Personal battlefront wisdom: main thing’s staying alive!

Photo: Jaanus Piirsalu

Again, the silence felt way too long. None of us was overly keen to venture outside, to smoke or even to ease oneself. Better to patiently endure... 

The initial mine dropped suddenly. They always do. Come down with a brief whistle. One swift to react will manage a few steps, or to fall flat. This time, the whistle was loud like never before. Before one had time to think further, our cabin – of good round logs – shook in the explosion.

Four of us dived to our bellies, unto a low bed in the back room. Realising it’s going to «rain». The only question being whether it was going to be a direct hit or a pass.

Ten seconds later, we got it – the explosions kept coming nearer. The third mine rocked the house like trying to lift the thing.

Afterwards, the guys in a stone house next door described it like this: it was as if a number of men had sprayed the wall with automatic rifle fire. In reality, these were mine splinters, sharp edged and jagged like shark teeth. The larger ones will cut a limb off and keep on flying.

The next two-three mines fell further away. Relieved, the motionless men begun to move a bit.

Exiting the room, we detected Dad (Ded) sitting at the fireplace, looking determined but calm. Right after the first bang, he’d come out of the room in the back.

Reading his face: this is my homeland and I’m not about to hide from the enemy. Tree (Derevo) lit a cigarette and serenely reported to Sky (Nebo) that we had just taken a mortar shower. Some seconds later, the voice of Sky came crackling over the radio transmitter, providing the coordinates where the Ukrainian separatist mines came from. 

A few minutes later, from the woods nearby, we heard Ukrainian army’s Grad-rockets sent to where the mines came from. Dad and Tree looked pleased indeed. «That’s what they need,» said Dad. Quietly, speaking to himself mainly.

Dad (66) is a retired railway worker from Outer Carpathians. Tree (50 or so) is an electrician from some Central-Ukrainian oblast. These are the Ukrainian volunteers, thanks to whom the front largely stays in vicinity of Donetsk. Officially, the Ukrainians are at war with the separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk. In reality, it’s against the Russian army and their weapons.

Dad and Tree are their call signs. Actually, Dad’s called Vassil, but Tree never gave his real name. But then, in the Kamikaze, no one cared too much for the real names anyway.

Checkpost Kamikaze, manned by Ukrainian volunteers, stands two kilometres from the Donetsk Airport – a Kaliningrad of sorts, for the Ukrainians – and a kilometre from the famed village of Pesky – currently the furthest-reaching spot at Donetsk controlled by Ukrainian state. To Tallinn, Kamikaze is by 500 km closer than Brussels.

What is happening there is a big and serious war. Dozens die daily, including civilians. In the cruel positions war, it’s mainly battles between artilleries at the moment.

The Ukrainian troops’ positions in Pesky are under enemy bombardment almost throughout the day. Usually, the Kamikaze post has it easier. During my three days there, we had some several-hour moments of total quiet. The nights were quite quiet as well; while sleeping, one was okay to take the body armour off. The first night, I did not.

The spot to draw bulk of the mortar fire from Kamikaze is the top strategic object in Donetsk region nearby called the Bridge (Respublika Most), which has changed hands repeatedly. At the moment, it’s under control of Ukrainian units. Basically, Kamikaze is a lookout for the Bridge.

I can compare: this is a war stronger by several notches than what Estonian servicemen fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. I do not recall feeling much fear while there. Regarding my stay at Kamikaze, I’d lie saying I didn’t.

But it was easy to push the fear back beholding the steadfastness of Dad, and the way Tree took it almost fatalistically. The country needs to be defended and if we die we die. It’s worth is, see.

In his home at Carpathians, Dad left his elderly wife behind sick and the cow soon to calve, and came to defend the country for a month. He said well the wife will recover and the neighbours will help with the calf, but defending the country can’t wait. «Thus far and no further!» he assured me. I lost count how many times I heard that, during my four days on the front, from volunteers and servicemen alike!

The Ukrainian volunteers do have a victory under their belt already. «In the summer we did not have an army, it was totally demoralised and the commanders were Russian-minded,» related Dad. «Now, at long last, we do have and army able to defend the country together with us. We made it till then!»

One day, we stood with Dad on the «headquarters» doorstep while Grad-rockets fell on the opposite bank of the river, on a field some 500 metres from us. No whistling. They just were there, and turned the field quite upside down. Grad flies faster than sound, so it’s not heard.

«Had these fallen over here, we’d not have been able to even move,» observed Dad, placidly. We would not have had time to even dive, he added.

In this war, Grad is a weapon most cruel. If the eight shot complex is fired at once, each one holding five rockets – 40 all together – about a square kilometre is covered with the lethal cloud of splinters.

Luckily for us over there in Kamikaze at that moment, the Grads are a weapon not too sharp-shooting. In Mariupol, however, this was to the doom of 31 people lately. Desiring to kill Ukrainian troops, separatists hit residential quarters.

Things are different altogether with Uragan-complexes – an update from Grad. These shoot sharp and, unlike Grad, add a sea of fire to the cloud of splinters. With Uragan, happening to be in the basement will not help. You’ll burn just the same.

The Kamikaze post head Aleksandr Jermakov (42), call sign General, is from here in Donetsk oblast. But he is still defending Ukraine as «I want to live in a free country».

Arriving at Kamikaze to write on the volunteers, the first thing he told me was: Donetsk just had another humanitarian convoy come in from Russia. «Consequently, tonight we have discotheque!» Thus, I was told, it happens after each convoy.

By the discotheque, he meant heavy bombing with mines, Grads, and the occasional shelling. That’s why I slept with body armour on. The night proved rather quiet, though. Wars do have the occasional positive surprises. Not much bombing – good news!

Even things that sound banal in everyday life, in war assume a new meaning. 

«It’s good where we are not,» observed Oleh, a volunteer, after we’d been through our severest mortar attack. In everyday life, banal. There and then, Oleh was not alone thinking that.

Or take the usual «Good night!» in Kamikaze context. We really really meant it.

The chief, General, providing on-the-spot basic military training for volunteers, was fascinated by their dedication: «We just had all the best people in Ukraine volunteer for war.» This is a statement I also daily hear, on the front line.

The patriotism and will to defend is so sincere with even the most battle hardened warriors – and such abound, among the guys defending the Bridge – that there comes a moment when I get a quiet confidence: these people, this Ukraine cannot be beaten. Except if they are betrayed. Whether by their own or by the world.

Occasionally, the mighty will to defend does curiously overflow.

On the Bridge I met these two members of the Right Sector, a nationalist movement famed from the Maidan days. One aged 22, the other 20. Their unit had kicked separatists out of a fire depot at the edge of Donetsk Airport, one they were now successfully defending. Before that, they fought in the airport terminals. In Ukraine, they are now known as Cyborgs.

All these guys talked about was death. To die – for homeland, of course! – was in their speech as normal as brushing teeth at night for some ordinary citizen. As related by them, fellows dying almost sounded funny. About those that fell next to them, they spoke as if they’d rise to life again tomorrow. I got the impression they waged war in the firm belief they had multiple lives.

As strong as the General’s appreciation towards volunteers and helps organisations supporting the army, was his hatred of the indifferent Ukrainians and a large part of the leadership and generals. This also is a prevailing attitude on the front, as the state is weak at supplying the army and organising life near the front. This is putting it mildly. Even in Kamikaze and on the Bridge, it is all over the place. Most of the food, clothes and other necessities are brought by the thousands of helps organisations that sprung up all over the land, by pure citizen initiative. Nice, at least, that the state provides ammunition and armaments!

«When this war is over, those of us on the frontlines right now will be asking Kiev some very very serious questions,» said General. «Why are army and the people not helped, where did the money go that was meant for that, how is the money distributed anyhow?»

The General’s words about how such Ukrainians as desired change came to the Maidan first and, thereafter, these same people almost unanimously went to the frontlines, and if needed will come back to Maidan after that, sparked in me the involuntary idea: this present power in Kiev, do they really want the war to be over soon? 

In this one regard, however, General differed from the majority of Ukrainian volunteers: he does not believe the war will end, not in near future anyway.

For the most part, the volunteers believed the separatists could be beaten. If only, at long last, Moscow would stop arming them.

«This will not come. For that, Putin would have to die!» said General while adjusting the anti-tank gun called Muha, on his back – just about to teach the volunteers how to use it. Muha is the volunteers’ main weapon against the separatist tanks – obviously from Russia. «We are not able to kick them out. The best we could do is for them to advance no further.»

By the end of the second day, Bridge sent Kamikaze word that, according to intelligence information, separatists had succeeded in sending several diversion groups over the frontline. During the night, all posts had to be extremely careful, we were warned.

The main job for Kamikaze volunteers comes in the night, standing guard by shifts to a flank of the Bridge so «visitors» would serve no surprise. That night, Bridge commanded the volunteers to guard their very selves from the diversionists – they’d look after the flank this time. 

Some freshly arrived volunteers were obviously not serious about the warning. But not Dad and Tree!

Dad started by checking the locks to all the houses and ordered that the doors be well shut for the night. In a house with its door unlocked, with all windows wither walled in or shut by think planks from the splinters, sleeping volunteers are easy prey for diversionists: open the door, throw in grenade, and amen!

About midnight, all were awakened by the tense voice of watchman Tree over the air: «We have visitors!» Now, try to imagine volunteers, fresh from civilian life two days before, hunting diversionists with special training – in the dark.

The brave and street-wise Tree, by all outward signs an outcast or recidivist in ordinary life, succeeded to locate the two visitors among the vacant houses nearby. Bravely, he personally indulged in the unequal battle. The brief exchange of fire between the houses was terminated by machine-guns blasting from Bridge. By a shriek, at least one of the diversionists got wounded. At dawn, however, nobody was found.

So it was morning again, the usual kind spiced with bombing. Thus we were smoothly eased into the mundane routine of just having to survive till the next shift shows up.