The Donkey Was Looking at Me … Should I Shoot Him Right Here? I Asked Myself …

Abstract

My dream was to do my military service in a place close to home. Among us Black Sea folk those who were born before 1970 were all sent to the navy. After that, we started becoming commandoes. We went to the military and, forgive my language, we were no different from sheep. Commandoes need special training. They taught us everything in detail: close-distance fighting, crawling on the ground, climbing … But it was not enough. They did not tell us much about the Southeast. “It is not easy to come back,” they would say. The training in Isparta was quite difficult. You have to run for five kilometers in the morning with an empty stomach. Then you have breakfast and at a table for twelve, they have three small pots of honey and one quarter of a bread. The first person who sits down at the table finishes the bread, the rest eat the honey with their fingers. Lunch was great. There was a whole loaf of bread for each person. We were now allowed to take bread from the dinner table to our barracks. I weighed 100 kilos when I went there. When I came back, I had dropped down to 80 kilos.