What’s It Like to Be Shot, Bombed or Burned in Combat?
The brightest best thing in my life was the war and there won’t be anything better. And the blackest lousiest thing in my life was also the war, and there won’t be anything worse. So my life has been lived.
—Arkady Babchenko, Russian soldier, journalist
From One Soldier’s War, Arkady Babchenko, translated by Nick Allen (Grove Press, 2008).
Babchenko was a conscript for the first Chechnya campaign in 1995 and volunteered for the second in 1999.