"disposable soldier" chapter 13. infirmary in the town of ts. near the frontline. winter '23 the original can be found here:   e16c9ca9a21c77a2960065ab-applicatio npdf.pdf part 1/? everything was just perfect. safety, comfort, and blissful idleness. the patients had only one duty: to stand guard at the door for an hour, twice a day. that's all! the rest of the time we rested. we had two senior patients: old man kasha (porridge) and the humble gubka (sponge). over time, i started helping kasha refuel the generator, and i helped gubka carry food to the infirmary. we gradually improved our living conditions. we jointly laid another gas pipe and built something resembling a stove out of bricks  i hung some scrap metal over a burning gas burner, and we had a great dryer for clothes and linen. someone brought a tv and set up an antenna  we managed to tune in to russian channels on this tv, so now we watched tv series, movies, and sometimes even the news. however, no one liked the news because the news was always useless. there was a library on the upper floors of the school. most of the books were in ukrainian, but some fiction in russian remained from soviet times. my comrade, kist' (brush), a book lover, and i raided this library and brought down a whole bunch of books to the basement. during my month at the infirmary, i read a lot of books: goethe's faust, the time machine, the invisible man, and the war of the worlds by h.g. wells, several short stories and the gods themselves by isaac asimov. i even started reading dante alighieri's the divine comedy, but it didn't grab me.
Finland