The grin on Gindin’s face widens. He can’t help himself. This is fun. “I insist, sir. Come see for yourself.”
The assistant division commander does just that, and he can’t believe his eyes. The five diesels have been installed, and they are running perfectly. Without another word he signs leave papers for Gindin and his sailors and storms off the ship and back to his office, wondering where the hell he went wrong.
21. BALTIYSK
The loyalty of Gindin’s crew is the barrel of still another gun that Gindin is looking down facing Zampolit Sablin in the midshipmen’s dining hall. The Storozhevoy may be his master, but his crew is the ship’s servant and Gindin needs to take care of both in any way he can.
But the situation is more complex than that. It’s not the ship, officers, and crew as separate entities that must work and live together. They’re three legs of a triangle, ship-officers-crew, that function together as a single entity. It’s another of the relationships that most civilians can’t appreciate at the gut level but that anyone who has ever served aboard a warship understands immediately.
At this moment on an early November evening aboard the Storozhevoy, faced with such a monumentally impossible decision, Gindin can perhaps be forgiven if he allows his mind to drift a little. He’s barely treading water in a monstrous ocean. In the troughs all he can see is black water in which he will surely drown. But at the tops of the waves he catches tantalizing glimpses of the base at Baltiysk, near enough to the home of the Baltic Fleet at Kaliningrad to be a safe haven.
The fleet, which consists of nearly forty major surface warships, more than three hundred small combat vessels, 150-plus auxiliaries, two dozen submarines, 250 navy aircraft, and the one naval infantry brigade that Admiral Gorshkov promised each unit, is a formidable power. And yet the town of Baltiysk, where the bulk of the fleet put in after each rotation, is not much more than a village that opens to the Gulf of Gdansk and the Baltic.
Gindin recalls that the base was always busy with ships coming and going. While they were in port they were tied alongside four long docks and were connected to the shore by not only the bow and stern and spring lines but also lines and hoses that supplied electricity, potable water, and fuel.
The base always stank of oil and foul bilge water drained overboard. But everyone felt a sense of invincibility here. At sea you were sometimes surrounded by the enemy—American aircraft carriers, Italian submarines, the bastard German destroyer that had tried to crowd them—but at Baltiysk you were home free. Safe.
The main street of the base is tree lined in the summer, pleasant with buffets and little shops where sailors can buy milk and cookies and cigarettes and other homely little things.
And there is soccer competition. Eight ships in the Storozhevoy’s Bpk division have formed a league. They play on a field near the docks, with benches on the sidelines for the fans. Gindin and Firsov are among the men representing their ship, and whenever they play, Potulniy and Sablin and most of the other officers not on duty or away from the ship come down to the field to give their noisy support.
Soccer is the national sport of the navy, if not of all the Soviet Union. The competition is fierce, as such things are among young military men, and in the end tournaments are held to see which ship will get the Bpk division award.
Those are the very best of times that Gindin remembers now. The Storozhevoy’s team is playing a very tight match when one of the midshipmen sprains his ankle. The game is stopped until the injured man can be helped off the field and brought back to the ship and a replacement player put in.
That evening Zampolit Sablin visits the midshipman’s quarters to make sure he’s not in too much pain and to ask if he needs anything. It’s almost surreal at this moment thinking about the incident. But Gindin can’t help himself; he’s fallen into another trough.
Across the street is the security guard at the main gate. Once you clear that point you are free to go into the town, which is right there on the other side of the fence. But it’s tiny, only three restaurants, two movie theaters, and a few stores spread out here and there. Plus the gaubvachta, the military prison, there to remind every man, officer and sailor alike, that the Soviet navy takes its regulations very seriously.
During the winter the chimneys constantly belch wood smoke, which fills the sharp, crisp air. The townspeople mostly stay indoors, so when it’s cold the streets are all but deserted. It feels like life has been halted in mid-step, waiting for the spring to return.
In the summer, however, the streets are filled with wives pushing baby carriages or taking the children to the park to play. Sometimes off-duty officers will go to the park, too, where they will mingle with the children and the locals.
Gindin remembers a town beach that everyone could use, civilians as well as naval personnel. But the only way to get to it was through the base, so everyone had to be cleared at the gate and driven down to the water.
Other than that there was almost nothing for the wives to do while their husbands were away at sea for six months at a stretch. It was only one of many reasons that the divorce rate among young officers was so high.
Nevertheless, thinking about Baltiysk gives Gindin a little warm feeling. The base is safe, the workload there is 10 percent of what it is at sea, and it’s where the Rossia, his favorite restaurant, is located. Food aboard a Soviet warship, even aboard the Storozhevoy and even for an officer, is not very good compared to the meals they can get ashore.
When the ship is at base and Gindin is not on leave, he and the other officers and crew are given a part of one day in four when they can go through the gate into town. The wives of some of the officers live in Baltiysk, and others take the train to the base whenever the Storozhevoy is in port. But for Gindin, who is single, the Rossia is the first place he heads for.
The restaurant is cozy and the lighting is dim and romantic, things that speak to a Russian’s soul. The Rossia is a place where a guy like Gindin can dream about a wife he’s yet to meet. Besides that, the food is fantastic and there’s always entertainment, someone playing a guitar and singing sad Russian folk songs.
Gindin is a regular customer, he tips very well, and he is obviously single. Every waitress in the always-crowded house loves him. There are always lines of people outside waiting to get in. Any spot inside will be fine. But when Gindin shows up, the waitresses scramble to get him a special place right in front of the singers. Even if every table is filled, one of the waitresses will race to the back room, grab one of the spares, and hustle it out to the floor for the lieutenant.
The crowds are usually split eighty-twenty between navy people and civilians. But everyone in Baltiysk serves the navy in one way or another, either in uniform or as a subcontractor or as a waitress in the Rossia. So every night the main topic of conversation in the packed restaurant is the navy. The faster the vodka flows, the faster the stories blossom, and the faster the guys grab any available girls and get up on the dance floor. As the noise level rises, so does the fun.
The Rossia is the place to be in Baltiysk. It has an atmosphere of relaxation and excitement. A secret place only a few hundred meters away from the ship that is light-years away from military duty, discipline, and responsibilities.