that if he did this job, he would get a leave and thanks from the commander of the unit.
And every morning after the divorce, he took a car, a tool, cement, and went to that warehouse. He built for himself bridges, bridges, and every day there. The company for other work, and he - brings himself cement from another warehouse, water boilers, mixes, tinted and tinted. He goes into the dining room without order. In the barracks, after the departure comes. In sight and in sight all the time. His grandparents and the whole borsot stopped pulling him. His work is checked. “Qualitatively well,” he says.
I have already forgotten about him—it does not create any problems—when one day he comes, “Comrade, senior lieutenant, let me go!”
What is?
Your order is fulfilled! The warehouse is broken!
Oh well good! What has come?
I think...
You talked about gratitude.
I woke up inside. About the promised vacation he is silent, and I remembered. I remember 91. There is poverty in the army and war in the Caucasus. It is impossible to let him go home - there is a great chance that he will not return, someone will have to follow him, and whoever will go - may also not return. There are no “Thanks” forms. Well – I had big postcards of the type by February 23, but no inscriptions. There is an order tape, heroic faces of fighters, something more relevant. On this postcard, the staff mechanic wrote about the following under my dictatorship:
- Dear Hatima Magomedovna (name-fatherhood here is conditional)!
Your son...... from (date)... to the present time performs the honorary duty of Defender of the Motherland in the military unit entrusted to me.
During the service of the ordinary... (name) showed himself...
Thank you for your education...
With sincere respect, the commander of the military unit No. Colonel...
Date of signature, stamp.
The commander signed, the stamp was placed in the headquarters, gave this card to the soldier. He, as I learned later, sent this postcard to his mother by order or even a valuable letter, which meant handing it personally to the recipient. As for the leave, he was declared a leave at the location of the station. That is, after the morning divorce he is free to leave the territory of the unit, to walk around Moscow, to come or not to come for a meal in the soldier dining room, to leave the territory of the unit again, but to return to the barracks at 21.00. Let us not go deeper – how much this incentive was consistent with the charter. But I promised, and my promise the commander fulfilled in this way.
The boy went on vacation. In the company, his relations with fellow servants have long been normalized, when part of the ordered letter from Dagestan came.
The mother of this guy on two pages with a calligraphic handwriting and with impeccable grammar thanked the commander of the unit for the received letter about the son. She that this letter was read by all close and distant relatives (this is what I here say to us "distant" and they have no distant relatives. All the neighbors.She said she is proud of her son, and glad that he got to serve in such a good part, with such good commanders and fellow servants.
Then, among other tasks and duties, I chose time to talk to the guy.
His father died early, and their three were raised by their mother, a teacher of Russian in a small school. At the medical commission in the military department, something was found in his lungs, and his mother had to borrow money from relatives, to lubricate doctors, so that the guy was recognized fit for military service.
And this letter of the commander of the unit about the good service of the son the mother took to one of the relatives, they took to another... This letter was read by half of Dagestan.
This is the story.
I almost forgot to say that during all the time of my officer service, this Dagestan was the only soldier I knew who wrote in Russian with impeccable literacy.