Dear Zazz,

The weather here doesn't show any signs of improvement but anyway we can live with it. It's beyond the powers of human being to change one's country geographical location or climate. I'm just happy that some folks live 50 m from the Gulf of Mexico. As far as I understand it's better than the other Gulf, commonly known as Persian. This was written several days ago. Now it seems the spring is beginning to set in. NATO started hitting Yugoslavia and today came the news about the loss of an USAF F-117 Nighthawk Stealth fighter and today Russian TV reported on an incident in front of the US embassy in Moscow, some guys shot a few rounds from a passing jeep.

By the way about the guys carrying guns. We had the guns, too. Although, I never used mine. Actually I had two, a Kalashnikov assault riffle without a butt, a so-called tankman's or paratrooper's version, and a Makarov pistol. I never took my Kalashnikov to Asmara and fired it only a couple of times on a firing range. The Makarov was with me everywhere. Entering a cinema or a good restaurant one was supposed to leave the gun with the door-guards.

We were young guys and many of us crazy about weapons. One could find all sorts of small arms and some folks exchanged those between them. It wasn't welcomed, but the registration was rather loose and no-one would think of tracing a specific gun. I never heard about violent crimes committed using those guns and for that was a reason, I believe nobody cared.

A guy I new was particularly gun-happy character. He once carried a German Parabellum made in 1915, then he got a very beautiful Smith & Wesson, a Beretta, a Colt .45 and what not. Another guy had a Russian Stechkin automatic, still another a Mauser, a weapon notorious in this country while it happened to be a sweet baby of the Russian Revolution.

Visiting cinemas belonged to favorite pass-time activities, and one also had to leave one's gun with a guard until an end of a show. Mainly they screened US movies with original English soundtrack plus subtitles in Arabic and French. There was a place where you could watch an Italian movie in Italian. Additionally they had two or three places, which ran Indian films.

I also visited book-stores rather frequently. They sold mainly British and US titles. But the barhopping was Number One. Whenever you saw an open door you could be sure you'd get a drink there. And we did consume industrial quantities of liquid. An Ethiopian officer told me how they decipher Melotti if regarded as abbreviation, Men Enjoy Liqueurs Occasionally Through Their Ignorance. Only "juvenile ignorance" could be an explanation why we drank so much.

(Webmasters note: The following is in response to a copy of the US involvement in Ethiopia (Eritrea)-which is posted on the Bulletin Board of the The Kagnew Station Homepage- that I sent to Sergei last Thursday.)

Before I finished to write the above your message came about US military assistance to HIM and subsequently to Derg. Yes, I do find the story extremely interesting. I sounds you've made an in-depth research on the matter. Unfortunately I don't have such detailed information on the Soviet military aid to Mengistu regime. No figures, just general knowledge derived from what I've seen and heard.

Although HIM was considered to be a friend of the USSR and was often invited either to Moscow and then visited seaside resorts in Crimea or Caucasus, we backed up the Eritrean Marxist guerillas ever since they began their campaign for secession in 1961. Eritreans underwent training in Russia alongside with Somalis. I met some of the latter in Addis-Ababa back in 1983. They spoke accentless Russian and drank like mad.

Among the senior officers and generals I met, many served with Kagnew battalion. Many were trained in the United States, one of them, then Lt.Col Getahun, later full Col. and when I saw him last a Brig.Gen. often talked about his days in Atlanta, Georgia. I witnessed a drinking session involving an Ethiopian General and a Russian colleague. Both fought in Korea as young officers. The Ethiopian guy served in infantry, the Russian flew an MIG-15 fighter. While they drank Armenian brandy (great stuff, actually), the Ethiopian much too emotionally remembered "shooting down a Communist jet". The Russian looked seemingly unimpressed, may be because it wasn't he who flew the machine, if the incident ever took place.

It's but natural that after HIM's abduction we switched our sympathies to Derg and old friends shifta became our mutual foes. Here I won't touch upon Ogaden campaign against Somalia, whom we loved until 1977. The folklore has it that the Soviet military advisers were present on the both sides, but the Ethiopeans enjoyed advantage of Cuban armor, artillery and infantry plus Russian supreme command executed by Marshall of the Soviet Union Vassiliy Petrov a 2nd WW veteran.

I don't have exact figures on how many Soviet advisers were there, but I know for sure, until 1981 a team of advisers was attached to each brigade and in some cases even battalions. During my time only divisions had advisors and some mechanized brigades, which were supposed to perform individual missions. The team usually included an advisor to division commander, political officer, artilleryman and an engineer who took care of tanks and other vehicles. Plus one or two interpreters.

There was a team attached to each of Operations Commands, Central, Southern, Eastern and Northern which was the biggest and responsible for operations in Eritrea and Tigre. Those had much more numerous staff of advisors and so called specialists, officers of armor, artillery, signals, etc. There were intelligence/reconnaissance teams and operational officers. Separate teams were assigned to the Navy and Air Force. We had a signal battalion deployed in Ethiopia with HQ in Addis-Ababa and mobile radio-stations scattered across the country. Our team attached to the 3^rd Infantry Division initially had two, one for general communication purposes and the other for crypto-communication.

The Soviet Union supplied to Ethiopians T-54 and T-55 tanks. (People said the Ethiopians refused to take T-72s, which they thought were too sophisticated for them). Artillery was comprised 2nd WW time 76mm and 85mm field and anti-tank pieces as well as D-30 122mm towed howitzers and 130mm cannons. We sent them 82mm mine-throwers produced 1940 through 1944 and 37mm double-barreled anti-aircraft automatic gun and some recoilless rifles for mountain warfare. Aircraft included MIG-21 fighters and MIG-23 fighter-bombers as well as Mi-24 gunship and Mi-8 utility helicopters. Shiftas shot one MIG-21 fighter with a heavy machine gun, I saw wreckage loaded on a truck. Mengistu forces dropped bombs on guerillas' positions from Antonov-12 cargo planes. As far as I know this didn't cause much damage. They also got from us huge trench-digging machines and river-crossing equipment, which seemed completely useless. The latter two occupied hectares at Kagnew. Their Navy also used Soviet made boats.

Ural trucks really proved useful. The Soviets provided ZiL-131 and 130 trucks, too. But those couldn't compete with the Urals. American vehicles were still used, as well as few US light helicopters. Some old US fighter jets remained in Dire-Dawa, but they didn't deploy them because of limited flight resource left.

Asmara airport was used by the Soviet reconnaissance planes, analogues to US AWACS. They flew from the Russian East and patrolled western part of Indian Ocean, Red Sea and Persian Gulf. A friend of mine who was a crew member of an IL-38 told me that one of them had been destroyed and another damaged by the guerillas in 1984.

Cheers

Sergei