For the sake of every life

Lidia may not be fighting in a trench, but she sees the effects of Russian weapons on Ukrainian troops every day.

“Shrapnel wounds, gunshot wounds … limb fractures, abdominal wounds,” she says.

The GP never expected to be practising wartime medicine, but she now leads a team of volunteer medics from the Hospitallers Battalion.

On a converted bus, they run a mobile intensive care unit and transport wounded soldiers away from the front line, delivering them to major hospitals.

“As a doctor, I can’t stand aside when violence occurs, and therefore I think it is natural for me to start helping,” Lidia says.

“This is my small contribution.”

The Hospitallers Battalion was first established in 2014, by Ukrainian combat medic Yana Zinkevych.

United in their mission to fight “for the sake of every life”, what began as a small group has now expanded to hundreds of volunteers across the country.

Hospitallers estimates it has conducted more than 3,000 evacuations, and saved thousands of lives.

The ABC has joined Lidia’s Hospitallers unit on one of its missions to rescue soldiers who’ve been injured while waging Ukraine’s counteroffensive in Donetsk.

They drive to a rendezvous point where they’re met by a military ambulance that’s packed with patients.

These soldiers are among an estimated 130,000 Ukrainian troops who have become casualties of Putin’s war since the full-scale invasion began.

From their blood-stained stretchers, the soldiers are carefully transferred onto the bus.

Any bump or jolt brings potential pain because many of their bones have been shattered.

One soldier’s leg is carried onto the bus separately in a plastic bag. It’s been blown off near his knee.

While the medics onboard give him fluids and pain relief, they’re also trying to offer him words of comfort.

Lidia believes this is a very important component of the work her team does on the bus.

Frenchy, an American medic on the team, says the long trip to hospital can be daunting for soldiers who are coming to terms with life-changing injuries.

“The guys who are in this vehicle, it’s the day they got wounded. For some of them, it’s that they were blinded. It’s the day they lost a limb,” he says.

“One of the things that I hear a lot [in this team] is … I want to do for these kids what their mother would do for them.

“And I know that someone else is doing it for my child.”

While tending to more than a dozen patients on the bus, Lidia has her own worries.

Her nephew is missing on the battlefield near Lyman.

“At the moment we have no contact, but we hope that everything is good with him and we will hear from him.”

Surviving the front line

We’re heading west, towards a major hospital in central Ukraine.

An escort vehicle with lights and sirens attempts to clear a path for the Hospitallers bus, which carefully navigates the bumpy road.

In a bed at the front of the bus, 31-year-old Sergii is clearly in pain.

The former builder was conscripted into the army after the full-scale invasion and had been fighting near Avdiivka when the Russians took his unit by surprise.

“The Russian troops advanced very quickly,” he tells the ABC.

“They threw smoke and then very quickly approached us on tanks.

“I think they were marines. They were very cruel. They shot everyone, they did not spare anyone.”

Sergii and his comrades tried to defend their position, but were hit by a Russian shell.

“I don’t even know where they were firing from,” he says.

“One comrade was killed immediately and I was badly wounded and lost consciousness.”

Partially blinded and suffering a fractured arm and shattered pelvis, he had to drag himself through the long grass, hoping to avoid a drone he says Russian forces were using to fine-tune their aim.

It took him two days to drag himself back to safety in the baking heat. He says he was so thirsty, he drank his own urine.

On the other side of the bus aisle, Vyacheslav is suffering shrapnel injuries from a mine that killed one of his comrades when it exploded.

He’s hoping to get back to the front line and doesn’t want his family to worry.

“I’ve written to my brothers but I’ve asked them not to tell my mother because she’s so old,” he says.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive is slowly pushing on, with the military claiming small gains made around the eastern city of Bakhmut, and in the direction of Berdyansk and Melitopol in recent days.

Russia though, has been focused on Ukraine’s ports, unleashing what Kyiv has described as “hellish” aerial attacks on infrastructure along the Black Sea.

A hospital on the highway

The longer it takes to get the soldiers to hospital, the higher the risk they’ll deteriorate.

Frenchy, who previously served as a medic in the US military, says Ukraine doesn’t have the medevac capabilities that are now standard in NATO countries.

“[There’s an] assumption that you will have rapid medevac, and in no more than two hours will be in a tertiary care facility,” he says.

“[In Ukraine] we are doing well to get someone into that tertiary care facility the same day.”

At the back of the bus, another medic, Faust, is attending to the soldier who is now missing his leg.

He says he tries to keep his emotions at bay for the sake of the patients.

“Every medic knows how to turn on a certain switch and at a certain moment focus entirely on providing assistance,” he says.

However, in recent days, Faust has been treating especially young soldiers.

“Yesterday I saw a fighter who is 18 years old,” he says.

“[Another] was 22. He was seriously injured and afraid to die in that moment. There was fear in his eyes.”

Faust’s own son is 19 years old.

After about two hours on the road, we arrive at hospital and the team unloads the patients, briefing the doctors who’ve walked out to meet the bus.

Then, the inside of the bus falls quiet. The beeping heart monitors can finally be switched off.

After clearing away the medical waste, the team heads back to base to get some rest.

Another callout could come at any time of the night, so they all sleep in bunk beds with their mobile phones at the ready.

“Basically, if we’re not on a run, we’re sleeping,” Frenchy says.

He took leave from his research job in Colorado and came to Ukraine to lend his skills as a medic.

“I was absolutely astounded at the intensity of violence by the Russians against the civilian population,” he says.

“Once you have cleaned a grandmother’s blood out of the back of an ambulance, you can’t turn your back on this.”

[Story By: abc.net]

Story Original Link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-23/ukraine-doctors-evacuating-soldiers-from-the-frontline/102610128