denny-piranha.com/start/downloads/arma/Reportage [soldier in the NVA]

My conscription day NVA [ NVA: east german Army]

My conscription day NVA after the whole circus of the pattern received I my conscription to the basic weir service of the NVA. In my personal planning this already also did not fit of course, to whom. 18 months are no cardboard handle and, above all, for a young person in 20 years. Money has not earned one yet and to the family planning was also not to be thought for the next 18 months. I envied that, this service do not line up need. There were reasons to handle also in the GDR enough this "honourary service".

The setting order blocked to me was 02nd May. Thus I should appear in the morning on the distant platform on beauty's field to be carried in the generally infamous Karpin with Eggesin. The platform was of fully young men who still had to say goodbye before the railway station to her parents, friends etc.. In the real sense we were Berliners and they might be called up according to allied right for this city not really for the national army. What this worried the superiors in this land. A little bit with envy we already looked at the west Berliners of the same age boys who never saw the armed forces from the inside. The platform was overfull from us which were ready Absolutely unsuspectingly to the departure.

Regardless of fearing mines a very big interest of the waiting was got drunk quite hopelessly and it was bawled and griped quite openly about the fact that now one had to line up this inevitable service. Before the railway station one lost vast amounts of tears with the members and at the railway station then the strong sides appeared.

I had nobody who said to me Bye or wished me all the best. This I was lived, as a former home child. The loudspeakers of the railway station announced the driving special train which was also already to be seen at the railway station end. The train stood and everything attacked in the compartments. The travel provisions in beer were brought fast in position. The posts standing at the railway station of the NVA were mocked from the window. The special train to Pasewalk, Eggesin and Ückermünde started his journey. This location in the north-east of the former GDR was of one of the biggest troop concentrations of the NVA and in so far almost all weapon types were stationed there. Everybody he knew since his call-up order in which weapon type position themselves has.

My purpose was an armoured division stationed in Karpin. The road journey was a special adventure. Somebody already pulled shortly after the exit from the railway station the emergency brake of the train under the laughter of the train passengers. The conductor and train driver ran like mad around the train around the reason to bring of this stop in experience. It lasted for a while to the train again on tours came. In the compartments it became always pure. Some could not keep any more on the legs.

Soberly I had to consider with, because I am a teetotaler. Again we flew almost by the carriage. Emergency braking! This recurred to the train at the railway station Pasewalk drove. Immediately we recognised that this train journey did not remain unnoticed with the persons responsible of the official places NVA, because soldiers with red armlets were recognizable there, immediately in the carriages transferred around the activity an end to prepare. Now the course of the journey to Eggesin ran a little more well-behaved, after us to all was threatened that other excesses with drastic logical would be anticipated.

The train held Eggesin at the railway station. In the meantime, it was already late afternoon and we crept formally from the train. Loudspeaker announcements served the orientation on which truck one had to take a seat. Everything wore her private things and had to take a seat on completely muddy NVA Lkws. The journey led through dusty streets. We had completely got dirty when the truck passed the gate of the barracks. In the midst of the barracks there was a kind of football pitch which was limited by the single barrack lodgings. From the windows the future companions hanging around there called the sayings which were not just edifying for us. " Your splash " called so one conscripts who were in the first half a year of the business hours.

Absolutely untidily we stood on this place and the most marvellous sunshine of the beginning May did this atmosphere more and more depressing. I would have had absolutely other plans in this time. In the meantime, more and more officers and other persons responsible appeared who made clear with important and important mine and everything that from now on the civil life found an end for 18 months. In the meantime, there appeared the regimental commander, a lieutenant-colonel who was greeted by the present officers and noncommissioned officer's ranks with clearly servile behaviour and gestures. The new whom we were delivered the most varied comments in addition and giggled at this submissive behaviour.

Even more astonishingly it was that these just submissive ranks to us put towards clearly who they are and what we are, nevertheless, for "arseholes" who lay at home " on the fig " and a lot other more. And those who are lying round there with the mushroom heads would get to know the hairdresser as first ones. Generally the incidents on the conscription journey would still have results. How they want to realise this! We shook only the head. After the responsible sergeant majors her "new" in receipt took they moved into the lodgings. This happened of course not without disparaging remarks about us which are stupid anyhow everything. Nevertheless, we found confirmed what was held in the population about the educational state of the lower ranks.

Come in the company we had been surprised at the extremely long hall and, above all, at the cubicle. Here were 40 soldiers interrupted. Of a personal area is not to be thought here. Particularly as here also the so-called dismissal candidates and hops were accommodated. We could still know would play which peculiar things in such constellation, We waited for the things still on ourselves would come up. A delusive rest before the storm began and we thought that one had forgotten us.

A loud shouting on the company hall, released by the noncommissioned officer sitting on entrance of the service, let us foresee nothing good. Raustreten to the medical investigation! if one said. In not all to military tempo we left this mass accommodation which itself cubicle called. The sergeant major observed with relish our trot to make clear immediately roaring that the "little mother's sons" would have to show movement. " I will still show You who I am, her soft type "

The medical investigation was the purest laugher, because we had to run, so to speak, by a trellis of soldiers with white smocks which murmured something what others wrote down. Then suddenly on the left and on the right one with a syringe which were sunk on the left and on the right in the upper arms. Question looks were commented with the necessity of this measure. Then in the end still the boss of the Med point stood before one and with weighty mine the command "stepping aside" occurred! Then just round the corner it went to the hairdresser who had to miss a military haircut to us. Only the "mushroom heads" had here a preferential admission.

After these actions were finished we looked uniformed everything and now fitted probably in the picture of the NVA. Resemblances, how at the beginning of our departure were not noticeable any more. The first day had run. The evening sun shone by the windows of the cubicle and we already lay around 21.30 in the beds because the tomorrow's day would become a very strenuous one. The command of the UvD was to be understood loudly and clearly " company of night's rest "