Time loses itself in the countryside, and so did I.
On the train from Budapest to Cluj I had nine hours to think about leaving the last forty years of my life behind with nothing but a backpack and three changes of clothes. We passed prairies and villages that time had forgotten about. I had grown up in the Pacific Northwest, my ancestors had arrived by boat to the free world and eventually trekked west through the plains and the mountains to find a new life. Here I was headed in the opposite direction through prairies and villages that time forgot searching for mine.
“You guys got any 40 mike mike?”
That is how I met Costel. We had just shot our way down a 5km stretch of road in Eastern Baghdad laden with IEDs to get to the DAK hall where his platoon had been pinned down for a few days. We had gone in to extract a humvee that had been shredded by an explosively formed penetrator and the bodies of two young men that had been killed in the blast, Durrell Bennett and Patrick Miller.
We pulled into the compound and he walked up to my window and asked me if I had any extra grenades. We gave him what we could spare and went back to engaging with the Mahdi militia. I didn’t know him very well at the time, but some guys from my old squad had told me who he was later when I was in Poland trying to figure out where to proceed after losing contact with our guy in Lviv. Someone gave me Costel’s number and I called him, he told me about what he was doing at the border and invited me to come work with him.
When I pulled into Cluj-Napoca, Costel was still at the border and couldn’t pick me up from the train station so he sent one of his friends to meet me later for beers and introduce me to Cluj. Costel is what we call a ROmerican. Born Romanian, and later moved to the U.S. at a young age. He joined the United States Army and risked his life for his flag and his brothers deploying to Iraq in support of the War on Terror.
He had grown up in Romania during a turbulent time in its history. He remembered what it was like to stand in a bread line, he knew these people needed help and it was his turn to pay back the kindness showed to him by Europe after Ceaucescu was removed. After one drop off we stayed to play with the kids for a few minutes. As we drove away Costel went quiet. I saw a tear on his cheek. “What’s up?” “These little kids, so excited for someone’s hand me downs. They remind me of growing up in the communist times.”
Costel came into town a few days later from the border and needed to unwind a bit. He took me to a CFR soccer match where we sat in a VIP booth and I got to enjoy some Romanian football. We spent the next few days going to different sites with two SUVs people had been kind enough to loan out and two young college kids he was mentoring. Our donations came from different people he knew and a few locally owned businesses.
It was heartwarming to see these people doing what they could to help the Ukrainians coming over the border. They donated clothes, food, diapers and blankets. It didn’t take long until the cars were stuffed to the gills with donations. We were even able to collect sim cards from Orange, a mobile company in Romania.
The next day we headed north into the mountains. From Cluj to the Ukrainian border near Siret is about seven hours of driving on a good day. Here we were crossing the Carpathian mountains which had just got slapped with snow. There are no roads bigger than two lanes that cross those mountains. The only thing tighter than the hairpin turns up this mountain was my asshole as we maneuvered up the steep passes, blind turns and grades that brought tractor trailers within a cunt hair of ending our little mission before we could get into Dracula’s backyard. I was white knuckling and sweating my first trip, and every trip over the mountains after that.
Driving into and over the Carpathian mountains is what I imagine crossing over into Valhalla will look like. I had grown up in the Pacific Northwest, lived within a 35mm panoramic view of the Hindu Kush and later lived for a few years surrounded by the Rockies. The Carpats were like elegant mature ladies that kept their form and shape over centuries. We passed through old mountain towns and monasteries and on one trip stopped at Vlad the Impaler’s castle near Brasov. Although I squeezed finger imprints into the steering wheel, the raw beauty of the place calmed my heart. Driving through this masterpiece of the cosmos it was hard to believe that just on the other side there were women and children living in warming tents with nothing but what they could carry.
First we stopped at a collection point in Botosani. It was run by a Romanian Veteran Program. We emptied our SUVs out into a small room in the building where there were other donated goods. What I had initially thought was a pretty big haul turned out to be a little pitiful when we organized it in the room. The Romanian vets coordinated with the border crossings in the north. There were a few NGOs out there but none of them really communicated. After some telephone tag we gathered the supplies that one of the checkpoints was asking for in one of the cars, and in the other car we loaded up supplies that a separate temporary refugee camp was asking for and rolled out.
The scene at the Romanian border crossing near Siret was heartbreaking. Women and children bundled up in these warming tents. The first border crossing we visited had a three week old baby bundled up in a tiny bassinet while the families waited for transportation and a place to stay in a larger city.
The border crossings had almost a month to set up a good working system, there were plenty of organizations there, and the outflow of Ukrainians into Romania had slowed, but it was still a humanitarian crisis. It honestly didn’t look much different than the situation I had experienced in Poland. We had spent a few days collecting donations, and driven eight hours over the mountains and what we had to offer was nowhere near what was needed.
We went back into town and went out of pocket for other things that the volunteers needed. More diapers, milk, bread, gas, baby food, pet food. The list was long. I started up a GoFundMe to offset the cost of gas, lodging and food for us, and to be able to purchase anything else the borders or the refugee camps needed. Thankfully my family and friends rose to the occasion and we raised around $5,000.
As a young Romanian in America, Costel was blessed to have some wonderful people in his life. Years later, these bonds would lead to a huge breakthrough in our efforts. Costel was working with a former mentor who worked in the Salvation Army in the U.S. On our long drives across Romania, we would talk about how amazing it would be if we could get the Salvation Army to help. We kept our expectations low, being pessimistic whenever the word Army was thrown around. Finally, his contact said that a truck was coming from Austria loaded with goods for our little operation. We both imagined a little Ryder truck or a U-Haul packed with what we had already collected. We would’ve been grateful, at any rate, just for the help.
The day finally came when this truck from Austria was on its way. It was no Ryder truck. It was an 18-wheeler full-sized shipping truck. Even when we saw this truck with our own eyes backing into the bigger building the Romanian military guys procured, we both imagined it was probably only packed a quarter of the way full. Finally, the truck backed up to the loading area of our new supply point, because the supply closet at which we were operating out of before wasn’t going to cut it. The driver came back and opened the doors for us. The truck was packed from front to rear with coats, blankets, fuel, food, shoes, and everything that the checkpoints and refugee centers had asked for. We were blown away. We filled that whole building with the contents of that truck. Costel called and thanked his contact, and his contact responded with, “We have another truck on the way.” Not only were we able to provide much needed supplies to all of our checkpoints and refugee centers, we had enough to help out the orphanages in the northern area of Romania.
We loaded up our little SUV from the new supply point and went out to all of our checkpoints and refugee centers with the news of what we had on hand. We eventually handed off our little operation to the retired Romanian military guys. This allowed us to work with refugee centers and refugee families that we met on a more personal level.
Through this experience what impressed me the most was the heart of the people that I came in contact with. Romanians are great people. They emerged from a dictatorship and communism in the late eighties. A lot of the guys I worked with had been kids during those times and remembered what it was like to have nothing. Some of the young men that I worked with during our border mission had grandparents that remembered when Russia occupied Romania during World War II. They had first-hand experiences of the brutality of the Russians.
Costel had started his little operation at the beginning of the war. He had seen some things at the borders that broke his heart. He and his little band of Romanians crossed the Carpats over a dozen times. From small heartfelt donations to landing the Salvation Army as a sponsor, I was quickly falling in love with Romania, the culture, the wild beauty. It was the people that captured my heart. Some people with very little giving what they could. Others loaning out their vehicles and taking the bus to work while we drove their cars over the mountains back and forth for weeks. The volunteer workers that cooked from their own kitchens and took turns staying in the cold to welcome in and feed the weary. My whole experience in Romania had been with acts of kindness and compassion from these people.
Romania reminded me of the valley at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers where I had grown up. Everywhere I went I was greeted with Romanian kindness and a shot of Polinka. Costel suggested that I stay in Cluj. He would help me find a place and get situated with a temporary stay permit. I still wasn’t sure where I was going or what I was going to do. I’d been sleeping in spare rooms since I arrived i Europe. I figured it would be a good place to lay low for a while, save some money and eventually join the Ukrainian Foreign Legion.
This is the 4th part of an ongoing series. If you missed the first installment, start with A Rolling Stoner Gathers No Moss.
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