[Requiem] Character Background - Valentin
I think of all the days in my life
Where I could have done something more
Yes I remember the days in my life
Where I could have done something more
There is never a day that goes by,
That's a good day to die
Please open your eyes to the millions of lives,
That will senselessly die in our wars
My name is Valentin Andreyov Koneysko, the son of a Russian “military advisor” and a Bulgarian water treatment plant worker. I was born in 1963 in the village of Durankulak in the Bulgarian province of Dobrich near the Black Sea. I suppose you could say I had a happy childhood. My father was the local Soviet officer in charge of the Durankulak border checkpoint between Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia, “advising” the Bulgarian officers on Soviet policy. My mother worked in a water treatment plant near the Eagles’ Swamp, and as the oldest of three children, I was responsible for taking care of them, even as a boy.
Because of who our father was, we had a comfortable home with all the “modern” furnishings for the 1960s - we had one of the only three television sets in the province, in fact, even though we only got three stations (two official Soviet broadcasts and a channel from Greece that we would only turn on when my father was at work). Even with a Soviet officer for a father, growing up in Eastern Europe was no picnic, and our summers and winters were difficult.
Our mother sang in the Orthodox church, and even though our father, being Russian, didn’t believe in organized religion, he let her continue this since it was one of her joys, and she taught us music.
When I was 11, my father had me enroll in the People’s Republic Youth Army, a Soviet-created program for Bulgarian children to grow up to serve the SSSR (I suppose in English you’d call it USSR or CCCP). First Secretary Todor Zhivkov ran the country from before I was born until almost the time I “died”, and I spent 7 years living between my home village and the capital of Sofia, until I enrolled in the Bulgarian People’s Army (the BNA), as a paratrooper, and due to my father’s connections, was given a high profile but low-danger assignment as part of a ready-response battalion just behind the Krali Marko defensive line between Bulgaria and Turkey.
After a few years there, I was transferred to Bezmer Air Base, closer to home, as part of the base security force. While in Bezmer, we would often take leave in the city of Yambol, only 10km away. It was in Yambol on my first weekend leave that I met Sophia, a waitress at a restaurant along the Tundzha River. Courageous thanks to the vodka and my companions, I asked her to take a walk with me the next day in the Park Ormana in the center of town, and she agreed.
In the first journal I wrote, whole pages and chapters are devoted to Sophia. But that journal was lost somewhere on that accursed hill, and my life has been darkened so much since then…I won’t sully her memory by having the joys appear in the same journal as the things that came after. We were married in 1984, and we lived together at Bezmer. Our years together were, without a doubt, the happiest of my life.
If I had known it is the only time
I would see your face
Then we'd celebrate
When I'm alone, living is only time
'Til I see your face
Though it's not today
Fate, however, decided it was not to last. One week after our daughter, Natalia, was born in January 1987, my squad was assigned to “Joint Soviet Operational Command” as a “military advisor” to Afghanistan to support the DRA (Democratic Republic of Afghanistan) army as the Soviet army began to prepare to withdraw from their war. I learned that this was the doing of my uncle, Mikail Vladomirovich Koneysko, who apparently wanted his nephew to do some “great things” on behalf of the SSSR, so perhaps I could become a Soviet citizen afterwards.
There were 12 of us on the helicopter headed to Jalalabad from Kabul to train DRA soldiers in rapid response techniques when we were hit by a mujahedeen RPG, and we crashed. I don’t remember much after that, just that I was alive along with four or five Russians firing as the mujahedeen closed in on us, but then there was another explosion and I blacked out. I awoke in a hospital in Kabul with a concussion, to learn that I was the only Bulgarian survivor from the helicopter, and the Soviet pilot who survived had me cited for bravery and valor in defending the crash site until I was knocked out by a blow to the head from shrapnel from another RPG. Of the 20 men in the helicopter, only 5 survived.
Because someone in Soviet command knew my family’s name, I wasn’t sent back out to Jalalabad alone - instead I was conscripted into the 9th Company of the 345 Guards Airborne Regiment, part of the Soviet 40th Army. I spent six months with the other 38 men of 9th Company, but I was always the outsider, even though the officers said that I was just as skilled as any of the enlisted men.
After six months of covering Soviet armored division withdrawals first to Kabul and then back to the SSSR, I saw things that I won’t even write here, in hopes that the horror of their memory won’t linger in these pages. The few American movies about the Soviet-Afghanistan War actually do some justice to the kind of needless brutality exercised on civilians by Soviet soldiers out of frustration for being forced to withdraw in the face of the mujahedeen.
We fight the fight so that we might
Know the fear of our mortality
If you breathe between the waves,
You will end up in a lake
In January of 1988, my company was assigned a critical role in Operation Madrigal, the last Soviet offensive operation of the war, to force open the road between Gardez and Khost, near the Pakistani border. The troops in Khost had been blockaded for months, and they were only able to be resupplied by air.
On January 7th the 39 of us landed on top of a hill called “Hill 3234”, because that was its height in meters, but it had no other name. The hilltop was one of the most important points in the operation so we could observe and provide artillery direction as convoys took the road below us.
We had barely dug in when the first attack came. RPGs, mortars, snipers…our artillery covered us, and then the mujahedeen charged. I had been in Afghanistan for almost a year, but this was my first “real” battle. There were only the 39 of us on top of a hill against almost 400 men charging us…I let my training take over and kept firing like I was ordered, but I had never been so scared in all my life. Our officers kept in radio contact with artillery and air support, and they kept dropping weapons and ammunition and fire support.
Men of destruction reap iniquity
While heroes of courage die with dignity
How many weapons did I help create?
How many lives will it devastate?
The attacks didn’t seem to ever stop. There were at least ten different attacks on us before dawn on January 8th, and we were almost out of ammunition…if they had attacked us again, I don’t think we would have survived.
Of the 39 of us, 6 men were killed, and 28 were wounded, including myself - shot in the arm and bandaged up by Kuznezov, one of the men, who was killed minutes later… I looked around as dawn broke and the last of the convoys went out of sight. Hundreds of mujahedeen were dead all around our hill…at least 200 of them, shot and bloody and mutilated by machine gun fire and grenades…it was horrifying.
The officers radioed for helicopters to pick us up…but I didn’t feel like going. Kuznezov was the only one in the unit who ever talked to me much, and he was dead. The men were exhausted, but all talking excitedly about the next time they’d “see action”, and how much joy they took in killing so many mujahedeen. I just wasn’t cut out for this…and with family in the SSSR, who knew if I’d be able to get out once I got back home?
So I decided to leave the war…just not in the helicopters. When the last helicopter was finishing loading up, I slipped off the edge when no one was looking and pulled some sandbags on top of me. If they saw me, they didn’t care, because after not too long I was alone.
I decided to gather gear from the dead, and head for Pakistan, which wasn’t too far away from Khost, which the army had just vacated, meaning the mujahedeen were likely busy trying to destroy the DRA forces left behind instead of chasing deserters.
Fighting the tide that takes me home
Only dreaming of the day
When the world will go away
A world that's full of pain
No sooner had I gotten gear together for the trek, I was hit over the back of the head by the butt of a rifle, and saw no more. I woke up in a cave, held by men in black uniforms with rectangular yellow and red stripes, which was that of the Black Storks, a commando unit that was part of the Pakistani Army.
Their officer spoke better Russian than I did, and demanded to know why I was left behind. I told him with honesty that I was a deserter, that I had no desire to go back to the SSSR which wasn’t even my country, and fight in wars I didn’t believe in. I had a wife, and a daughter, back in Bulgaria, and I wanted to return to them.
The commandos kept me prisoner with them for days while they monitored Soviet radio broadcasts (some on frequencies I gave them) to try and verify that I had deserted. I suppose it was confirmed, because they didn’t shoot me, and instead dressed me as one of them as they made their way back to Pakistan.
Across the border, I was given a deal. I could stay in Pakistan for one year, training their soldiers in Soviet tactics, and they would pay me a hefty amount of money in cash and then let me go…or they’d shoot me in the leg and turn me over to the mujahedeen. Even if I had any issues with that, I’m not an idiot, and I agreed.
When I'm alone, it is the only time
I would see your face
When I'm desperate
Now I'm alone, building my holy shrine
Where I'll see your face
And then contemplate
Later, I learned that the 9th Company had all been awarded the “Order of the Red Banner” and the “Order of the Red Star”, and two of the six men killed were honored as “Heroes of the Soviet Union” posthumously. It’s odd, though, that my name doesn’t appear anywhere, even though the records show that 39 men dropped in that day in Afghanistan, only 38 received medals and were listed in the ceremony.
In the early spring of 1989, I was given a small briefcase full of cash for my “services,” and told to find my own way home. Because Bulgaria was still behind the Iron Curtain, it was difficult trying to get back home. I went to India first, then to Hong Kong, where I was able to get a fake ID, and I was able to use it to fly to West Germany. Getting into East Germany was much easier than getting out of East Germany, and in September of 1989, I had finally made it back to my homeland of Bulgaria!
It took me some time, since I was trying to keep a low profile, but I made my way back home, to find out that Sophia had moved to Yambol. I tracked her down there…only to find that she was…she was sleeping with somebody else. Even in the war, I never felt rage, never wanted to hurt anybody…but now I did. I followed the bastard when he left the next morning to go to work, and I cut his throat, left him for dead in an alley.
To this day…I have nothing but regret for what I did. I learned, only afterwards, that I had been reported as dead in the helicopter crash when my unit first went to Afghanistan, and Sophia had re-married. The man I killed was the only father my Natalia had ever known…and now I’d taken him from her…taken Sophia’s second husband away from her. Some part of my brain said that I should go back to her, but I knew that I’d be investigated for the murder, and then she’d lose me a second time, and poor Natalia…my poor little angel Natalia, who sung in a choir even as young as she was, the voice of an angel.
I was despondent…I felt I had nothing left to live for. I took all of the money I had left and donated it to the director of the choir in Natalia’s name, signing it “Orpheus”, after the Greek myth…perhaps hoping that I would be found and torn to pieces for what I had done.
All I do brings me close to you
Whatever you'd ask me to
I can't take back what's taken from me
All I see becomes a part of me
Even if you don't believe
I'll see you where the river takes me.
Not knowing what else to do with myself, I started backtracking to East Germany and East Berlin, hoping to find a way to cross back over to the West, to find something worth living for. I had seen death in Afghanistan…and no matter how much I loathed myself now…I did not wish to go into whatever came after death with such stains on my soul. There had to be a way for me to atone…somehow.
My luck in travel ran out in Berlin, unfortunately, and I was thrown in a cell in November of 1989 while they began to look into who I really was. My only prayer, even if it meant my death, was that they would not discover who I really was, so Sophia wouldn’t have to ever hear of it.
For once, my prayers were answered, it seemed. Of all things…the Berlin Wall “fell” (in reality, the border checkpoints were simply opened under pressure of large crowds), signaling the start of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The guards, wanting to leave just as much as I did, let me go, and I went across the border into West Germany, away from my old life for good.
And everything that's new is a lie
It's that same damn sun and the same damn sky
And everything you thought you knew is a lie
God bless you son, at least you tried
[Meeting Sire - Embrace Story]
[1990s as a Daeva - Background Hookups]
[2000s as a Daeva - Background Hookups]
All lyrics from the songs “Fighting Tao” and “Wars” by Hurt