ANTIFREEZE AND COMBAT READINESS

‘You are a dirty pile of human waste! You are a bunch of misfits, morons, criminals, hooligans, alcoholics and degenerates.

Your mothers should be ashamed of you! You should be ashamed of yourself but you don’t have a shred of consciousness to be ashamed of anything. Army might still make people out of you, but I wouldn’t count on this happening any time soon’.

Our CO Major Bunin paused his rhetorics and tried to remember what he was supposed to say in a first place. After a while he gave up and turned to his terrified driver. 

‘Why?’, he asked….  ‘Why???? What did I do to deserve this?’.

He apparently had a few too many last night, and was therefore in highly sensitive state. For us, it meant one thing only – trouble! It was not a good idea to reply, to make an eye contact or to attract his attention by moving, breathing, blinking etc, so there was total silence and universal agreement on his assessment of our personal qualities.

We just hoped that in his current state he won’t be able to hang around for too long and will have to head back to barracks to sleep it off, but there was more to come…Our patron suddenly remembered that he had a very important announcement to make.

‘The winter is coming, which means it’s getting cold. All our machinery will have to be transferred to the ‘winter mode’, otherwise our tanks and trucks won’t start. If our tanks and trucks don’t  start, we won’t be combat ready in case of an imperialist attack, and we’ll be branded traitors and saboteurs. A court-martial for me and a disciplinary battalion for you.

In the garage you’ll find 10 drums with antifreeze. Get it? Water – out, antifreeze – in. Even you morons should be able to manage.‘

Then suddenly he remembered what he needed to say…

’Battalion!! Attention!! Listen carefully!!

Antifreeze smells like spirit, it tastes like spirit, but it is NOT SPIRIT!!! It’s not drinkable. It will poison you, it will make you blind and it will kill you.

Yesterday, the ‘Chemical Defence Battalion’ had six soldiers hospitalised…….morons!

I repeat again!! DO NOT DRINK IT!!  

Battalion! Dismissed.’

With those words, completely spent and exhausted Major Bunin turned around and went back to HQ to repair his damaged health.

Well. In all his wisdom our patron had failed to learn something every parent knows too well….

If you say to your kid, ‘do this’ – he will not, and if you say, ‘don’t do this’ – he will.

So, after he left, everyone, including our officers went to the garage to have a little party. 

There were no fatalities, nobody got blind or poisoned, and the rest of antifreeze went into radiators, thus ensuring our readiness to give a proper response to imperialistic swine, daring to threaten our freedom and our way of life.

Amen