Vrej Babayan was born in 1965 in Berdashen, a village in the Martuni region of Nagorno-Karabakh. He graduated from the Faculty of Applied Mathematics at Yerevan State University and started working in 1990 at the secondary school in the neighboring village of Hoghorti, also participating in the war with the armed self-defense groups of this village. On July 31, 1993, his armored vehicle drove over an anti-tank mine near Aghdam, and he lost his right arm and leg and received injuries to his left leg and right eye. When I asked him for a photograph to publish, it turned out that Vrej did not have any pictures of himself in military uniform; he had fought for three years, but had never been photographed. Many people today have pictures of themselves with automatic rifles, but they have never fired them and never smelled gunpowder or heard the horrifying sound of a hail of bullets. Vrej does not need such a photograph. He gave this war exactly half of his body.

"I was wounded and on my way to the hospital I had a feeling that I would lose my arm and leg, so when I woke up after the amputation I was quite calm, I didn't make a tragedy out of it," said Vrej.

After prolonged treatment in Yerevan, he returned to Berdashen in 1995 and resumed work at the school there. He lives with his parents. They are four brothers, all of whom were part of the war from the very first day, up until the ceasefire was declared. Two of the brothers are still serving in the army.

"I'm not married; the war got in the way. I underwent treatment for a long time after my injury, and was constantly putting off marriage, and in the end I remained single. But I'll probably marry sometime in the future," he said.

I asked him what the Movement, and the war, meant to him.

"I'm a bit of a nationalist, I was part of the national liberation movement from day one. War is the biggest tragedy in the world, the greatest one invented by Man. After this war, I realized that everyone suffers because of war and those who are to blame reap the benefits. The Karabakh war specifically was an issue of national liberation; we were forced to be part of it, there was no other choice. We had to either leave our homes and flee, or fight. They were either going to kill us, or we were going to kill them, there were no other options. We were victorious, but at great cost. We gained freedom, but these victorious people don't deserve this life, or this living. In 1988, our nation was more unified than we had ever been throughout our history, but there isn't even a trace of that unity today. Besides that, the people in power have not suffered with the nation and only think about their own pockets; unfortunately that's true. We are also to blame to some extent, but the authorities should not ignore their consciences this much," said Vrej.

"War is a tragedy in itself; it is Death. You were part of the war - what was the most tragic moment for you?" I asked him.

"Our village is on the border. We were in our posts while the enemy was bombing our village; shells were flying over our heads. It turned out that we were safer in the trenches than our parents or children were in our own village. After the shelling it would take hours, sometimes days, before we would get to know the extent of the damage done to our village. We would sit for hours and days in anxious anticipation. That was horrible. But the most tragic was when children would be killed. Two girls aged 11-12 years old were killed in our village. The total number of victims in our village came to about 40, some of them civilians," he said.

"Did it disturb you to think that shelling on your part could kill children on the Azerbaijani side?" I asked.

"Personally, I never fired at a civilian. We would take prisoners sometimes, but I would never let our boys beat them. Both then and now, I believe that civilians are not to blame for anything. Their fate was such that they too had become part of the war and were forced to bear its burden. We did not have enough shells to fire at civilian targets; we did not even have enough shells to silence the enemy's fire. We would reply with one shell to ten fired from their side. The Azerbaijani army was very well armed; we had almost nothing, especially in the beginning," Vrej narrated.

He said that the government gives him a pension, and had recently organized a festival and contest for the handicapped, as they do almost every year. "That is also a sign of attention towards us. But that attention should not be in the form of pity. They gather around tables and drink to the martyrs of the war and the wounded, but forget about them immediately afterwards. Most often, they feel sorry for us. I'm not speaking about myself; I have a job. I'm speaking on behalf of the majority of the handicapped freedom fighters. They help the families of the dead and the wounded to some extent. But there are freedom fighters who have fought in the war from the first day to the last and have not died or been disabled. Some of them do not even have enough to feed their children."

"What impressions from the war disturb you the most?" I continued to ask, listening to the man before me - a patriot, soldier and teacher.

"During the Karabakh war, many of us - not just I - have been convinced that history is written to order. I am sure of that now. I think that the Vardanants war was also written to order, and if it had been Vasak Syuni giving the order, then it might have been said today that Vardan Mamikonyan was the traitor. It is the same in the case of the Artsakh freedom movement and war. A hundred years later historical information will show that a 100 people received the 'Battle Cross' and one would think that they won the war."

"Who did win the war?" I asked.

"The people. You think the people sitting in the army base won the war? We won the war in the trenches," said Vrej Babayan.

Berdashen-Yerevan