The usual shift of a reconnaissance pilot was routine. His eyes carefully scanned the area over which the drone was hovering, and his hand periodically tore away from the remote control to flip through the map, clarify the coordinates, and refresh the page on his smartphone that showed changes in the weather and wind gusts. Searching for orcs among the thick green trees is a task that requires maximum attention and concentration. Two landings were heard somewhere, from which a light tremor rippled along the walls of the dugout. “Far enough to report another shelling of the position,” the pilot thought, not taking his eyes off the screen on the remote control, and continued to examine the landing site occupied by orcs. But in a couple of minutes, as often happens on the front, everything changed dramatically.<\/p>\n
A frightened fighter suddenly ran into the dugout, covered in dust. A stranger shouted from the threshold in confusion: “Guys, there’s a man asleep in a dugout, help!”<\/p>\n
The next few seconds passed in sudden instinctive actions: a comrade who had been sleeping after his shift jumped out of his bunk and grabbed the remote control, turning the drone to the base, the pilot grabbed a shovel, threw a flashlight into his pocket as he ran and ran out along the landing after the stranger, who, breathing heavily, mumbled something incomprehensibly about a direct flight through the dugout.<\/p>\n
More than a hundred meters later, the green landing changed into a lunar landscape covered with torn trees. In the middle of this apocalyptic landscape, twisted trunks of the dugout roof stuck out of the ground, resembling the broken ribs of a disemboweled animal. From inside this lifeless carcass, some sounds were coming and a lone shovel was spitting out handfuls of earth.<\/p>\n
Under the remains of the shelter, it was as if some infernal mixer had just worked, mixing everything into one indecipherable mass: part of a laptop, a backpack, an icon and other random things were sticking out of the pile of earth. Amidst all this commotion, a half-bent soldier tried to dig, but – shell-shocked and exhausted after his arrival – he could barely scrape the thin surface of a large layer of earth from under which the groan of a sleeping man could be heard.<\/p>\n
Near the very wall of what had once been a dugout, a small wrinkle of insulation that had been used to cover the walls and ceiling was sticking out of the ground. A little oxygen was coming through this narrow gap, thanks to which the sleeping man tried to breathe.<\/p>\n
Diving under the shattered ribs of the broken dugout, the pilot began to dig intensively, simultaneously taking a warm shower from the dust that was monotonously pouring down directly on his head. Handfuls of earth and curses began to fly out of the pit more actively, and the voice of the man under the rubble became more energetic and began to encourage his rescuers: “Boys, dear ones, dig out your legs. Legs! I can’t feel my legs.”<\/p>\n
“Pray, grandfather, or curse – it doesn’t matter,” the pilot barked, working tirelessly with a shovel. He had to constantly hear the fallen man in order to understand that he was conscious and to orient himself by the sounds where exactly under the rubble the body was.<\/p>\n
Having removed a couple of bayonets of earth around the place where the voice was coming from, the guys widened the gap by a couple of centimeters, through which the man got more oxygen. A few more minutes later, part of his palm and the top of his head appeared through it. To everyone’s surprise, the fallen man was wearing glasses, the thin frames of which had not even been bent during the explosion.<\/p>\n
About 20 minutes later, when the pilot once again stuck the shovel deep into the ground, the grandfather cried out sharply in pain: “Ouch! There’s my ass<\/a>!” Everyone burst out laughing and the atmosphere became a little lighter. However, not from a spontaneous joke, but from the fact that the guys had already removed most of the earth from the body and very soon the guys would pull the grandfather to the surface.<\/p>\n At that moment, a Mavic hovered over the broken dugout. The guys glanced at it with fear and began to dig even more actively – it seemed to them that this was enemy reconnaissance. Which means – a second flight could happen very soon. But one of the guys who had just come up clarified that this was our drone, showing the commander the state of affairs. And after this phrase, even more curses began to pour out from under the broken dugout at the inquisitive commander. After all, because of the buzzing of the Mavic overhead, the boys with shovels could not hear the sky. And enemy reconnaissance could arrive at any moment.<\/p>\n Ten minutes later, the pilot had already cut the film that had previously covered the ceiling of the dugout, and now covered the grandfather’s legs. Carefully cutting through the layer of insulation, the pilot simultaneously felt the grandfather’s leg with his other hand for fractures and cuts. Fortunately, the grandfather was left without a single scratch. And the fact that he had complained about pain in his legs<\/a> from the very beginning was only because they were pressed down by a meter-long layer of earth and they became numb. Moreover, the grandfather ended up being the cleanest of all those who dug him out. The pilot himself, running back to his dugout, felt the adrenaline gradually recede, and instead he felt a severe pain from fatigue in his hands, which had just shoveled several cubes of earth at speed. Earth continued to fall from the pilot’s head, and his entire form was covered in clay. If you took an old, tattered broom, smeared it in mud, collected cobwebs from the corners, and then placed it next to the pilot, the appearance of these two would be identical.<\/p>\n