“What are you barbecuing?”

“[Nagorno-Karabakh Republic] DA [i.e. Defense Army] sausages...we’re fighting men. What can we do? That’s the life at the [military] posts.”

Soldier Hovo laughs. “Once it’s ready, you, too, will taste [it]. We’re waiting for you for four days. They say you’ll come, but you’re not around.”

While Hovo and his friends are barbecuing, we go to meet with the other soldiers. We have little time, since the road back from the Jrakn (Jebrail) military positions will be long (PHOTOS).

“It was very difficult, but we endured, tried to always remember our families at the most difficult moment,” mortar battery commander, Captain Martirosyan, who is accompanying us, said about the four-day war with Azerbaijan, in early April. “We have lost friends [in battle]; we are in pain, and we commiserate with their families; we wish them strength. Along with all this, it’s important that we still smile; there are jokes, songs and dances, too.”

After a few seconds, we are at the focus of everyone. Some soldiers approach us, interact with us, whereas others observe from afar.

“Each and every one [of them] is a hero. They have fought, but they’re just shy to come, speak in front of the [video] camera,” the commander explains and smiles behind the soldiers “fleeing” from the video camera. “A shell explodes beside you, you do nothing, [but] he holds the [video] camera at you, you run away.”

Five minutes later, our photo camera assembled everyone at one spot. The relatives of these soldiers will see and know from the photos that their boys are safe and sound. The soldiers gradually get used to our “weapons.”

“We are all ready, we stand [at these military posts] for our motherland, for our friends,” battery senior officer Muradyan said, as he was the first to be “bold” enough to speak in front of the video camera. “We were able to withstand because we knew that our soldier is standing at the frontline; someone’s life will be saved from one explosion of ours.”

“Those are the boys who neutralized a 60-member squad of the adversary,” Muradyan says pointing at Hovo, Marat, and Ruben. These 19-year-old boys, however, stand in a way as if they have done nothing extraordinary.

“They told me about what you’ve done. Will you tell, in more detail, what happened?”

“Well, they’ve said [it already]. What else can we say?”

“I would like you to tell,” I continued stubbornly.

“Well, it was the second of the month [of April],” Ruben responded and continued succinctly: “An alarm was given at  dawn. We came here, saw that a real war had begun. We took measures, hit the adversary, [and] they were running away from our mortars.”

“They told us, ‘they’re right in front of you with a direct aiming point; open fire in that direction!’” continued Hovo, for his part, and added: “Then we learned that we had destroyed a tank. They said, ‘Open more intense fire in that direction.’ At the moment, they were firing in our direction with tanks, but we started shooting, again without being downhearted, in their direction with our mortars. Their 60-member squad began to flee, withdraw. We opened fire again; they said, one KamAZ [truck-load] of people [i.e. Azerbaijani soldiers] were coming to position themselves; we destroyed that KamAZ, too. Things like this; this is the life of a soldier. They say a soldier shall not sleep, a soldier shall just rest. We’re here so that those who wait for us can wait without being downhearted.”

“And they should definitely know that we definitely will come,” added Marat.

We continue the chat at a more intimate climate, and without video cameras. It turns out that on the day of the Azerbaijani attack, they had lost two friends at that very site. But they do not wish to recall the details. They say they did everything to save the lives of their friends, but they could not.

We are saddened and we walk to the dinner table together. The first toast is to the memory of their fallen friends.

A few minutes later, we are all in high spirits at the dinner table.

Gevorg’s patriotic song and the aroma of the “DA sausage” barbecue comes from the war that I pictured.

P.S. I learned on my way back that one of these soldiers had saved the lives of two wounded friends in battle by risking his life, but he had asked that they would say nothing about it, so that he would not give an interview.