. .’ Mama doesn’t know what we do on those mountains, she don’t know a thing about our troubles. The years of our youth are spent in the Caucasus, where there’s always war . . . The sound of bombs in the background, our brigade advances, over there you can already hear the shots. The sound of bombs in the background, the tracer bullets fly, and the whole earth shakes from the cannons. The helicopter goes off, and we must go on, I hope you make it back, brother . . . The helicopter goes off, and we must go on, It’ll be hard, and some’ll never make it home . . . Too young when we came here to the Caucasus, where there’s always war. We’ll never forget these terrible years, and our friends left behind forever . . . When we come back we’ll sit down together, and before our third glass we’ll be silent. The fallen in battle, the ones who made it home, Now our souls are one . . . Russian military song from the period of the Chechen conflict We don’t need a soul, we’ve got blue berets instead, we swoop from the sky like angels, with parachutes instead of wings, we leap onto the ground like demons in battle, we don’t care about a thing, we just want victory .
