Back to the front, in uniform this time

Gear and getting here.

"Venomous", who despite her name, is a very sweet cat. Rescued from the frontline, she now lives with us in our base, a little out of Russian tube artillery range. Like some cats who have had it rough here, she went from a frightful state, and not pretty to look at, into blossoming into this beautiful creature.

Things happened pretty quickly since the last time I posted here. Miraculously, I didn't have to redo my physicals or paperwork and so was quickly issued the rest of the gear I needed. Thanks to generous donors all around the world, Ukraine only had to kit me out with a helmet, body armor, and an IFAK. That's an individual first aid kit, every soldier carries one. After a lengthy train ride across this vast country, from near the Polish border to near the Russian border, I was issued my rifle (a very short carbine actually) and a large medical pack as well. Some of the things in the medical pack aren't appropriate for my skills and training level, and so I'll be replacing them with other supplies that are and eventually adding some pouches to the outside of it to add even more. For the moment, my job is almost purely driver though.

Part of the time we are in a village in between Kharkhiv and Luhansk, outside of regular artillery range, and not far outside a big enough city to have pretty much all the services we need, despite its having been battered by the war, in this case since 2014. Every few days it is my teams turn to man the forward bunker, just behind the frontline, where we sally from to extract our wounded with the tracked vehicles driven by Ukrainian troopers stationed there. For now, my role is technically purely driver, although there is the expectation that at times I will assist medically as well.  I'm quite content with that, and may remain so, although there's a decent chance they'll move me up to medics assistant or medic as time goes on. I'll probably look back on this as a simpler time and in some ways prefer it. As driver, most of the time I wait at our forward base, just barely behind the frontline, while our medics go forward in the 113 or the "Metalivka" to retrieve the wounded from the line companies Casualty Collection Points on the backside of the "Zero Line". That is the term for the very front-most lines of trenches and foxholes, those actively in contact with the enemy. The term "front line" seems to have broadened some to cover the area from the Zero Line through those areas likely to be shelled regularly and where although there are some villagers hanging on, mostly there are only military folks in the area. 

Our medics quickly assess and possibly briefly treat the patient there, at the Casualty Collection Point, and put them aboard either a venerable American M113 tracked, lightly armored carrier, or a similar Soviet era vehicle, an MTLB. Although the M113 is in service still in the US military, as nothing has really come along that improves upon what is essentially an armored tracked van, this type of vehicle has been in service since before my father worked alongside them in Viet Nam. Ours had a coat of desert tan applied over it at one point, but is old enough to sport dark green paint underneath that, although, it is mostly mud colored right now. These lightly armored vehicles are usually proof against small arms fire and shrapnel from near misses from artillery. Thanks to American politics and the cowardly Russian simps in Congress there, our artillery doesn't have enough shells to suppress Russian artillery, making patient extraction all the more dangerous right now. 

After the tracked carriers finally traverse the short distance (as the crow flies) of zig-zaggy dirt roads filled with deep shell craters and potholes, both of which making treating your patient in back of the track nearly impossible, we transfer our patients to civilian four-wheel drive vehicles for the trip on to either the nearby "stabilization point" or directly to a hospital. The roads from our forward position back to higher levels of care are hardly better than the road from the zero line, and include a nearly impassable bombed out bridge, as well as a pontoon bridge standing in for another bridge wrecked by Russia invading Ukraine. Previous to this war, a nation that had air superiority would use helicopters to transport the most badly wounded from here back, but with an enemy that has anti-aircraft systems capable of shooting them down dozens of miles beyond the front line that isn't possible any longer, and the US military is studying how that reality is something that it will have to face in coming conflicts, with a concurrent drop in the numbers of lives saved and positive outcomes of the wounded that do survive. Time is life, and the advancing technology of warfare is making things worse. For a good portion of my run, drones are our big worry. We are well within suicide drone range when we set out and must traverse open areas and cross a bridge, our likely routes are known, and in addition to the artillery interdiction fire regularly hitting the bridge, the drones know which roads we have to use. The M113 survived a recent drone strike that managed to only damage one of its roof hatches, but our other vehicles lack any armor whatsoever. 

It's my job to help transfer the patient from the track, to the truck, and drive them to their next level of care. I of course have other duties as well, but that's the main job. Like Hemingway, I'm an ambulance driver. A job I love, and am content doing. I am very glad to be doing it again, this time for our soldiers defending us against an aggressor state rather than for cats and dogs. That was a great job too, I am very proud of having done it, and look back on aspects of it fondly, but it was time for me to get on to the job I came here to do. 

Below in this post, and over the next post or two, I will detail some of my experiences and observations from my first 24-hour shift at our forward position.

Up too early, but not early enough.

I had woken up at 0300 and while trying to get back to sleep decided that to shower in the morning would wake others in these close quarters and to sleep a little longer and so reset my alarm for a bit later in the morning than it had been. I should've given myself a bit more time to get all my gear together for the first time, and to make sure I didn't leave anything behind and just left the alarm where it was.

At that point I was pretty awake, and had to read for a while to get back to sleep. Forgot to change socks in the morning when I got dressed, and realized I had packed the last two clean pairs into by bag. It's cold enough that I'm sleeping in my most of my uniform. Didn't want to wake anyone, with one person sleeping alongside me barely two feet away in his bunk, and three more in the next room, without a door between us, so rather than open the zipper to my pack and the zipper to the clothes bag I have in it, and close them both back up, I decided to change socks later. Taking care of your feet is one of the most important things a soldier can do, and I had been lucky so far, but was concerned about pushing it. As things turned out, I ended up spending more than another 24 hours in those socks.

I did go ahead and shave. I much prefer how I look clean shaven, and it's far easier to shave every day than skip some days and hack through tough stubble. I was expecting it to be pretty cold at the bunker, but layering for cold weather is complicated when you also have to wear body armor, that is also affixed with pouches for the spare magazines for your rifle. It's all quite bulky. I decided on one of my favorite base layers, an REI brand long sleeve technical undershirt with really long sleeves, that I've worn for years at work under scrub tops. It's dark blue. Over that went a winter cycling jersey. It is also made of a modern wicking fabric and has a very long tail that largely covers my behind. It also has very long sleeves and a sort of a mock turtleneck, although it is a zip up, which is a boon, it means it's easy to get off if I get too warm, although it will be tucked into my pants. It’s served me well for years of cycling to the hospital in the winter in the Pacific Northwest. In between those two I was wearing another shirt of modern wicking fabrics, this time a t-shirt in MultiCam, one of Ukraine's two approved camouflages for our uniforms, although, being a citizen army, people tend to wear whatever they want to a surprising degree. The doc running the last outfit I was with sometimes wore blue jeans and a black hoodie. You'd have never known she was in the army.

Over all this would go my uniform top. Something like an American Battle Dress Uniform top, but stylistically a little different than BDU's, mostly the cut of it, and the pockets. As cold as I expected it to be in the field, and a cold bunker, I kind of wanted to wear my winter jacket over that, which was also purchased thanks to donors from around the world. It is a warm insulated coat kind of like a "puff" jacket, but in MultiCam of course, and with a hood. I didn't think it'd fit over my armor though, and I knew it wouldn't fit under it either. I was also tempted to bring my fleece hoodie, another piece of kit I have y'all to thank for. It's a zip-up, and of course, also in MultiCam, but I was worried about how bulky it is to fit under my armor, and knew that it wouldn't close over the armor, so I decided to leave it behind, and have it clean for me to come back to. I don't have a lot of clothes left at this point, since I had to be able to carry everything myself from Odesa to Lviv to the eastern front, a distance of about 2,000 kilometers. For those of you who like to measure in Rhode Islands, bananas, and washing machines, that is over 1,200 miles. It ended up being a fair bit more than that actually with the side trip to the rear area base on the way.

Of course, it wasn’t the British who developed the metric system…

So for my final top layer I just went with my rain shell, I was worried I would still be cold, but didn't have any other outerwear options, and didn't want to add any more base layers, although I could've added at least one more, a woodland camo fleece top that is pretty baggy on me now, that like my tiger stripe boonie hat, I had originally purchased for paintball in Pacific Northwest forests. I usually sleep in this, but I might need to buy something real similar to wear in the field, I feel like I got lucky with the weather this time, it was pretty nice for being right around freezing the whole time. I can hear the wind blowing outside now as I type this and expect it be nastier and colder a few more times before the rain and the mud takes over for a while. 

My rain shell is made by the Ukrainian company M-Tac, one of my favorite Ukrainian manufacturers, whose main warehouse was hit by a Russian missile recently in their shift to actually hitting some strategic targets in their tacit admission that they aren't going to win this war anytime soon. This was another recent purchase thanks to donors, I really like this jacket. I had had another jacket in December, but when I left the other battalion of the Legion where I was in the pipeline to be straight infantry, I left a few things behind for some of the guys who were continuing on and who didn't have much in the way of funds. I had no idea whether things were going to work out with the army at that point and had way too much gear to carry and so gave that jacket to one of the other troopers, a volunteer from a certain Southeast Asian country my father visited in the late 60's courtesy of Uncle Sam. He's a really good guy, and needed some help, and I helped him out as much as I could while we were in the same unit, and to a degree still. 

M-Tac did a real nice job with the cut of the jacket, and it has nice slash pockets which are not only large enough for gloves and more, but when zipped up are hidden, and give a clean look to the coat, and when open give a kind of WW2 "Ike" jacket appearance to it. It looks sharp with the hood stowed in the collar, but it's there when you need it too. Since it's just a rain shell, it's thin enough to go over my uniform top, and still squeeze into my armor over it. I was pretty happy with how warm everything kept me, but the temperatures were pretty mild for this time of year, hovering around freezing the whole time. Water bottles left out overnight didn't freeze, despite a fresh dusting of snow, and around noon it was 3 degrees Celsius, or about 37 Fahrenheit.

Since I'm talking about my clothing and the weather, I might as well round out the rest of my attire for that day. I had a hard time finding army boots that fit, in fact I couldn't. I ended up having to go to two different outdoor supply stores to find a pair of boots big enough for my feet. They aren't huge or anything, just 12, and a little on the wide side these days. I have good socks, some of which I've purchased over here, actually at the first of the REI-like stores in Odesa that I went looking for boots in when I gave up on the military supply stores. I’ve been over here long enough to wear out some of the good pairs of socks I brought with me initially. I'm wearing Smartwool merino long john bottoms I've had for a few years, with new lined, water-resistant army pants over that. Around my neck is a thin wool gaiter I've also mostly worn while cycling in winters past, that I tend to pull up over the top of my head to cover my ears half the time. I've also got a thick camo fleece gaiter for when it really gets cold, but I don't wear it too often. I've picked up a variety of headgear, and still have two of the hats I brought to Ukraine with me. I've lost some things along the way, some I regret. Half the time I'm still wearing the green striped knit hat Amy made for me. My tiger stripe boonie hat mostly lives in the bottom of my duffel unless it is raining heavily or hot and sunny. In the field, I'm wearing a Flecktarn pattern German army winter cap. I had one of these for years in the US and loved it, but finally lost it a year or two before I came over here. It’s warm, and has ear flaps stowed across the top you can fold down. Most of the shops I go into are military outfitters, but I ducked into one that was more of a classic military surplus store, and he not only had these great hats, but in my big head size (60), so despite it not being Ukrainian army issue or one of those camouflage patterns, I bought it. It's one of the only discordant notes in my uniform. 

I've got a proper MultiCam fleece watchcap, that is, if I can get it back from the nurse that borrowed it! And I've got a nice, kind of fancy, MultiCam ballcap that looks good with my uniform, but since anything goes in this army, and all the rest of my gear (except my boots) are the same correct camouflage, I wear the hats that work best for me much of the time. In town, I tend to favor one of the more official uniform hats. Everything purchased since I got here is thanks to the kind donations of people all over the world supporting me. Thank you. 

Lots of soldiers are running around in black hoodies, or other non-uniform clothes, and despite almost everyone adhering to the rule of either MultiCam OR the Ukrainian digital camo, and not a mix of the both, one of the soldiers working with us yesterday was rocking a mix. I was actually surprised to see that. Other than a hat or helmet cover of one camo and the rest of their uniform another, despite being otherwise apparently lackadaisical about their clothing choices, Ukrainian soldiers have remarkably almost never mixed the two types of camo we wear. I'm not too keen on the digital camo, despite it being Ukraine's proprietary camouflage, and before I was actually a soldier it would've been illegal for me to wear it, and I kind of like the MultiCam pattern, so early on I picked MultiCam and have worked hard to only purchase that pattern kit for everything from my helmet cover to my undershirts and body armor. The only exception I made was my rain poncho. Because the Russians also use MultiCam, I figured the Ukrainian digital would be the way to go, as my shoulder patches and other kit wouldn't be visible if I was wearing the rain poncho.

Speaking of things I've purchased recently, my rifle came with a Soviet era sling that was way too small to fit over me while wearing armor, and I'm dubious if it would've fit over my huge self without armor, so I bought a decent sling for it when we went into town to run some errands the other day. Some of you might be very interested in the weapon I was issued. Ukraine is fielding a dizzying array of weapons, from all over the world, and spanning from before World War Two, to newly manufactured arms in Ukraine, Poland, and elsewhere. I didn't know if I'd even be armed in this role, and whether if so, that'd be a pistol, submachinegun, or a rifle of some sort. Being who I am, I definitely had hopes and preferences for each. I knew Ukraine had received CZ-82 pistols from the Czech Republic, and if it were to be a pistol this was my hope. I bought one of these for Amy over a decade ago, and we both loved shooting it. It has the same trigger group as the early CZ-75's and honestly the best factory trigger of any of the well over a hundred different types of pistols I've fired. Ukraine is also fielding some submachineguns and machine pistols, and either Stechkin or a vz 48 would've been pretty cool and a good choice. I don't have any complaints about being issued a AK74U, or "Krinkov" though.

These first came to the attention of the public when Osama Bin Laden posed with them in his press releases.

No one really knows for sure where the name “Krinkov” originated, but these very small carbines were developed by the Soviet Union to provide tankers, helicopter crews, and other non-infantry troops with a better self defense weapon than a pistol or submachinegun. As such, they acquired some cachet amongst Afghanistans’ freedom fighters, for you had to have really accomplished something to capture or acquire these somewhat rare weapons. They are coveted for their very small size as well.

Ukraine inherited a LOT of these with the fall of the Soviet Union, to the point that it is extremely common to see one of a pair of patrolling police officers carrying a Krinkov, and in our unit anyway, they are standard issue for medics. Mine was made in 1991, complete with a Soviet star stamped into the receiver, and his been sitting in storage since. Other than a bit of shopwear, or more properly, warehouse and transport damage to its furniture, and what appears to be a pistol grip recycled from a decommissioned earlier model of rifle, the weapon is brand new.

Ukraine lacks a factory producing the 5.45 x 39mm ammunition that is the Soviet equivalent of the cartridge the M16 uses, but again, Ukraine inherited huge stocks of this ammo with the fall of the Soviet Union and doesn’t appear to be in any danger of running out any time soon. My commanding officer and I were discussing this when he issued me my rifle and ammunition, and I said that the ammunition looked like it came from the Tula plant in Russia, as I had fired some stuff with the same markings and similar stamps through my Kalashnikov in the US. The tableau was kind of funny, I was sitting on the one patient bed in our little exam bay in the entrance to our tiny dispensary, loading magazines for my rifle.

The Krinkov is loud, but it is easy to keep it to two or three round bursts in full auto. So far, I got just the briefest opportunity to familiarize myself with it, in driving snow, as the sun was setting, but there will be other chances to practice with it, and it isn’t really any different from the Kalashnikov I owned in the US for the past 25 years. I like how compact it is, and as medic, should I need to use it, I don’t think I’ll miss the extra length of barrel. Likely the only way I end up firing it in anger is if things have gone very wrong, and the Russians will be very close. It’s not my job to be getting into long range fire fights with them.

Although the weapons have to be returned in the form we were issued them, we are all allowed to modify them as we choose. Many soldiers change almost everything about the rifle, putting different fore-stocks and buttstocks on them, mounting red dot and magnifying scopes both, sometimes bipods as well. Although not many medics have them, silencers are a common modification here, and readily available in the gun stores for us. I might put a small can on mine, partially to act as a flash hider.

If this stock were long enough for my long arms, I might’ve left mine alone, and kept it simple. As it is, a US M4 six position folding rear stock is likely in its future, and likely a red dot scope and different foregrip as well.

I didn’t have to use it yesterday. It was a good day. It’s high time I got to bed; I’ll wrap up the story of how my first day at front in uniform went tomorrow evening. Usually, we train line soldiers in basic first aid on many of our days off, I expect to be assisting with that tomorrow during the day but am looking forward to telling the rest of this tale. There’s a bit of excitement, and no one too badly hurt.

.