Bar 1 “The Atomic Soldier”

“At the time I was just an ordinary soldier. I didn't know I was being tested on. It was only afterwards that I was told what they had done to us. In a way it was nice they told us at all. Covering up things wasn't uncommon back then. Many things were hidden, even from the people involved. It was just the way things worked in the Soviet Union. I found out later that they wanted to see if they could effectively carry out troop movements in nuclear fallout. As it turned out, the answer was yes.

I later found out that they had done similar tests in America. Only they started off testing pigs. They placed them in suits, made of different materials, and dropped a bomb nearby. Many of them survived, though they had burns over most of their bodies. We didn't have protection though. None at all. Russia, my home. I remember all of it so well. Though I wish I could not. I cannot forget. Not of the smell of the aftermath. Not the looks of the villagers.

We were told it was a fake military exercise. However, some of the nearby villages were informed that they needed to move away to a safe distance. Many of them were warned. Most of them weren't, and most weren't evacuated. I don't know why they told them and not us. Maybe because they thought we would refuse to follow orders. They were silly to doubt us. We would never defy our government.

Three hours after the detonation we were sent in. My unit was positioned on the edges of the exercise, and before we knew what was happening we ended up separated from the main group. I don't know how we could have gotten lost, only that we did. There were thousands of soldiers. The sound alone should have kept us on track. But we were young, very inexperienced. Without direction we simply became more and more confused. Our radios weren't working properly, so we couldn't call for aid. At the time, we felt like we were in luck when we saw a village nearby.

Not wasting any time, we headed towards it, hoping to use it to get our bearings. Not a few minutes into the vicinity of the village we noticed several young kids walking around, along with a few adults.

They were pale, sickly, and very small for their ages. As we got closer, some of them began to watch us, and a few even came up to us. Their eyes were bloodshot and very drowsy. Their Russian was poor and broken, and it was difficult to make out anything they were saying. The buildings themselves looked new, and I could tell that though they were for civilians they were military in construction. We found a nearby watchtower and used it to get a better look at the area around us. However, when we got there we were unable to see even a single unit. But from that height it was hard to miss the piles.

There were bodies stacked behind buildings, some of which had haphazardly been formerly set on fire.

Wherever we were, it wasn't any place that I knew of, and I soon realized that we were somewhere we weren't supposed to be. I suspected that their broken Russian meant that they weren't Russian at all. They were foreigners, though I couldn't tell from where. There were no walls. I don't know why they didn't run away. I suppose they didn't because they were so sick. It is...better to die with friends.

Fearing for our own lives, we left the village. I looked back only once, but I swear I saw them dancing, their movements jerky and without pattern. Eventually we joined up with the rest of the troops, though how we managed to do that I have no idea. We never told anyone, never asked anyone to investigate. We figured if we had, they simply thought we were crazy. Then we would disappear.

Afterwards, myself and the rest of my unit sought out medical attention, after we were finally told that we had been exposed. Most of us survived, though the doctors told us that our levels of radiation had been higher than the other soldiers they treated. During our stay a man in official clothes came to us, though he lacked any identifying patches. How he knew I couldn't say. He tried to convince us that we had imagined it. Said that the radiation had caused hallucinations. But we knew the truth, and I found later that the levels required to cause us to imagine it would certainly have killed us.

We were shocked when we found out years later that our medical cards containing evidence of our treatment had disappeared. I supposed we shouldn't have been. Things being as they were back then. So many of us died, and yet there seemed to be an overwhelming belief that the incident could be kept quiet. The bomb had been twice as powerful as the one that dropped on Hiroshima, yet so few knew about it.

In time, I realized what we had seen in that village. They had been dying of radiation. However, the symptoms they had shown required days, even weeks of exposure to occur. These people had been placed there for a purpose. For some reason or another, someone had placed them there to die. I returned to the place where the village had been, only to find nothing there. The place had simply disappeared, though I knew I was in the right spot. Somehow we had stumbled upon something even more horrible than what had been done to us, more horrible than purposefully exposing your own soldiers to radiation. And yet there is no one who will believe me. With most of us dead now of one thing or another it seems the truth will die with me too.

The doctors told me I was clean, and for years I believed it. Yet I began to develop a sensation, like pins and needles on my skin, and a metallic taste in my mouth. The doctors say that I am okay, that it is in my head. It helps explain the dreams...the nightmares. I stumbled upon those people by chance, but in my dreams I cannot help but see their faces. The men. The women. The children. Those poor, dead, blistered, orange skinned bodies. Their faces won't go away, and I feel them watching me wherever I go. There are shadows in the corners of my vision, and sometimes I swear when I am alone I hear someone scream.”

The man apparently owns an apartment near one of the factories. I asked him what had made him come to America, and why he came here to Wellington Street. The moment I asked he became quiet and I could not convince him to speak further. My personal research has turned up no evidence to substantiate what he saw in the village. Further, it confuses me how knowledge of the nuclear exercise Snezho of September 1954 could exist, and yet there is no evidence of what he saw. Whatever truly happened, there seems to be at least for now a mystery stuck in the mind of this poor soul.