“We have to do something!”
I’d been thinking the same thing as I was watching the news reports of the Russian military buildup on the northern border of Ukraine. For a week, most news outlets and the president of the United States were saying that Russia would not invade. This was different. On February 24th, 2022, they rolled over the border and the war in Ukraine began a new chapter.
“We can’t just do nothing. I’m going to go with or without you.”
My friend Dean pleaded with me to go with him to Ukraine. Dean was my brother from Afghanistan — the one who had dragged me onto a motorcycle in Vietnam a few years earlier and opened the world back up to me. I needed some time to think. After an hour I called back and told him we would go, but I wasn’t going to join a military. I would not don a uniform and be at the mercy of chickenshit politicians like I had been during my deployments in support of the war on terror.
We would go as trainers and, if we could, as partisans or insurgents if you will. I would rather utilize tactics taught to me by the Taliban and Mahdi militia than be confined to the rules of engagement and shortsightedness that the U.S. military had taught me. Wow, was my brain fried. If you are thinking, what an idiot, I hope that you add a few more demeaning words to my mental state at the time.
The escape hatch had been opened. The reason was there, plane ticket bought, and I left with no plans of returning to the land of milk and ridiculous health care premiums. I packed my travel backpack and took nothing that would identify me as a potential combatant. I saw on the website for Ukraine’s International Legion that they were only taking people that could bring their own gear. I left with three changes of clothes.
I flew into Portugal, then boarded my flight to Poland. I sat next to a Ukrainian who had been working abroad, now headed back to defend his country from Russia. The plane was filled with Ukrainian men heading back. At one point during the flight, the man sitting next to me stood up and shouted Slava Ukraini, and the plane suddenly echoed with a deafening Heroiam Slava. My hair stood on end. The plane landed in Warsaw, and I don’t remember being scanned into Poland.
I met up with Dean, we stayed the night in Warsaw, and we drank a bit to take the edge off. He was in contact with a guy that could get us over the border in Medyka. We took the train to Krakow and set up a base of operations there while we waited. It was difficult to find lodging as the hotels were quickly filling up with refugees. We met some Ukrainian volunteers who were working with their church in Krakow, collecting donations for refugees as well as medicine and equipment for the military.
Dean’s contact wouldn’t be able to come get us for a few days. We decided to go to the border and see how we could help. We got up the next morning and took the train to the border. I’ve served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. The side of war I had never seen was a mass human exit from a country being invaded.
The train station in Przemyśl Główny was being used as a hub to receive the refugees coming in fifteen minutes down the road in Medyka. The place was packed with women and children. There were warming tents, and there was even a pet park set up for the families that fled with their furry friends. This wasn’t led by the government, this was a rally of the Polish people. They took the initiative, scrounged together tents, blankets, and food and worked around the clock as thousands of women and children poured through the border with little or no support from the Polish government at the beginning of the war.
We met up with another volunteer from the U.S. He told us they had more volunteers than they knew what to do with but found us some work distributing food to the families. Later we helped tired mothers carry backpacks, suitcases, and kids to the train back to Krakow all day long. Most of the men I saw coming out of Ukraine were not Ukrainian. They were foreigners, Chinese, Africans, and Indians. The few Ukrainian men I saw had many children, had elderly parents or special needs children in tow. Maybe there were more. I didn’t see them.
After moving bags and people all day long, Dean and I hopped on the last train back to Krakow. We had arrived at Przemyśl Główny on a nearly empty train; now there was no room to stand. Every carriage was full. The walkways were full. There was hardly any chatter that usually fills an evening train, just the crying of babies and cooing of mothers that filled the silence between the rhythmic violence of steel on steel carrying Dean and I back to a hotel, and hundreds of others into uncertainty.
When we got back to Krakow, Dean and I showered and went straight to the bar. It took a few drinks to get the conversation going. Dean chatted up a German lady that spoke English. She was there with two business colleagues. We sang some karaoke and the night seemed to be going in the right direction. At some point the Ukraine conversation came up. One of the German guys started saying some foul things about Ukraine. Dean and him squared off. I tried to talk Dean down and get out of that place but he is the type of guy that won’t back down once provoked. As I paid the tab the two had started making their way out of the bar. The other man stood up to exit, and I assured him it wasn’t in his best interest to follow. I raced up the stairs and before the German asshole could step out of the door, I grabbed the back of his collar and yanked him back into the bar onto his ass. Dean wheeled around to pounce but I pushed him back out into the street and we made our way back to the hotel.
We were getting antsy. I had to reiterate to him that we weren’t joining the military. It became a point of friction between us. The next day we took a break from each other as we thought about the next move. I was dealing with personal shit on two fronts — the closing out of my past and the beginning of my future.
Dean lost contact with his guy in Ukraine. Nobody was coming to get us. I wouldn’t budge on my standpoint of joining the military. I was also delusional about my pursuit of being a freedom fighter. Knowing what I know about the Russian military, it was the right call. Through Facebook I found out that a guy I served with in Iraq in 2007–2008 was doing humanitarian work at the Romanian-Ukrainian border. Dean and I reconciled before we parted ways. I was out of options and running low on funds. There was no place to stay in Krakow anymore, and everyday there were more and more people trying to find a place to land in Europe.
There was something I needed to do before I went to Romania by way of Budapest.
This is part of an ongoing series. If you missed the first installment, start with A Rolling Stoner Gathers No Moss.
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