part 3/3 we were organized into what they called a reserve battalion. we had a temporary battalion commander: a short man with extremely dark skin, who constantly wore a patch with the virgin mary on his shoulder. he never introduced himself to us, so we nicknamed him "negr". this same negr assigned us to companies and platoons. our group got lucky: we all stayed together, making up the majority of the new platoon. essentially, it was still the same old pyatnashka (fifteen). they also added a few other guys to fill in the gaps from our battalion but from a different company. training ground g became a gathering point for our entire old battalion. i constantly saw familiar faces: our company first sergeant vishnya (cherry), company commander lineyka (ruler), political officer veslo (oar), battalion political officer ishma, senior medic kasha (porridge), and many other guys. everyone was being reassigned. some other groups were probably less fortunate than us and got split up. reshuffling was happening almost daily for a week. we hadn't seen our families for months, so the question of leave to visit them quickly came up. the soldiers' desire was understandable, but the command had very different plans.
Finland