Interview 2: Joining the Legion
So I just had to grab some medication, you know, some pills against sea sickness, stomach aches, Ibuprofen. Pills against the radiation if I were to be deployed near Chernobyl. I got purifying pills for the water. That didn’t cost me much. What got to me the most was the ticket price because it was the last minute. I spent less than €500 on preparing because I already had a lot of shit from the military I used. They were there were in the case in the garage and I just had to grab them and then to put them into a bag and that’s it. I took more way more than I needed it just because I thought about people with no military experience. Because you always have people with no military experience going there in conflict, in combat. And so I grabbed some stuff that could actually fit people that had nothing. I grabbed everything I could to help.
When we arrived we saw like a small, very small theater. The man was dressed as military and he said, “Do you have any military experience?” He questioned all the 11 guys that were with us. Some of them said no. And they (the Ukrainians) were like, okay, you need to go back to Lviv, then find an NGO. You have to be military veterans in order to get into the Legion. And then after that, we got into a small bus and we went straight to Yavoriv. We arrived in Yavoriv. The very next day it was bombed. It was very messy because of the bombing, not because of the Ukrainian organization. My feeling was you need to focus on what you have to do, what they want you to do in order to be able to be deployed as soon as possible. You cannot spend two, three, four weeks in training when you when you when you have the war that is close, that close. The whole time we spent in Yavoriv, we heard we were supposed to stay ten days to get everything in order, like equipment, ammunitions, weapons. We spent two days there and then we were straight to Kyiv.
I don’t think we are ready or really prepared to see horror committed by other human beings. So even if you are a veteran of 20 years special Forces, you’ve seen a lot of stuff. You have done a lot of stuff. I don’t think you’re 100% ready at all times, even if you are the most strong-minded person or the most -ready person or the most trained or anything. Everyone can break an arm. And it’s the same for your mind. You can see a lot of dead bodies. You can see a lot of crimes. You can see a lot of blood. But you never know when your brain is going to flinch, when the brain is going to switch off or switch on. We were not ready to see everything we saw. I wasn’t ready. I was expecting something. You always picture things. But you are just picturing images. When you have the smell, when you have the noise and the yelling and the bombing day and night then and then you see it and then you smell it and everything that’s completely different. You cannot in your brain reproduce the smell or the yelling. When you experience it, that’s when you take a big slap in your face and say yeah I have to get through all this. I have to. You’re never prepared. And we were not prepared for everything we saw.
I got close to that feeling that I saw too much. But it wasn’t because of the war mission and it wasn’t because I was a hundred meters away from a Russian vehicle that could detect us with a with his goggles and everything. It was more because I was with some people that were not sure that they wanted to be on that mission. They didn’t raise their hands and say, no, I’m not feeling it; I don’t want to do it. That’s the most difficult part, is that when you go on a mission, you have to count on everyone. And I was close to that point where it’s too much. I cannot take it anymore. Not because of the mission or because of the Russians shooting at us or the shells falling close to us. It was more that when this guy doesn’t feel good, that’s one more thing to take care of. We are focused; it’s a tunnel effect. If you’re focused on one guy in your team because he cannot walk or he cannot operate his gun or whatever, you are not focused on what is surrounding you. That’s where you lose your temper or control or the track of time. You can have people that actually get wounded or get shot. So I got close to that point, but not for mission reasons or for fighting reasons or for dangerous reasons. The danger to me at that point, the danger wasn’t coming from the Russians. But at this point, the most dangerous thing that could happen to us during that mission, is that one of our guys is actually not handling the stress or the fear and spread it to the other two.
We saw a lot of war tourists that were there only for pictures. Also people that wanted to help but didn’t not have any experience, military experience, stuff like that. And at some point when you are at war, you don’t have the time to teach them something. They have to learn while they are on the mission. And that’s very dangerous. But we have in common the gut feeling we need to do something. We have different nationalities. We have different height, different eye color, hair color. We have a lot of differences. But the main point that gathers everyone in the Legion is because they fight for something that is fair. The same gut feeling that something unfair is happening and we need to do something and we are able to do something. This is not something that is going to give them honor, respect, and money. We don’t care about this. We just care about doing what is right.
