A soldier in six weeks. Exclusive report from the army training center

I've been having a hard time getting up these days, and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to convince myself that running back in the morning is fine. I don't even want to carry anything anymore and clean the weapons in the corridor of the company building by night. A continuous seventeen-hour job is starting to kill me.

I am in the army training center in Vyškov and the second week I am completing a voluntary military exercise (DVC) here. Being a "bookmark" is becoming more and more modern. And the numbers prove it. While in 2004 the number of volunteers stagnated at around a thousand, for this year the army has already exceeded the recruitment target, namely 2,400 soldiers in the active reserve.

"If the Czech Republic will have the funds for ten thousand members of the advances in 2030, let them have them. This will make our security system better, "says Josef Bečvář, former Chief of the ACR General Staff. And the reward, which increased the year before, also motivates. If the midfielder completes at least seven days of regular training in the calendar year, he will receive 18,000 a year from the army.

If I complete the six-week course and pass the final exam, I will become a soldier in reserve with a completed DVC. Or I can join the Active Reserve of the Czech Army. Such a soldier can already be used not only for rescue work, for example during floods or to guard strategic facilities, but also in foreign operations.

It's seven in the evening and three hours ahead of us, because the evening is two hours before midnight at the earliest. Today we end by cleaning the submachine guns. Perfectly to the last fold so that the weapon passed the white napkin instructor's white napkin. He is satisfied at half past ten. My day then ends an hour after midnight, according to my schedule, I still have service at the weapons warehouse in the company building.

But it is the best option, because before I stand at the warm-up again at five in the morning, I will sleep for the remaining three and a half hours at a time. During dinner, we hold a patrol at the arms with a younger colleague by the arms. We have a total of three women in a platoon of thirty-seven.

"Nice" pioneer camp

"Nothing nice is waiting for you in Vyškov. You will be exposed to the maximum use of your physical and mental strength, "said one of the sergeants of the Regional Military Headquarters in Hradec Králové seriously last October, when we compiled the initial" papers "together. I laughed honestly. I've been playing sports my whole life, it certainly can't be that scary.

"You will run from morning to evening and they will keep inflating some theory into you. And after fourteen days, you will reach for what the army is, "he continues with visible enthusiasm and a bit of malice. "Such a nice pioneer camp," he says informally.

In order to get to Vyškov, in addition to formalities and filling in army questionnaires, I have to undergo a medical examination. A x-ray of the thoracic organs or an extract from the medical documentation is provided, and a gynecological examination for women. If I were in the care of a specialist, his opinion would also be necessary.

A month later, I sit with all the "lejsters" in the waiting room of the Žižkov barracks in Hradec Králové. Nothing limits me except glasses, I will walk without problems. I don't even need psychological tests, they were canceled the year before last. "A questionnaire must be submitted, a medical examination must be completed. These are indicators that allow us to eliminate extremes. We didn't want to complicate people's entry into the reserves, "Josef Bečvář explains later.

The tests remain for specialist positions such as paratroopers, scouts or the Castle Guard.

Who wants to give it up?

The Hradec Králové sergeant reminds me exactly one day later six months later. "So what? Who wants to give it up because he doesn't give it? ”Asks an instructor one early morning in the second week of the platoon. "Any injuries? Not a blister or a sore knee, I mean an injury, "he continues. We are silent. Although almost everything hurts, no one officially hurts.

We spent the first week mostly in the classroom, trying not to sleep there, marching and running only in the barracks area. The second week froze. Morning exercise at 5:15 is becoming the absolute rule, backpacks are heavier, more running from anywhere with more load, more and more often we stand for tens of minutes on a buzzer in direct sunlight and we are tested by theory. A drill has arrived at the shooting range.

"I have bruised elbows and bruises, but we are finally doing why I am here. At first I was disappointed and wanted to go home for the first week, "says the smiling young man at the time. He had just disguised himself, was guarding a submachine gun in his hand, and was waiting at the edge of the grove of the military district to learn how to move around the battlefield. So crawling on the abdomen, on the side and on the back and moving forward. At the same time, the instructors are standing over our heads and pushing the line forward. "You're not moving around like toucans, okay? Do it! ”They comment on our efforts.

Shoot hard

A diverse group of people are running across the 95-strewn meadow in the stone-strewn meadow. You will meet a lawyer, a bank adviser, a regional office official, a train driver, a storekeeper, a paramedic and a student. Tastes from the age of twenty to about fifty from all over the country. And their motivation is as varied as the composition of their profession.

"I think half of you are here because we want to shoot ourselves properly," one of my colleagues "spontaneously" reports, while for the fifth time in class he voluntarily disassembles and assembles an assault rifle. From his childish boyish enthusiasm, it almost looks like he is composing Lego. My bren (assault rifle, editor's note) in the meantime is lying on the bench after the second corps and disassemblers, so far I'm looking for a complicated relationship with weapons.

The motivation of others is diverse. From the desire to get to the Castle Guard to the sheer interest in the military. "You'll shoot yourself in civilian life after a maximum of one shot, but you'll sprinkle the whole dose here," says a guy about the same age, who often and happily demonstrates his affection for weapons for three weeks. This often annoys instructors, mostly soldiers with experience in the Balkans, Iraq or Afghanistan.

If these men are based on anything other than military discipline, it's shooting safety. "You'll never aim at anyone and have your finger on the trigger if you don't want to fire. Do you understand? ”They shout at us several times a day, mostly rightfully. Those who did not understand it experienced something of that famous army buzz.

When a machine gun and armor were added to the submachine gun, rifle, and pistol, I began to feel very frustrated. "You are the first course to discuss this. Don't ask me why. But I understand that you are confused, "during the last drill the day before the sharp shootings, the instructor answers me when asked why and who invented this. I realize that I can handle five weapons at once, but not one properly. "The adjustment was created on the basis of the requirements of the AZ commanders and practical experience," explains Army Spokeswoman Vlastimila Cypris.

The next days are almost like a photocopier, they start to merge. Running warm-up at five in the morning, picking up weapons, drilling weapons, classroom, running somewhere, returning to the company and evening self-study in the barracks. Even in the rooms, although modestly furnished with three single beds, bedside tables and one table with chairs, but clean and renovated, we have to sit until the evening in the prescribed "system".

So in camouflage and green military T-shirts with short sleeves, it is usually possible to take off Canada, other times sports military clothing is allowed. And at 6:10 in the morning, properly dressed in a military uniform, we stand in front of the building. The room commander (me), chosen "who is written on the door first", is waiting for the instructor to check. And another day again.

But finally, after hours of topography, tactics or health science, we get what most come here for. Action.

"Gun to bear and let's go. But do it and don't tear the shape! ”I hear the instructor again. This 62-year-old sergeant major is a waste. He never complains and always runs with us. He is a man who engraved himself in my memory the next day after his arrival with a sentence that told us that we would definitely not stop with him. "You run with me when you stand. And when you're lying down, you're digging with a shovel, "he said.

He was right. With a few exceptions, when the others left us on the way to "íčko" (I-1, the name of the building in which we lived) to run and click because we do not keep the shape and talk, it was he who was always there when our physical and mental possibilities were shifting. Whether we ran or carried "wounded" on a stretcher.

If I tell you how far it is, you will collapse

We are now in the field for about fifteen hours and we are to return to the barracks from an unspecified place in the military area. I still don't know how far it was. Maybe five, seven… maybe less miles.

"If I tell you, you will collapse. It's far, "the instructor replies, and according to the rules, we try to keep our shape two steps behind him and not slow down. Large field on the back, submachine gun on the shoulder. I can't say how much it could have weighed together, but somewhere in the fog I heard that "about twelve or fifteen kilos."

"Don't talk and get on. You only have one health and I'm not interested in breaking it up here, "the instructor crammed me into the door of the Tatra Mountains when I want to come to the barracks due to health problems.

That concludes the first three weeks of training for me. I start the next three at the beginning of September. That's what armored training awaits us. Training with a machine gun. Survival tactics. Comprehensive field training. And engineering training. Topographic training in the field. Radio operation. And drilling shooting training.

That's enough for a civilian.