I present here the final installment of Haim Shwecky’s journals. I hope these entries have given you, as they’ve given me, some insight into the on-the-ground (and sometimes underground) experience of the soldiers fighting to defend Ukraine. Many thanks to Haim for permission to publish his excellent writing here. I doubt we’ve seen the last of him here at the Substack, and you can always check out his Substack for his thoughts on Ukraine and many, many other things.
Godliness
Much free time in army life is spent trying to stay clean. Or rather, because you are never really clean, trying to stay hygienic. Alcohol wipes and shampoo and foot powder are among the militiaman's bag of toiletries. The surfaces of his world are muddy, dusty, or stained, and the soldier is forever trying to keep himself dry and clean and fresh.
In certain conditions that opportunity seldom comes. Weeks or months can pass without sight of a shower or change of clothes. It is curious that, once you accept the squalidness, you feel somehow less repulsed by it.
The food I ate with unwashed hands (unwashed of what exactly, I don’t want to say), the stained mattress I slept in (stained by what, I don’t want to think about), the begrimed and foul-smelling clothes I wore, and the sweat which was itself like wearing a layer of material; I accepted it all with a tacit, “Well, it's all part and natural to the circumstance. Fuck the discomfort. I'm paid in experience.”
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