When It’s All Gone
It was the morning after Christmas. We stepped onto the platform of Kyiv Train Station. Shaheds and ballistic missiles shot through the air. The ground shook. We took our bags full of tourniquets and power banks and ran for the tunnels inside the station. Hundreds of civilians sat on the floor, hugging their luggage, with their backs against the concrete walls as we waited for the sound of rockets to end. It smelled like sulfur. Everyone looked at the ceiling as dust sprinkled down from the impacts of the salvo. Inside the tunnel, there was a room with free water, coffee, and conversation.
At 09:00, someone came over the loudspeaker and spoke Ukrainian. Everyone shot up to their feet. The station went silent. The aerial attack paused. A clock sound muffled through the speaker. “Tick…tick…tick.” When it stopped, the speaker announced, “Slava Ukraini.”
The tunnel erupted, “Heroyim Slava!”
“Every morning at nine, we give a minute of silence to the soldiers,” said Viktoria. She had been our roommate on the train from Poland. Her voice was soft. Her posture was not.
Ian asked her, “What does Heroyim Slava mean?”
“Glory to our heroes.”
Another missile made impact, but it sounded further away than the last. “Let’s go,” Viktoria said. We walked outside to the gray sky and freezing temperatures, where taxi drivers were out looking for customers. Viktoria was going in a different direction from us, but we exchanged information before taking different cabs.
By the time we checked into our Airbnb and finished our jet lag naps, it was 13:30, and the salvo had ended. Ian and I roamed the city center. All that could be heard was the hum from the box generators pumping electricity into cafes and restaurants. The sidewalks were frozen. Men with missing limbs struggled to stay on their crutches. When we returned to the street of our Airbnb, we could hear endless honking from hundreds of cars.
“Protestors blocking the streets?”
But as we approached closer to the noise, the demonstrators were not on the street. Men, women, children, and the elderly in winter garments stood on the sidewalks and medians with signs that read: ‘Free Azov.’ They signaled every passing car to lay on the horn. Drivers waved Ukrainian flags from their windows and honked like the Turnpike during rush hour.
“Where are you guys from?” A stranger asked. He was middle-aged and spoke American English.
“Washington.”
“New York,” I said.
“Did they do anything like this on 5th avenue after the American soldiers in Syria were killed?”
I shook my head, “No.”
~
Ian and I sat in the living room, but the demonstration continued. Ian was on the floor, back against the wall, while I was on the couch.
“Glory to our heroes kicks the shit out of Thank you for your service,” he said. “I mean, the one hundred percent disability rating changed my life.”
“Mine, too. As they say, veteran benefits prevent another Shay’s Rebellion.”
Ian ignored my statement. His eyes were wide and fixed on the window across the room, still taken aback by ‘Glory to our heroes.’ Maybe he was just tired from the two-day trip it took to get here, or maybe he was worried a Shahed drone could come through the window.
“Why don’t you think there was a rally for those killed by ISIS?” I asked Ian.
“We have a saying in the Marines. The Marine Corps goes to war while America is at the shopping mall.”
~
At 03:00, Ian and I would drive to the front lines with the Ukraine Relief Fund (URF), delivering vehicles and tourniquets to the 3rd Army Corps. They were box-vehicles with right-hand steering wheels for delivering mail. We kept our radios on to coordinate through routes and roadblocks.
At 10:00, shortly after sunrise, we reached the city of Kharkiv. The sky broke open with explosions. Trails of smoke surrounded us. We were too tired to be afraid. We stayed calm—we had to. If we swerved off the road, then the minefield would get us. So, we drove on until we reached Izyum, a snow-covered suburbia of bluffs and hills. Camouflage nets ran on wooden posts above the road for miles. Outside of the nets were churches and stores reduced to rubble. We met the unit in a cul-de-sac of single-story homes, where we could hear machine-gun fire in the distance.
“2022 was crazy,” one of the soldiers told me. “We weren’t professionals. All we had were AKs and RPGs—nothing else.” He showed me a picture of himself on his front porch. He and I almost fought over who should buy the group a round of coffee, but the URF organizer told me the soldiers can’t afford much, and this is their only way to show gratitude. “I’m not worried about USA government,” he continued. “Americans are good people. We feel their support. Government is short. We care about American institutions that last for hundreds of years. I think this year we will see good change. For now, my job is live one more day.”
~
When we returned to Kyiv, we went to a memorial service held for two soldiers from Azov who were killed in action. It was held at the Maidan . A snow-covered garden nearby held a flag for each fallen soldier. Thousands of them. Most were Ukrainian, Czech, Polish, Colombian, Georgian. Ian found a United States Marine Corps flag.
“Plenty of American flags, but only one branch is willing to plant their own—not the Army, not the Navy,” he said as he caressed the red banner.
“Do you think they prefer to be buried here or back home?”
~
We found Viktoria among the Azov soldiers. A few dozen men were either wearing army fatigues or black sweatshirts imprinted with tattooed naked girls. A band with wind instruments stood behind two vans. It was cold outside, but the two orthodox priests remained unshaken in their robes. Soldiers carried a coffin from each van and brought the two fallen to the center—their lips shook, and their hands were blood red. They opened their caskets, and the priests blessed the faces inside. After the priests blessed the dead with the smoke from their censer, and eulogies from the officers, each soldier lined up to the coffins and saluted then crossed themselves. The band started to play “Last Post,” and the guards brought out the New Zealand flag and laid it on the first coffin. Then they readied the American flag, and that’s when my breath turned short and Ian began to cry. I kept it together until they played “Taps.” They laid the American flag on the second coffin, then folded it. Only Ukrainian flags remained on the coffins as they were carried back to the vans.
After the memorial ended, Viktoria held onto Ian and talked about her son, “I miss him so much. He misses his little son and wife very much.” Ian gave Viktoria his boots, medical kit, and five hundred dollars to send to her son. She smiled and said, “You are very beautiful people, both inside and out. God really did make us in His image.”
Ian went back to the room, but I did not follow. Instead, I went to a dive bar with the Azov soldiers. Most of them were American, and we drank ourselves stupid.
“Most of them are orcs,” one of them said. “We’ve been kicking their asses and most of them want to surrender—they don’t want to fight. On one mission, we had forty Russians surrender all at once. We lose guys from complacency.”
A woman sitting at the bar next asked me, “You’re American. Tell me, why do you Americans come here to fight? Are you addicted?”
“The civilian world is hard.”
“Really?”
“We were the best in the world at our jobs. The civilian world is filled with doubt. And some people love us for our service. Some hate us.” I pointed to the Americans fighting for Ukraine. “They just lost two brothers, but look how happy they look.”
“They’re drunk.”
“I didn’t say they were healthy.”
“Some hate you?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
A marine handed me a shot—he bought a round for six. After we tossed them back, he kept shaking my hand, and so I bought us the next round. It’s only 18:00. He hugged me from behind, “We’re going to the strip club, and you’re coming with!”
The girl at the bar walked away.
~
The strip club was across the street from the Maidan, through a set of black-tinted doors. We went down the stairs into the venue, and the soldiers turned quiet. The manager sat us on a couch in front of a giant birdcage where the dancers put themselves on display. The ceiling flashed and glowed with red and blue lights. The hookahs stunk the place up with their fruit-flavored smoke. There was a man across from us. He looked to be in his late thirties. His long hair was as gel’d back. He wore a red MIT hoodie.
The men reached through the holes with their chapped and bloody knuckles and stuffed crumpled cash into the bikini straps. But they were still quiet. One of the dancers said, “Thank you.”
“You speak English?” I asked.
“A little bit,” she said. She sat next to me. She wore pasties, her dark hair was slick back in a ponytail. There were three rows of short but thick scars on her wrist.
“What happened?” I asked her.
She rubbed her thumb across the scar on top, “I was stupid.”
“I’m sorry.”
“When I was kid, I was nice to people but they were not.”
“How do these guys usually treat you?”
“Good. They’re calm.”
“Is there a difference between how an American soldier treats you versus a Ukrainian soldier?”
She shook her head and shrugged, “They’re the same.”
ISSUED 