Truck saga

How we got here: reassessing the ambulance fund-raiser

Although in large part, the purpose of this piece is to explain fund-raising efforts and needs for an armored ambulance, this should be of interest to all, as I feel the need to address the larger situation, why units need to fund-raise for basic pieces of equipment, and how things have gone for me over the past ten* months in the army.

* Although I have been in the army for a year now, I didn't arrive at this unit until the first week of February. It was an Odyssey getting here, but that is a story for another time. Most likely, not until the book.

When I reported for duty at the Medical Service, for the 2^nd Battalion of the International Legion, we had a dwindling number of high mileage civilian cars as our only transportation. Very quickly, we were down to just three SUV's, a Nissan Patrol, that had a lift kit and was riding on nice fat offroad tires, but had about 400,000 kilometers on the odometer and was tired and getting unreliable, having been beat to shit flying across the extremely rough roads here, and a Mitsubishi Shogun (same as Pajero), with about 120,000 miles on it's odo, but being in equally bad shape, despite only having a quarter of the Patrols miles on it. It was falling apart. A testament to the difference in durability of choosing a quality truck over a cheap one. We also had a Series 70 Toyota Land Cruiser, but it went away for a while to get repainted from white and orange, and to receive some final modifications into a field ambulance. Then it went away again after getting bombed.

We are supporting an battalion medically. Drone teams, mortar teams, headquarters, comms, the recon team, and of course our infantry companies. The CO regularly needed to be driven to HQ for meetings and other things necessary to the functioning of military units. We needed to transport patients from the hospital closest to the frontline to the next hospital back regularly. And of course, we needed to evacuate patients from the frontline with these vehicles. Both of which were falling apart, and two trucks was too few for our needs.

This is a strange war. Ukraine's army was small before the war, and had to expand greatly to try and contain Russian aggression and hopefully, eventually, take Ukraine's land back, and free the people now subjugated behind Russian lines. Europe, the United States, Australia, Japan, and a few other countries have contributed some equipment to kitting out Ukraine's expanded army, but nowhere near enough.

We lack for everything. As I mentioned in my last piece, driving to the frontline, nearly three years into this conflict and we still don't have night vision devices and are driving right up to the frontline at night with our headlights on while drones are overhead. It's fucking suicidal.

At the same time, we lack for all kinds of transport. Ideally, we should have a tracked, armored vehicle for extractions. Enough armor to shrug off the grenades dropped from drones that are so common here, like took out the Toyota, and tracks, to keep from being stuck during the two parts of the year when the dirt roads we are using to get to the wounded at the front turn into muddy quagmires.

Initially, we had loan of an M113 from the brigade we were attached to, but very early on in my tenure with the unit, the driver missed the last turn to the evacuation point at night, and drove into the minefield in no man’s land, and we lost that vehicle, as well as the people that were inside. For months we tried to get another armored vehicle to replace it, and off and on were alternately promised one and told we would not get one, and then briefly had one that then immediately had to go away for lengthy repairs. This always seems to be the case with the M113's. The ones donated to us are high mileage, nearly worn out, like most of the things the west has given us. Enemies of freedom like to crow about how much money has been spent supporting Ukraine resisting genocide and the advance of authoritarianism into Europe, but largely it has been a cheap way for the West to dispose of munitions and equipment that they would have had to spend a lot more money getting rid of in an environmentally friendly or safe way. Not to mention that the vast majority of the money spent goes to manufacturing new, not expired or worn-out replacements. Money that goes directly back into the United States economy. Missiles aren't forever and are tricky and expensive to dispose of properly. Likewise, the vehicles we get are old and often worn out, or nearly so, meaning just a few weeks of hard use in the field result in them needing major overhauls, and your precious armored ambulance disappearing for many weeks at a time, over and over again. Of course, on paper, you have been assigned and possess an armored vehicle, so that is all the army is going to give you, even if you don't actually have it to use most of the time. Not that are a lot of spare armored vehicles kicking around, mind you, given that we can’t even draft enough troops to hold the line because we can’t equip them thanks to the paltry efforts of our so-called allies.

With the Toyota away at the shop and the M113 blown up and burnt in no man’s land, we were down to just two SUV's to not only do our evacuation runs, and crew rotations to the frontmost position, but also all the other tasks the unit needed transportation for. It wasn't nearly enough, and with both vehicles aging and worn out, it was only a matter of time before they broke down on us.

Our unit had a fund-raiser going to purchase an armored Humvee, but that turned out to be an extremely lengthy process. After we finally raised the funds and purchased it, it needed an overhaul, and wasn't set up to take armor, so needed upgrades to handle the extra weight, and then needed to be shipped from the United States, and then needed to be actually equipped with the armor and other things in Europe before it could finally come to us. The lion’s share of the money raised for that project was through one nurses’ non-profit and in the last few months she has been detached to another unit, so we never actually received that ambulance to work with us.

If you go on Twitter, you can see any number of units raising funds for everything from night vision devices to ambulances, because the Ukrainian government is desperately strapped for cash by this war, and our allies still haven't even supplied us with enough civilian trucks to do our jobs here, much less proper military vehicles or armored ones. It's pathetic on multiple levels, and disgusting that democracy can't even be bothered to give us the tools we need to do the job here. Luckily, I am used to my life being considered disposable, first as an American, then after working frontline healthcare in the US during COVID, I have no illusions as to what my life is worth.

Given our dire circumstances regarding transport, and realizing I potentially had some reach through several avenues on the internet, I decided to reach out and see if I could get our unit another truck.

My first, and seemingly obvious go-to was NAFO. The Fellas deliver trucks to units every month.

I reached out.

Crickets.

I don't know if it is because we are the 2^nd Battalion of the International Legion and maybe when they tried to check if I was legit only checked with the 1^st Battalion, which is all many people know about, and is entirely separate and who don’t know me from Adam, or if they figured as the International Legion we had a high enough profile that we should be able to raise funds for a truck on our own and they were going to help smaller units, but for whatever reason, NAFO completely ignored my requests for getting a truck donated to our unit when I reached out several months ago.

Deeply disappointed, I reached out to my other networks of friends, and one of these initially seemed to be working out. For months the International Rotary Club promised that they were going to donate a deeply discounted to truck to me. A friend had come across their operation, where every month they were taking a convoy of trucks into Ukraine, where they were converted into armored ambulances and donated to units needing them.

A pair of American retired Colonels were running this pipeline of trucks into Ukraine, sourcing vehicles in Britain, where environmental regulations had made older diesel 4x4's rather inexpensive. On top of this, they promised to chip in over two thousand dollars towards the purchase price of the vehicle, leaving me to come up with almost another three thousand for the initial purchase of the vehicle and an undetermined amount for the conversion into an armored ambulance. We could only make a wild guess as to how much that was going to cost until we actually knew what kind of vehicle and what condition it was that we were working with, and it was delivered to the Ukrainian outfit doing the conversions and they had the vehicle in hand, along with our wish list for modifications it needed. We estimated we would need at least another eight thousand dollars for armoring, conversion to an ambulance, a lift kit and big tires, et cetera.

I knew it would take time to raise funds, and I was extremely nervous about being able to raise such a large amount of money, so I was eager to get the fund-raising started immediately. The guys running the truck donation pipeline for Rotary were extremely busy, and it turned out that they only wanted to be reimbursed later, and didn't need the money up front for the purchase of the vehicle, so they were extremely slow in getting back to me about questions. They seemed clueless about my need to raise funds to pay for the repairs, upgrades, and up-armoring of the vehicle, and my need to begin doing so yesterday.

Which was incredibly frustrating, as I wanted to start fund raising immediately, and they had said that if I could get local Rotary clubs to do local fund raisers, that Rotary International would match their funds one for one. Which would be fantastic, and I have contacts all over the world, so it seemed like I should be able to get a few local chapters of the moose lodge to hold a fundraiser, and the International would double their money, making this whole thing seem a lot more feasible.

So, I spent months trying to get this Rotary International outfit to tell me where to send the funds to and to give me some information for the local chapters so I could set up fundraisers. They were perpetually slow in responding and only ever answered a fraction of my questions, but apologized for being so busy and this is when they offered a contribution of their own of over two thousand dollars as a sort of apology for delaying my fund-raising efforts.

Nonetheless, I was getting more and more nervous about raising enough money. My three best shots at getting a local Rotary chapter in the US to have a fund-raiser for an ambulance all fell through, while at the same time the guys running the truck donation said they had a truck for me if I wanted a 2005 Nissan Pathfinder, and that they could deliver it in the next month’s convoy.

I was stymied. I REALLY wanted to the right tool for the job. I wanted the most capable vehicle I could get. I didn’t want something worn out that was going to break down. I wanted something with enough horsepower to power through the mud, and a proper, durable 4x4 to handle the incredibly rough roads here. I wanted a vehicle with some room for the medic in back to work on the patients. I was REALLY hoping to get a Nissan Patrol or Toyota, but they had told me that those would cost at least 10K, while they could get me the Pathfinder for 5K, and now that matching fund-raisers had fallen through.

With my initial hopes of having local chapters of the Rotary raise funds and it be matched by Rotary International being dashed, and the constant delays in my starting fundraising by this Rotary International outfit never answering my questions, I decided getting the right tool for the job wasn't in the cards, and we'd make do with an old Pathfinder. After all, it was about the same size and capability as the Mitsubishi Shogun we were currently struggling with. It'd be even more cramped for the medic trying to work on patients in the back, and be a problem trying to bring in crews for rotation, fitting us and all of our gear into it, but it seemed like that was as good as it was going to get at this point.

If only.

The guys running the delivery of the trucks said they had two 2005 Nissan Pathfinders sitting there, I could have my pick, and they could deliver it to the shop in Lviv doing the modifications and upgrades in either the next month's convoy, which was only a few days away, or the following month, my choice. With fund-raising not even having started, and my now needing to come up with something like eight thousand dollars for the modifications, I asked them to hold the truck for the following months convoy, and hastily launched fundraising, despite them STILL haven’t having answered most of my questions, hoping to somehow raise enough money by the time the shop was done with its work, which they said usually only took a couple of weeks.

Initially, fund-raising went well, and fairly quickly we had raised half the funds we estimated we needed for the conversion into an armored, off-road ambulance. I knew that the first half of the fund-raising was the easy part though. On first seeing the fund-raiser, some people will chip in pretty large sums of money, but most of those people are only likely to do so once. My partner insisted that if we constantly posted begging for money that we would eventually grind away through very small donations and get there. I was dubious to say the least, and we didn't have an endless amount of time have small donations add up to enough to make this happen as I was expecting my truck to be delivered to the shop in just over a month, and work to be done on it in about two weeks.

Alas.

In the meantime, I still had a ton of questions for the Rotary International outfit acquiring, checking out, making capable to drive across Europe, and delivering these trucks. I kept asking again and again for information I needed to be able to make decisions and prepare, not to mention to fund-raise to be able to even make this happen. People were asking me how much money total I needed, and some were saying they wouldn't contribute until I had a solid number. Which I totally understand. But, I was totally at the mercy of these Rotary International guys, and at best, they'd sometimes answer a fraction of my questions.

And then, they totally went dark.

They just fucking ghosted me.

After saying they believed in what we were doing here, promising me a truck, promising to help with fundraising, promising to pay for almost half of the initial purchase price, and apologizing about delays in getting back to me, they just stopped responding altogether.

Because of this:

On their last convoy into Europe, the one I fucking could have had my fucking truck delivered in, except I hadn't raised any funds yet, because they never gave me the information I needed to do so, fucking Russians sabotaged the convoy. Somewhere on the way, at one of their overnight halts, a saboteur slipped under one of the trucks and rigged it with a grenade. In a country in the EU. Once it hit a large enough bump in the road, the pin would be pulled and the grenade would go off, at least destroying the back of the truck and puncturing the gas tank, and quite likely killing or severely injuring the driver with shrapnel, or them perishing while trapped in the burning wreckage, and causing at least a traffic accident in a country that refuses to acknowledge that Russia is already at war with it.

Thankfully, they were diligent about checking their vehicles each morning to make sure that something like this didn't happen, and caught it before driving away from their overnight halt en route to Ukraine, so no one was injured or killed and the grenade was safely defused, and they were able to deliver that convoy of vehicles.

Apparently, that was their last though, as they went completely dark after that. Haven't responded to any emails, no explanation, nothing. Evidently, that was more risk than they were interested in taking, and they couldn’t be bothered to communicate that, or make any arrangements for the vehicles they already had in hand, ready to be delivered. I still have leave, I could go to England and drive it here my damned self. Needless to say, my opinions of them are rather pithy right now.

Meanwhile, not only was I left holding a bag with over four thousand dollars in it and now no truck on the way, but my unit’s situation had changed rather dramatically.

A few months ago, we had actually gotten down to a single running unit vehicle for several weeks. We managed to keep ourselves in groceries and accomplish some of our rear area tasks by leaning on a couple of unit members private vehicles (part of why I briefly owned a Lada station wagon), but we were using just the battered Shogun to do evacuations, rotations, and patient transports while the Nissan Patrol had finally succumbed to its abuses and was receiving a very lengthy total overhaul.

The Series 70 Toyota Land Cruiser had returned to us for a brief spell, but had been caught by three Russian drones dropping VOG 30mm grenades and had been both hit and bracketed, completely riddling it. Luckily, freakishly, both our medics were inside the casualty collection point bunker when it happened, which isn't normally how evac pick-ups go, so no one was injured or killed. I always sit in the truck while the patient is being loaded, and usually the infantry had the patient ready to go and we make a very quick turn-around. Luckily for that crew, there was some sort of delay, and they left the truck for a minute to go fetch their patient. If anyone had been sitting in it, they would have been riddled with shrapnel, same for folks outside loading the patient. The truck was borked though. Windshield was gone, and there was a good-sized hole in the roof just above it, and both gas tanks were perforated by numerous fragments, as well as various other damage. Luckily, the VOG grenades were weak enough to not damage the engine any, so it was able to be driven out of there (on flat tires), but the Toyota would be hors de combat for months getting repaired, leaving us with just the Mitsubishi, was quite literally falling apart.

Driving the Shogun, I was constantly worried about carbon monoxide, as we now had a piece of exhaust pipe missing and the rest of it held in place with baling wire. At least it was still warm out and so we usually had the windows open. The front sway bar had shaken itself completely loose, and the expedient solution by the unit mechanics was just to remove it. That was fine, I could handle that, but I wondered what else was being shaken apart constantly bouncing over these extremely rough roads. I had repeatedly asked the unit mechanics to top off the rear transaxle, as it was clearly leaking, and making noise, and you could feel its unhappiness, but that hadn't happened. I hadn't bought another set of tools yet at that point, and being our only remaining vehicle, it was constantly in use, so finding an opportunity to work on it was problematic to say the least.

Then, our vehicle situation started to change. We had received a crappy Fiat patient transport ambulance from the UK, but it had arrived with a transmission that was on its way out, so it only helped with rear area duties for a few weeks before it had to be hauled off for several weeks for that and other repairs and a repaint from white to green.

In the meantime, we received other donated ambulances. A decent Volkswagen and a big Mercedes. I am going to sound like Goldilocks here, but the V-dub is a little too small, and the Mercedes is too damned big, but we manage to get a lot of our rear area driving needs accomplished with those two now. The Fiat is also too big, and its stretcher broke, and we only need so many rear area ambulances, so it mostly gets used as a cargo van now that it has finally returned to the unit from repairs. At some point in there we received a Renault ambulance as well. It isn’t too cramped, or too big, but I hate it for other reasons. That’s a story for another day.

Both the Shogun and the Patrol eventually returned from extensive overhauls as well. In addition, another military unit donated another armored vehicle to us, a British Saxon wheeled armored personnel carrier. One might wonder why they weren't using it. I think we will find out soon enough. For now, we did finally get an M113 assigned to us, and although it went away for a few weeks to get "Cope Cage" anti-drone armor installed, we are now using that.

(What the Saxon reminds me of, the Herkimer Battle Jitney from the movie Mystery Men. The Herkimer is a far cooler and better vehicle though. It is also a much more handsome vehicle. Yes. The English really excel at making abominably, incredibly ugly vehicles.)

I am highly dubious of the Saxon's utility. It IS four-wheel drive. It is also a very large vehicle, that is weighed down by its armor. Being so large, it is slow, unmanueverable, and a big target. On the other hand, that armor is dubious. This isn't a fighting vehicle, it was designed as a colonial policing vehicle, with only enough armor to stop rifle bullets. It is a conversion, from a British truck, to four-wheel drive, and into an armored vehicle. It wasn’t designed from scratch as a military vehicle, and truck conversions like this are notoriously unreliable and prone to getting stuck in the mud. It also is old and used. With all that, I highly doubt that it will function for long once we have to press it into service. I fully expect it to break down almost immediately, take a long time to repair, and likely break down again shortly after it returns to service, just like our M113's always do.

That said, when I started reaching out to acquire a truck for our unit, we only had a tiny handful of vehicles, and those were in poor repair and dwindling. Now, I find myself having had the truck that I was trying to acquire having evaporated, with only a tiny fraction of the funds I would need to purchase and upgrade a truck in hand, dismal prospects of raising more funds, and my unit currently possessing two armored evacuation vehicles, a few decent ambulances, and a few other vehicles.

Our situation has gone from extremely dire, to at one point recently when we had to change locations and were down several drivers (not everyone in Europe drives), we didn't have enough drivers to move all of our vehicles in one go. So, I feel really weird about continuing to raise funds for an armored ambulance for myself right now. One member of our unit has said to me that we don't need any more vehicles, which is true for the moment, but very unlikely to stay that way, and I don't want anyone to think I am doing this just for me to get a personal vehicle, such as it is.

So, I have decided to discontinue my fund-raising for an armored ambulance for me*/the Medical Service of the 2^nd International Legion.

I will be transferring all of the funds to a worthy, similar fund-raising effort. I would like it to go to a unit trying to raise funds for an ambulance. I am open to suggestions.

Frustratingly, I KNOW, that if we manage to stay in combat long enough, that we will have constant attrition of vehicles both due to enemy action and wear and tear, and by the time that I finally got a truck we will most likely need it. Nonetheless, that isn't the case at the moment, and I don't want to give the impression of impropriety, and right at this moment, there are other units that need the funds more. I also despair of raising something like 20K to purchase a truck and get it modified and armored. When it was going to happen through Rotary, it had gotten down to about half that, with the last less than 3K not due any time soon. Doing it from scratch is a whole different thing that daunts me, and I don’t have the constitution to be begging publicly every day for months to try and make this happen, even if I thought that was somehow feasible for a sum this large.

I will admit to being relieved that I no longer have to beg for money (for the moment**). Normally, I am an extremely independent, reclusive introvert. Being public with my life and begging strangers for money is not only completely alien to me, but deeply distressing. I am very thankful for the break from it, especially right now, which is a particularly difficult time for me.

I just got back from my rotation at the front and could use a little rest before I go back. In a day or two I will go through the totals of the trickle of money that has come in over the past week or so and post another update to Twitter as to what the final total of this fund-raiser was, and begin looking for a fund-raiser to transfer the money to then. Again, I am open to suggestions.

Thank you everyone for your contributions and support.

Wish me luck, obviously, I will be doing rotations in an unarmored ambulance, and if history is any guide, evacuations as well.

* Me: One of the few answers I did receive from the Rotary International group was about registering the vehicle here, and they said that they were donating it to me, on the strength of my service here, and that registering it with the unit was a lot more trouble, so that vehicle would have technically been personally mine, so if I ended up transferring to another unit in the Ukrainian army (unlikely), I could have taken it with me. Also, I would've had a vehicle for personal errands here (which are all army related anyway), which would be incredibly helpful. My unit actually preferred this at the point that I mentioned that it looked like I was getting a truck, because that was right when we were so flush with vehicles that we didn't have enough drivers, and we pool funds from our army pay checks to fund repairs for them all and the unit wasn't eager to take on another vehicle into that.

** I still don't have neck or lower back armor on my vest. I still don't have a gas mask. I still don't have night vision or proper ballistic goggles. I should probably be begging for money for those things, but I don't have it in me right now. This whole experience has been incredibly stressful and despressing.

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