GREETINGS FROM SPECIAL FORCES
Dear Ma and Pa, I finally got access to a computer and decided to write you this email. I am well. The first two months went very fast. I will tell you in a few words what we do here.
Reveille is at 5.30 in the morning. The first day I got up at 4 like at home, but the sergeant made me go back to bed and keep quiet. So at the start of the day I loaf around — I don’t deal with chickens or pigs any more. Boring.
In the morning they put a pack on our backs and make us run. The sergeant asks why I’m not sweating; I told him the distance is shorter than I used to run every morning with a pack to school. The city boys are in a bad way at the end of that drill; if the sergeant isn’t looking I carry one of them on my back, just to toughen my legs.
They make us shoot regularly, but I’m clearly on the beginners’ course. Here you shoot lying down at stationary targets!!! Much easier than shooting boar or quail! And nobody shoots back at you, the way those idiots from the next village do! So the medals here are mine.
They make us wrestle regularly, like we do at home with my brothers. The city boys break real easy; you squeeze a little and something pops. Here, to the shame of the whole village, I lost… Once. A young man, about a hundred and thirty kilos, tripped and fell on top of me. I, as you know, am 65 kilos, exactly half. I couldn’t get out from under him and they gave him the win. The second time I was ready — when he charged I stepped one pace aside and then threw myself on his back. It was much easier than with the village bull. I squeezed his neck and he popped. Nothing to worry about, the sergeant said it was a training incident and his parents won’t sue us!
There is hot water every day, I still can’t figure out why… The sergeant doesn’t beat us; I think there’s something wrong with him. Maybe he’s a vegetarian, or a sectarian…
The food here is all you can eat. Or rather it was all you can eat. The first time they said we could eat as much as we wanted, I quickly swallowed twenty-five meatballs. They weren’t bad, but Ma’s are better. Since then the sergeant lets me eat no more than twenty. That is not a problem: I sit next to some city boy at lunch, stare at him, and he gives me half his portion. And I last till evening. I rotate them, so nobody complains.
The first week three boys pulled me behind the sleeping quarters; I think they wanted to beat me up. Because they felt offended by my successes; it wouldn’t do, recruits showing them up. No worries! Their parents won’t sue us! Two of them will even be back in the ranks quite soon, in two months. Once the bones have set. The third will probably lie there a while with that big one. Because he tripped a little, and I gave him a very light shove against the barracks wall, and his head went in a tiny bit. And there was that pop again. The doctors said both of them will be out of the coma soon. So no worries!
Please tell my brothers Tosho and Gosho to come at once! They should enlist; after all that eating and games they even pay you! Quick, before those idiots from the next village catch on and the places fill up!
Ma and Pa, I love you and I miss you! It is nice here, I hope they like me.
Your daughter:
Stoyka