The army, like any other organization, is filled with its own different kinds of traditions, customs and superstitions. Moreover, the more extreme the conditions of service of a particular type of troops, the more diverse they are. One can talk endlessly about the superstitions and customs of aviators, so I will devote a separate story to this topic. And now I want to tell a story about a completely extraordinary tradition.
It was in 1992. At a time when the Soviet Union had already remained in history, and the new Russia was entering a period of boundless reform, there was no one to think about the fate and prospects of the military who served outside the "new Fatherland", and there was no time. Our minds and minds were in complete confusion. We did not know what would happen to us next: whether our squadron would be transferred from the Transcaucasus, whether they would be disbanded and scattered in different parts, or there would be something else. One thing we knew for sure, that we would not stay here. And the whole environment said that it was necessary to prepare for the move, and the sooner the better. Therefore, it was decided to send families and things “home”. The term "home" should be understood as Russia, wherever anyone can - parents, relatives.
Families were sent mainly by passing military planes, since civilians almost never flew to our region. And we started sending personal belongings.
I will not talk about how we mined railway containers, because this is a separate story and has nothing to do with our topic. And the tradition that the experienced old men told us - young officers - is as follows: for a comrade, unloading a railway container with belongings at home or at a new duty station, to remember with a kind word his colleagues in the container, imperceptibly for him, it was necessary to put something something extraordinary. It could be anything. For example, a little later they managed to shove a huge heavy cover from the well into the container. For another, they somehow hid an urn that stood at the entrance of his house. And so on.
On that day, we helped load the container to Lev Koskov. He was a single crew commander, and he didn't have a lot of things. Therefore, the three-ton container was loaded quickly. They began to think about throwing this into a container for him, but they could not come up with anything original.
There was no suitable object in sight, and Lyova was about to go downstairs from the apartment. There was no more time to think, we frantically searched the surroundings of the courtyard with our eyes. Suddenly flight technician Slavka came across a torn soldier's cap lying in the mud, burnt out from old age. Slavka pulled it out of the mud and threw it into the far corner of the container. At the same moment, Lyova came out of the entrance of the house and, having examined the neatly packed belongings, closed the massive doors of the container.
Koskov did not manage to go home after the container. Service circumstances forced him, like many of us, to stay for another half a year in Transcaucasia.
A month later, Lev received a letter from his mother, in which she wrote that she had received the container. The things were unloaded, everything went well, without any significant losses. But one circumstance made her turn to her son with a short educational remark of approximately the following content: “Son, how could you have put on a hat like that! You've always been a neat boy. Are you not given out new uniforms? But don't worry, I washed it, dried it and sewn it up ….
Such is the tradition.
