Your message dated Feb., 23 came as a gift for The Red Army Day, the holiday celebrated in this country by everyone who spent anytime in the armed forces, although the day is being recently considered as one dedicated to all males. Like the Japanese Boys' Day.

This time I'd like to delve into the fresh food issue when in the field.

According to agreement between Ethiopian and Soviet governments the hosting side was supposed to provide food rations for the Russian military personnel. That included flour, sugar, coffee and tea, canned meat and fish, etc. The latter two tasted like shit, I never happened to taste it, though. That's mere imagination, you know. Thus in order to get something fresh we had to go hunting and fishing, but not as often as we would wish.

There is one fishing session that I'm going to remember as long as I live. It was on Tekese River, which we reached after a couple of weeks of marching on foot. For hours we had been drinking river-water, washing uniforms and enjoyed life idly lying in the water.

Then evening came and the hunger pushed a friend of mine to produce a brilliant idea. We didn't have any fishing or angling equipment. But the hand grenades were available in the hundreds, and we thought we could have disposed of a couple. The friend I mentioned intended to proceed right away. Being a cautious guy (still am), I thought we'd better ask division commander or chief-of-staff or both first.

The Commander said OK, and the Chief-of-Staff decided to take part and off we went. The first grenade didn't explode. We waited for a few minutes then threw another... The result proved to be beyond imagination. The water surface looked as if covered with thick layer of foam. It was fish. Everybody present rushed into the water. Bare feet could feel something slippery on the bottom: a huge sheet-fish, dozens of them. The catch was enough to feed some 4 thousand men for two and a half days. Remember the New Testament?

That's it for now. More stories to come.

Best regards,

Sergei