The Zastava

The Way of the Arpha: 9 of 12

A chronicle of Cypriot boot camp. Intro HERE and last section HERE

Our Yugoslavian-made Zastava semi-automatics had wooden stocks and, without their cartridges, looked more like souped-up BB guns than actual weapons. But they were surprisingly capable, with a maximum effective range of 3,500 meters. The arphades, of course, treated them like a water guns. The issuing process started out orderly enough: we sat on the ground by platoon, going up one by one to collect our rifles before sitting back down. It wasn’t long, though, before everyone was up and about, fiddling with the hardware. The harsh clatter of sliding bolts and clicking hammers filled the air as the conscripts played with their new toys.

No matter where you stood, the barrel of a rifle was pointed at you. Some took aim at one another. Mock executions were performed. One grinning arphas put his mouth over the barrel and pulled the trigger. Another jabbed the muzzle into his friend’s stomach, while the unperturbed victim in turn calmly aimed his Zastava at a passing truck, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth.

I’d handled guns before but had never seen them treated with such casual disregard. Every time I stepped outside of one rifle’s line of fire, I found myself staring down another barrel. It was just something to get used to. The conscript officers barked at us not to cock the guns or point them at each other but did nothing about it. Later that day, our company commander delivered a stern warning, threatened punishment and reminding us that goofing with firearms had cost many soldiers their lives. His words had no impact. Only when the novelty wore off did the sound of sliding bolts and the sight of mock killings finally cease.

The next few days were spent on the Zastava. We memorized its specifications and range, practiced disassembling and reassembling it at speed, and learned commands like Shoulder Arms, Present Arms, Port Arms and Order Arms. It would be another two weeks before we fired them, and even then, we only got twenty bullets each: ten during daytime target practice, and ten at night.

The targets were set 100 meters away, in front of a carved-out mountain wall. Every time a line of conscripts fired, clouds of dust and shards of earth exploded from the rock face, sometimes as high as fifteen meters over the target. Watching from a distance, you might have assumed half of us were blindfolded.

The sessions involved workshops on everything from rocket launchers to compass readings to fire-and-maneuver tactics. Occasionally, this included hands-on schooling, and once even head-on when three conscripts collided during a concealment drill while sprinting for shelter under imaginary enemy fire, resulting in one going to the hospital for x-rays.

Now and then we’d hike up to the shelters after dark for night workshops on skills like crawling on one one’s belly and ambushing sentries. The highlight was a ten-minute seminar on how to silently kill an enemy guard. It’s simple: you sneak up behind him, cup a hand over his mouth, sink a knife into his second rib, and drive the blade upwards. The cadet officer demonstrated on an accommodating conscript who pretended to be murdered with little fuss. We watched with great interest, confident that we’d have no problem getting ourselves killed if we ever attempted it.

Another memorable moment at the shelters came one afternoon when a National Guard helicopter flew low overhead. One of the conscripts, dubbed Brains for his towering lack of intellect, ran out of his shelter and aimed his Zastava at the helicopter, making stuttering tat-a-tat machine-gun noises as he tracked it. Chewbacca just happened to round the corner of the shelter at that moment. Even the pilot probably heard Chewbecca’s bellow over the chop of the rotors.

*to be continued with The Furlough