What we drank at the front
During the war, the urge to drink seemed to be inseparable from soldiering. We drank everything we could find. While our academy class was in Georgia, we drank the local grape moonshine - chacha. A good chacha is a bit like Scottish whiskey. When we were fighting in Northern Osetija, we drank a corn moonshine - araka. Most basements of abandoned Osetin houses contained at least one, sometimes two 20-liter bottles of fairly strong araka.
When the fighting moved into the Kuban' region, we switched to beet moonshine. You could tell that the Cossacks didn't have centuries-old traditions of making moonshine, and a thin crust of esthetes among us pointedly didn't respect this beverage. Near Krasnodar, things improved a bit with wheat moonshine.
Officially, we were given alcohol in only two cases: 100 grams before an attack, or else when there was so much alcohol that there wasn't any place to put it. I remember once, near Pjatigorsk, after we had captured some wineries we each got a glass of a fabulous dessert wine for several days in a row. I think it was the "Sil'vaner" - honestly, I hadn't found anything better since.
The "attack rations" were actually given out not before, but after an attack - this way, the survivors got a bigger share. Nobody really complained about this, since each soldier thought that, no matter what happens, he will be one of the survivors. And besides, we were Guards Paratroopers, we didn't need any encouragement to attack. Not because we were particularly "conscientious", but rather because we did everything as a unit. The only person in the unit who drank - and usually quite heavily - before every attack was the CO, since he had to be the first guy to stand up out of the trenches.
One particular episode stands out in my mind. One day, after being the first to storm a German bunker, I started hunting for loot (the need to loot your enemy, I think, is something genetic - an African warrior ate his enemy's liver, Napoleon gave captured cities to his soldiers, the soldiers of the First Cavalry Army, as per professor Venzher who famously got into an argument with Stalin himself, upon capturing the Crimea ransacked the local mansions). [The First Cavalry Army as referenced here was a famous Bolshevik formation during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922 - Transl.]
This time around, there wasn't much by way of loot. There were some almost empty bottles on a crate that served as a table, a wet packet of pea soup concentrate and a small cardboard box. Yet again noting German efficiency, I quickly gulped down what little schnapps remained in the bottles, grabbed the concentrate and the cardboard box and rejoined my unit.
The next day, when things had calmed down a bit, I sat down and studied the box. It contained blue rectangular pills and a metal tray. With my schoolyard knowledge of English I could make out the words "dry alcohol" and "two tablets per glass" written on the side of the box.
"You know, the Germans are such an industrious people," - I thought. "Who else could have thought of this - two pills and there's your drink." I dropped two of the pills into a mug, ground them up with a spoon, poured some water and started to stir the mixture. The powder settled on the bottom without dissolving. I gave it a taste - tastes like water. Further examination of instructions on the side of the box revealed a small image of a glass sitting on the metal tray with a small flame lit underneath. Aha, got it, there's a reason why I got good marks in Chemistry. I gathered up some dry brush, lit a small fire and started to warm up my mug.
Meanwhile, someone gave the order for the unit to assemble. I hurriedly drained the mug's contents - nothing, still water, the powder wasn't dissolving. I scooped the powder up with a spoon and put it in my mouth. Almost tasteless, like sand…I'm marching along and waiting for the buzz to kick in.
About 30 years later, a chemist friend of mind, remarked after hearing this story: "had a decent chance of kicking the bucket."
The moral of this story - kids, learn your foreign languages and don't chase a buzz at any cost.
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