gendarmegesh

It has been already 2 years since Oberwachtmeister Stepan Stepaniv began to serve at the entrusted cobblestone streets of Rachiv. He knows these streets since early childhood. One might think such a job is nothing but a monotonous routine that repeats itself every day with nothing exciting happening. Not always Everyday is full of the new encounters, new events, new situations and also, if one watches carefully, new changes. Such is the opinion of Oberwachtmeister Stepaniv.
Mazar family has acquired a bad habit of hanging their drying laundry off the balcony, thus disturbing the town�s good appearance. Some already dead trees have been planted among the good ones in the alley. Construction workers finished closing the dangerous pothole on the road. The ugly garbage dump has disappeared from the street corner.

A stolen bicycle has been found thanks to the KG (criminal gendarme dept.) and the information provided by the neighborhood residents. Some trouble seeking teens have been expressing their strive for freedom by participating in the no-boundary fun and playing really loud music in the youth club way past the district�s quiet hours. These are all points of gendarme�s concern and, when put together, are like mosaic pieces making one whole picture. But before one sees it one has to walk the streets of Rachiv again and again.

Stepan Stepaniv had a making typical to the one of the Karpatian youth. After 10 grades of public school, he then went to professional school specializing in mechanical and electrical repair and maintenance. He served a duty to his land in Vladevanian Armed Guard has been wounded in combat and was awarded the Vladevanian Battle Cross. Discipline, not simply a blind obedience, love for one�s country and work have been well instilled in young man�s heart. His Father�s personal example gave him another reason for a profession�s choice upon demilitarizing. Fedir Stepaniv has been a longtime veteran of the Rachiv gendarme force. He prepared and tutored his son for a future job. In him Stepan found a stricter critic than some of the instructors and supervisors. �� But he is also a very patient teacher, to him and to my wife I owe it all in turning my first clumsy steps in the �New Land� of gendarme service into a steady confident walk.� His wife is ��my most precious souvenir acquired while serving in Wegorzewo.� A Lemberg girl was studying there with aspirations to become a nurse when the war started. Stepan became her first patient. They got acquainted when he came to get his bandages changed, which she did as part of her training. Today, when sometimes their shifts cannot be synchronized, they treat each other with a lot of care and understanding. �The one who protects order for the public must have order in his family firsthand�. So say the textbooks. To those very textbooks Oberwachtmeister Stepaniv will be returning real soon, when he begins to attend the High Academy of the Ministry of the Inferior to earn his commission.