'Ukraine. The Greatness of Sacrifice'

Warning Notice: This article from our Chair who has just returned from Ukraine contains distressing images and use of swear words. If anyone is upset by this and feels support or further explanation as to the article's intention would help please seek out other members of The Forum or contact David himself on davidlewis@brynstowe.co.uk

Message from the author:

'I have just had a request from the person concerned in this article, the host. Please could we capitalise the last two words. We are more than pleased to do so.'

'Ukraine. The Greatness of Sacrifice'

by D.B. Lewis on returning from a trip to Ukraine

This is a story of war. Of sacrifice. There is nothing horrific in this tale, nothing dramatic, nothing shocking. And yet it is all horrific, all dramatic, and all shocking. This is a short story of what total war feels like to the outsider: to people not living with it day in and day out, people whose fathers are not fighting, and dying, whose brothers, sons, uncles, nephews, and grandfathers are not being killed or going missing or being captured. Or worse.

There are no heroic individuals in Ukraine, for they all are heroes equally. In Lviv, remote as it seemed at first glance, the war felt unreal, something read in a newspaper or seen in two-dimensional television. At first glance. For we were just two men from the west, an energised Brit and an equally energised Irishman far from home hoping to help where we could. Not quite simple happy wanderers in the tourist-focused city of Lviv. But at first it did seem that way.

Arriving late on the Monday and straight to work at the Lviv University of Internal Affairs to which we had been invited, our first chance to take a look around was on our second night, the Tuesday, the last Tuesday in April. It felt safe, the persistent rain a damper to our spirits but still a gentle reminder of the warm refreshing taste of home. Home, where freedom is. The area where we were lodged seemed quiet, the story to be read in the detail only. The absence of men was the most obvious sign, the sandbagged ground-floor basement windows another, the dripping soldiers, guns at the ready on the street corners incongruous in this ancient place of beauty, the boarded-up windows an added insult. Without the soldiers it could have been a flood scene at night in Richmond or York or Budapest.

It was mid-evening when we set out to explore the surrounding streets; we had been told not to travel far, not to become lost, and most importantly, not to be late for the curfew. By the time we returned we had managed to walk a long way, had become completely lost, and by a whisker only just made it back before the time was up. But the walk had helped to bring the reality of total war home to us.

For turning yet another corner, we chanced to meet the barracks. The waist-high sandbagged gun emplacement was sudden, unexpected, and chilling, the rusting metal anti-tank spikes even more so. And then the single sentry. We were transported straight back to 1916. The black and white and sepia pictures of The Somme echoed here. But in colour. The sentry was all in green, his dripping poncho seemed to have been lifted straight from all those far off trenches, the rain an eerie flashback to the wet of those Flanders Fields of long ago. Only his mobile phone told of today. I looked at his face; gaunt, bearded, tanned, lined. And dripping wet. He didn't seem to care: his phone call seemed his main concern. To his home? His parents? A wife, girlfriend, children? The image was to come back to haunt us later in the week. Looking up, we saw a line of uniformed photos all along the metal fencing, pinned on with security tags, the photos of the barrack's dead, each with their field nickname. I swallowed hard. We walked on in silence.

The day passed. On Wednesday, shortly after work, we were taken to a bar. It is in all the tourist brochures, has a glowing TripAdvisor recommendation, and a strong theme of re-created reminiscence of Ukrainian resistance. It was well done. For a small donation you could shoot Putin in a firing range. It must be doing a good trade. To enter the locked door you must knock, give the password 'Slava Ukraini!' and an actor lets you in, gun over shoulder. The confusion of reminiscence and reality was hard to disentangle. Inside, another poignant moment, a real soldier in uniform this time, a massive man, with his friends saying goodbye. I went over, shook his hand and he rose, a hand as large as both of mine in an iron grip, took it and he simply said ' Dyakuyu. Thank you. Tomorrow. UK. Training.' Our host just said, 'Thank you, that was a lovely thing to do.' Every gesture has poignancy in Ukraine.

Thursday came and Ukraine was not done with us yet. Our delightful host, an Associate Professor of Law at the university and a co-author of the book 'Tell Me What happened...or Confess', (a rather wittily titled study of Investigative Interviewing in English) told us she wanted to take us to the local cemetery. Knowing of my interest in the many poets and authors of this great city I naively imagined she was to give us a tour, like a visit to Highgate or Brompton Oratory.

But we passed the entrance and then the exit and carried on along the cemetery wall. We stopped. Our host put out an arm and on turning the corner my heart missed a beat. At the same time, we two men simultaneously drew a sudden audible breath, as if we had been hit in the stomach with a blunt object. There in front of us, rising up a shallow hill, a shocking, stunning sight. A sea of flags, proudly, defiantly, flying from the fresh breeze, a field of red and black, the colours of Ukrainian resistance, the Blue and Yellow of Ukraine, and a hundred different flags of so many proud units, only the airborne wings identifiable to the layman. We were in the burial ground of the recent dead. Hundreds of mounds of men. I called it 'The Field of the Glorious Dead' for it was indeed a sight full of glory: the greatness of Ukrainian sacrifice laid out for all to see. I imagined a file of medieval knights on the eve of battle, their standards flying proudly in defiant glory. A sight never to forget.

Tentatively, together, we walked across the soft brown earth, bare of grass from the feet of a thousand mourning feet, perhaps a thousand more to come. At the base of the hill the neat, wooden encased memorials topped with clean white stones met us silently, accusingly, orderly in death if not orderly in battle. War never is. I looked. Each grave marked by three flags and the lanterns of the orthodox church, some still lit. Fresh flowers on every single grave, tulips, everywhere tulips, then a cross and on the cross a photograph, each a smiling soldier, uniformed, proud. And dead. The name written in gold, the date of birth. And the date of death. February 2022, March, April, May, and on through the days and weeks and months, onwards up the hill in a never-ending procession of glory. One was 19 years old, next to him a man of 54, perhaps his father. And every age in between. These men were not professional soldiers, they were lawyers, bank clerks, tailors, lecturers, policemen. But they all had died …as soldiers.

After many rows, the wooden neatness faded and mounds of soft brown sandy earth started to take their place; the more recent dead. We walked amongst them, tears pouring down our faces. Even our host, who'd witnessed this so many times, had tearful eyes. I put a gentle arm around her shoulders to say I cared. I saw her lips move as if to say 'Thank you' but no words came. We stood upon the scene in silence, unable to move. I looked at the latest lines of finished graves. I thought of the sentry at the barracks on Tuesday. It could even have been him they were burying. Or one of his friends. It was too much. Far too much.

Later that night, full of emotion, I wrote to a mutual friend in The Forum,

‘My dear friend, Ukraine finally got to me today...the most movingly, shockingly, terrifyingly, awful single moment of my life: we were taken to a field outside the main cemetery...

Today, I cannot bear to describe it in full...in time I will try. It is a sight almost beyond description...there was no warning...I came around a plain drab wall of weathered brick and there before me lay the most awful, beautiful, terrible, shocking sight I have ever seen:...a field of flags so dense it seemed a wall of blue and yellow, and red and black, the colours of resistance in Ukraine, spread like a blood-stained sheet before me: colours that seemed as if they had been painted on a drab, grey canvas of some unwanted, waiting scrap of unstained virgin land: flags with airborne wings, of units known and unknown, of heroic deeds lost to all but the dead, for every single one, a flag, flying proudly in a wind of defiance as if sent by God: so many it seemed they were endless, each flag the marker of a grave; each one a father, a son, a grandfather, a brother, a friend.

At the bottom of the hill, the graves started in neat order and each were dated in hand etched golden letters; February 2022, then March, April, May, endlessly moving up the hill. I cried at every one: 2023: January, February, March, April...for God's sake, these last rows are men who were alive a week ago, six days ago, three days ago... and then a funeral...Tuesday's dead...another row from yesterday...men who when we arrived on Monday were alive, vibrant, hopeful; living men who breathed and drank and phoned home and said, 'Don't forget to pay the baker.'

And now they are another row of flag-mourned mounds of soft clay earth, the sad abandoned spades still lying by the graveside path, the aged grave diggers waiting for the grieving to move on so the next row could be dug for tomorrow's dead. The tears flowed freely from us for all who stood amongst their own. For Ukraine. For us. The faces of the living etched in lines of hatred, anger, revenge, remorse: of suffering and pain: a litany of angst and hurt for all those words unsaid, those moments missed, the living left only to tend the lamps of the believers, flowers fresh on every single grave.

The mounds of piled up earth, the tear-stained photographs each pleading to be heard, for each grave had its owner's image; smiling, happy, proud, silent. And this was but one field in one town of many fields in many towns and how I loathed humanity for what I felt I had to see: there is no sacrifice more worthy than this, that these brave men died that we might live, to live and be free, to be happy, that we might live as they had lived. And to be thankful that we are not worthy enough to lie amongst them. For this is hallowed ground for evermore. Slava Ukraini! May God bless them all.'

Even now in the warm soft light of home, with music sent to me by a newly found friend from Ukraine, a friend who must have sensed my angst and my distress, and sent music for this purpose, to help me cope, music that was thoughtfully sent and playing gently in the background, I cannot add to this, nor can I change it, rawly written as it was, perhaps in shock. And I shall not try, full of the emotion of the moment as it had to be. And the tears still flow.

Before we moved on that day, humbled, sober watchers of a scene I hoped to never see, I saw two spades lying on a pile of earth, earth I recognised as that made ready to spread over coffins being lowered down. The wooden spade was poignant yes, but my eyes fell further still. I choked. The second spade was a yellow plastic children's spade from the beach. A spade that was almost identical to the one which just a week ago Oscar, my grandson and I had built a sandcastle on the beach at Scarborough, a sandcastle we had topped with flags that flew in the breeze... it was just too too much. The tears flowed again as we watched the mourners of the latest lines burying their dead, silent, tearless, hardened by war and their eternal fear of a hated enemy with which they now have nothing in common. We cried for them. And just for added poignancy, a small child, four, or five, ran around the mourners, smiling, unknowing, uncorrupted by the evil of adults. We left, silently and angrily.

We said farewell to our wonderful host over a last drink and turned towards bed. But even then, Ukraine still would not let us go. After over a month of no missile attacks, the Russians, the 'Fucking Russians’, as they are known in Ukraine, sent over a vicious wave of Cruise missiles. It was 4 a.m. The chilling air-raid sirens wailed in their crescendo of spine-chilling suddenness, a sound I shall not forget in a hurry despite sleeping through the first one, a sound that broke the stillness of the curfew like a starving hyena in the desert waiting for the dawn for something to devour. Thankfully for us the strike hit elsewhere, not so thankfully for them. More death, more misery, more defiance. It was a bad attack. The more Putin has attacked the Ukrainians the more determined they have become: it became clear to us that the Ukrainian people will never give in, never stop their daily activity, even for a moment. Lviv lives on, loves on, as if war was no more; brave, determined people resolute not to show the slightest act of defeatism. As the sign in the city said, 'Just Lviv it!' Nice one Lviv.

The last words came from our host before she put the phone down: 'The raid is over, you are safe, travel home safely. FUCKING RUSSIANS.'