Vignettes

I'm not driving Miss Daisy here.

You might notice that American flag on that helmet on the right. That’s not my helmet, that’s one of the Ukrainians from the unit we share our bunker with. Yes, despite congress not having passed an aid bill in support of Ukraine’s fight in 451 days, a fight for survival, and to keep the world from slipping into a might makes right paradigm that will cost us all more dearly should that come about, Ukrainians still proudly fly the American flag as a symbol of freedom. I don’t. I’m ashamed of America and only fly Ukrainian flags.

I've been writing, but much of it isn't things I can share right now. Aspects of it would give away locations, equipment or other things that we must keep from the enemy. If I hadn't seen for myself how prying their eyes are, I'd be tempted to poo-poo them ever coming across my musings on the internet, but with everything I've seen over the past two years, I know it is all too likely. I have one piece written up that I am going to take the censors scalpel to and see if it still makes sense after I am done with it, and I still need to get my general war report finished up, but a few vignettes have popped up that I can share right now.

A note on names. When I use Ukrainian names, it is because they are incredibly common. Referring to a 'Sergey', 'Dima', 'Oleksii', or 'Misha', is even more common than 'Mike', 'Eric', 'Marc', or 'Ayden' in the United States. Everyone has the same name here, it's even worse than there being over one hundred villages named Oleksandriivka. I'm giving nothing away here in the way of OpSec using Ukrainian first names, and you don't know when I've changed names to protect folks. I think I may use Ukrainian first names for a lot of the folks from here that I am serving with and use a mix of call signs and pseudonyms for the foreigners I am working alongside, except perhaps one, who like me, seems to have embraced being a public figure. I'm still figuring out what flows best for communicating, all while maintaining operational security. Some of the foreign volunteers are careful about their identities, and the Russians do try and "dox" us when they can, revealing people's home addresses and more to try and make them vulnerable online.

For myself, I figure I am a public figure. I also have virtually nothing to lose. I don't own anything in the United States, and don't have someone I am sharing my life with right now or any children, and don't have any money. I'm also armed and surrounded by armed soldiers, so I figure Russia can't do shit to me. They'll be lucky to be more than the Grand Duchy of Moscow after they finally finish imploding in a few years, so I'm not too worried about them coming after me as one of the tens of thousands of foreigners who have come here to help Ukraine in this righteous struggle against genocide, revanchism, and an attempt to establish a new order where might makes right.

So, I'll share my face, and not be worried about my name. I'm proud to be here fighting against the greatest evil the world has seen in almost a hundred years, and I am lucky enough to be in a position to put my name and face to that. Raise a beer to those who come here and don't have that luxury and do the same, or far more dangerous work without the accolades I sometimes get. They deserve it more.

Every few days I am a standby driver. Both to take any patients from our rear area dispensary and tiny aid station to more advanced care, and for any errands my commanding officer (C.O.) has. In an odd twist of fate, before my father moved over to running wreckers and then commanding a M578 tracked recovery vehicle in Vietnam, he was his company commander's driver too.  

Today, my CO had a meeting in the city of REDACTED. I went out to do my vehicle checks before we set out, and when I fired up the Mitsubishi to warm it up just before we left, Donatello noticed that a puff of smoke came out from under the middle of the car. He told me, and I shut it down, and then fired it up again with him watching closely. Sure enough, there's a massive exhaust leak coming from the middle of the vehicle.

With the big ugly Fiat faux ambulance deadlined waiting for transmission parts, and the Nissan away in another city getting extensive repairs, the only vehicle we have in the rear area is this Mitsubishi that is falling apart. It only has about 120,000 miles on the odometer, but it's not holding up well to the battering it is getting on Ukraine's war-torn roads. Last time I drove it Donatello and I were hearing a noise coming from the front left that sounded like that joint is now going too. I'm hoping it'll hold together until Nissan gets back, but I wouldn't bet on it. Things might get pretty difficult here for a few weeks.

Well, an exhaust leak wasn't going to stop us from going in to town for the bosses meeting. And it's not like we have any other running vehicles to take, so after giving me the bad news that I'd be taking it to the Legion's mechanic after we got back, Misha clambered aboard, and we set out.

Most of the trip we were quiet. He's always got some comms traffic to deal with, and I like to give him some quiet time to think. He doesn't need to chat with me about the weather, although sometimes we do talk about both shallow and deep things. He's seen some shit. Those are his stories, so I won't share them here, I feel privileged that he shared them with me, and I'm not sure it is for me to reshare, even in furtherance of our, and truly everyone's, struggle against evil here.

Some things are the same all over though. The local police had their regular speed trap set up. A scene from ordinary life, except here they had Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders. Luckily, where they post up at is right after I take a sharp turn and so I'm not speeding right there, so I'm not in any danger of getting another speeding ticket in a warzone, as funny as that would be. Although, I doubt Misha would appreciate the delay, and I'm trying to make a good impression here.

After a few trips into town, I am just starting to learn my way around REDACTED. It really came together for me this time, as after I dropped him off, he said he didn't know how long he'd be, but to feel free to run whatever errands I needed to do. This was great, I had gotten a ride into town the day before for groceries, so I could concentrate on some things we needed, and get myself a nice meal too probably.

Although I was hungry, Misha said he'd be stopping by the grocery store after his meeting, so I figured if I ran short of time, the one thing I could cut out was eating, because there are a couple of street food stalls at the grocery store, and I could eat while he was doing his grocery shopping.

My first stop was an ATM. I won't be able to buy night vision this month but have set aside my donations for that to combine with my pay next month and get it then. Even after buying a bunch of kit I was holding out until this months’ pay for, I've still got some money left over, and my next big-ticket item is a beater car for myself. If I can get a cheap Lada, I won't be reliant on other people to get into town for groceries or to run other errands, like the ones I was running today, or picking up packages from the postal services. My writing is starting to blossom too and the income from that is actually adding up now instead of going hand to mouth, so I wanted to take the opportunity to stop by a "bankomat" and pull some cash out towards buying a car. It'll take multiple trips to the bankomat, over several days, to pull out all the money I need. The air raid alert is on more often than not during the day here, and so I can't access the teller to pull from my Ukrainian account, and I need to pull from my American one, with its daily limits too.

I actually managed to make my way to a functioning ATM without using the map. When I rolled up, I could tell an air raid alert was on, because there was a crowd of people gathering outside, waiting for the air raid to clear so the bank would reopen. The ATM was on the outside of the building though, so I thought I was good. As I made my way up the steps of the building an elderly gentleman and an older lady were both ahead of me making a beeline for the ATM.

I started to get concerned at the bank, as the elderly gentleman seemed befuddled by technology, was glacially slow, and seemed to have a lot of different things to accomplish at the machine. At one point the older lady intervened and helped him, but then he went on, oblivious to the growing line behind us. Another soldier asked me what I recognized to be "are you in line for the ATM?" in Ukrainian and I answered in a mix of Ukrainian and English that I was. With no idea how long the CO's meeting was going to take I started having visions of him calling me before I even managed this one tiny errand, but mercifully the lady's transaction was quick, once the deedoos (Ukrainian for 'grandpa') finally wrapped his business. I had wanted to do multiple transactions, but with the clock ticking and a growing line behind me, I cut it short to one.

Again, I weighed my options. My stomach said eat, but I had had some breakfast, and I wanted to knock out at least some of the things on my list first. If I didn't have a backlog of gear to acquire, I would've sat down for a leisurely lunch at a nice place. I thought to myself, "some other time", and chose to head to one of my favorite military stores in REDACTED.

Two nice ladies run this small place inside the sort of small indoor mall you might find at a flea market in the United States. Set up something more like an antique mall, except the stalls were things like jewelry, shoes, bed clothes, and all sorts of wares. There were several people in the shop, but I knew what I was looking for today, and my pidgin Ukrainian was progressing. The display hat I was coveting was in my size, so I didn't have to struggle through asking for that. After that one of the ladies was free and approached me, she recognized me from past trips here, and knew I didn't speak Ukrainian or Russian, but I managed to tell her that I wanted some camouflage netting. Pointing to it, I said "Showteeri maskirovka. Dva." A lifetime of studying military history had given me a leg up, I already knew the Russian word for camouflage. Lots of folks in this region grew up speaking Russian and are still more comfortable in it, although most of them are transitioning to speaking Ukrainian. It's an awkward time and we are all muddling through. 

Of course, it turned out she had more sizes available than the two on display. Those two together would've been just about right to cover most of the rest of our vehicle positioned forward with a screen set a bit away from it, so we could still access the vehicle easily, and quickly drive off when we needed to. She managed to communicate that she had other sizes, and that they were in her storage area and gestured for me to follow her. I said something about being graced to be taken to the secret magazine and she led the way. It was a repurposed display area around the corner, mounded high with goods leaving narrow passageways between. Of course, the camo netting was all the way in the back, which was an L shaped portion running behind another sellers' civilian goods. 

She asked if I wanted Ukrainian digital camouflage or MultiCam. I didn't know how to tell her I wanted whichever showed as brown dominate and so she started digging through a huge pile of camo netting presenting different sizes. I reminded myself I need to learn all the names of the colors in Ukrainian. I know both patterns well, but there are variations. In a netting application it hardly matters what pattern the strips of cloth are in, as long as they are earth colors and not too bright. Eventually she came up with a 10 by 8 meter hunk of brown dominate camouflage that should suit all our needs and I said I'd take that one. At the same time we both said how about she carry the hat and I'll lug the giant camo netting out through the narrow aisles. I even knew the word for hat! Although half of what I said was in English. We laughed and threaded our way out through the maze of their “magazine”.

I stowed my fatigue cap and the netting in the back of our rig and double checked that I hadn't missed a message from the CO that he was ready to be picked up yet. Nope. I needed a whisk broom, maybe a dustpan, and a squeegee for the vehicles. I don’t mind shelling out for things, I live to serve, and we need these things. Next to find a place for auto parts. I kicked myself for not having sussed out the years of the Nissan and Mitsubishi so I could get new windshield wipers for them as well. Next time, I thought. There's always a next time. With the mix of goods I was still looking for the reenok seemed the best bet. I knew where that was, and I might as well drive there, so did so, only to be greeted by the gates of the open-air market being closed. Holiday? Or always closed on Mondays? I don't know, but I struck out there. I was a little disappointed. I love wandering the flea market, and prefer to give my money to folks that run the stalls and shops there rather than the brick-and-mortar stores. Next time.

The rumblings in my stomach finally won at that point and I drove over to a cafe' that professed to have street food. Figuring that meant it was quick, I hoped that I could at least get it in hand before my commander called for me to pick him up. The ladies were friendly and enjoyed practicing saying "cheeseboorger" in American, and I enjoyed that and some nuggets, while I looked up auto parts stores. One was only two blocks away, so I decided to just walk over to it. On the way there I saw one of the sexiest looking armored cars I've ever seen. An Oncilla. I had never wanted an Italian car before, but now I wanted one of these for our wheeled evacuation vehicle, even if it wasn't the roomiest in the back. The streets here are filled with every type of army vehicle imaginable, alongside a fair amount of civilian traffic. Many of the military vehicles are SUV's, pick-up trucks, and less likely civilian vehicles, usually repainted olive drab, or whatever camouflage pattern suited the owner or unit's artist, but sometimes just sporting a simple spray canned white cross, or one fashioned from tape over the civilian factory paint, whatever color that may be. Some of the camouflage patterns are elaborate and very well done though. 

I struck out at the auto parts store. It looked more like it had been closed for some time, rather than just on Mondays as the rynok was. The map showed a cluster of three auto parts stores a little ways down the road. Far enough I should drive, just to be ready to pick up the boss. If it were just me, I would've walked it, I can always use the exercise, and it wasn't super far. I parked where the map showed two of the stores together. I didn't see anything obvious as an auto parts store though and walked up a block in each direction. Stopping in front of where I parked again, I took a closer look at the wares advertised on the outside of the building I parked in front of. At first, I only noticed bicycles and a few other things that weren't car parts, then I realized it had a mix of such things and likely included car parts. 

Sure enough, I was able to get a small whisk broom, a natural medium sized broom to sweep out the back of the ambulances, and a dustpan, but no luck on the squeegee, despite them having a fair amount of auto related things. It was one of those odd hardware sort of stores here with clerks at each of the sub departments to help you get the stuff behind them and in the display cases, but then they write out a slip for you and you go to a central cashier and pay and then come back with the receipt to get your goods. Lots of folks in Ukraine have at least one relative living somewhere in the United States, when I apologized about not speaking Ukrainian and explained by way of saying I was an "Amerikanski" she let me know that she had a relative living in Salem, Oregon. I told her I had last lived not far from there. Small world.

I could've tried to squeeze in a stop at one more auto parts store on my squeegee quest but decided that'd be pressing my luck and I'd likely get recalled before getting it done, or get delayed in returning, which I didn't want, even if it was likely okay, so I headed back to where I dropped the CO off for his meeting. I parked behind a business next door, where he'd likely see our vehicle when he stepped outside, and I started putting my new brooms to work. 

I popped open the back door to let all the dust I was kicking up out, and while I was sweeping out the left side of this right-hand drive, British pattern vehicle, I noticed a little old lady and a cute dog peering curiously into the back. I approached the dachshund in a friendly manner and gave him some scritches. She tried to say something to me, and I apologized again for not speaking Ukrainian and said I was an American. She seemed surprised and said "Ni Ruuski?". No ma'am. I'm an American. It was getting warm sweeping in the sun, so I had stripped off my uniform top and was wearing a camouflage undershirt, that didn't have any Ukrainian flags on it. I told her "Amerikansky volunteeri" and her eyes lit up and she started saying happy sounding things I didn't understand. I went to pull my phone out of my pocket, telling her it'd translate for us - "perekladach" but she started to give me a hug, so I gave her a big hug first. Then I had her repeat what she was saying into the phone.

I managed to remember the phrase I had been struggling to remember recently, the greeting soldiers give each other at checkpoints before the password, I said:  Ba zha yoo  Z do rro vooya as she walked away, and she turned back to me and gave me a big smile.

It's always worth it being here. But some days the rewards are greater than others.

.

.