Ukraine Adventures – Part 2

By Matt Evans 

(Editor’s Note: Local critical care paramedic Matt Evans spent five weeks helping out in Ukraine this past summer. In this four-part series, he describes some of his adventures…)

Transporting the dead

It was the second night of my first and only shift with the other battalion we worked with. A different group with different protocols, different operational procedures and different people. Their blindazh was massive with three exits, a big patient care room with four beds, a stabilization theater and a bunk room all about 10 feet underground. It functioned more like a stabilization point than an ambulance service. The bunk room was full, so I was sequestered in the back corner of the patient care room. It was dark and lonely, and I did battle with hundreds of flying ants that crawled all over me. The only English speaker wasn’t fluent enough to want to engage in prolonged conversation. So I read, and tried to learn how to read words like 為盼’癸盼研盆砌砂眇盼 and 洛盆眉研眉盆砌眇矜砂眇祆盆盼, medications I would have to administer.

After a long day and a half in the corner, we finally had a job. A dead soldier needed transport to the morgue. He had been bagged at the front and left in the sun for about a week. We went to work prepping two additional body bags, hoping to reduce the smell. The body bag was white, and tore easily. The maggots had seeped through the seams. Myself and my comrades regularly had to step away to gag as we placed him in the additional body bags. One of the guys lost his stomach multiple times. After we got him bagged and hoisted into the back of our small, soviet era van-turned-ambulance we crammed in the front, a bench seat that barely fit three grown men in full body armor.

Shoulder to shoulder, we pulled onto the road.

“Do not worry, he is very good driver. The best,” my English-speaking Ukrainian medic told me.

“Cool.” 

Why did he say that? I wondered.

The roads, although paved and less pothole-ridden than others I had driven, were no cake walk. The stench crept to the front as we red-lined the small engine. The wind from the open windows did little to beat back the smell. The stench and the wind and the cigarette smoke mixed as I felt my stomach drop nearly catching air over the small hills. The Gs pinned us to our seats as we flew through the dips. We had to be going at least 80 mph. Despite the roaring engine and blasting wind, the distant thunder of war could still be heard. Large flashes and an ominous glow illuminated the horizon. 

The zero line. 

Our headlights only extended about 20 feet ahead. We might as well have been driving blind at those speeds. Violent braking would send us into the dash and the tires squealed as we ripped around 90-degree turns. No seatbelts. 

Now I knew what my partner was talking about. This driver was good. And I was thankful considering our lives were firmly in his hands. The high speed and low lights were for our safety. Less time and less visibility equals less risk of getting hit. After about 25 minutes of the most dangerous situation I would be in during my time, we slowed and took a hard right. We made it to the morgue. Alive. 

It was time to attempt to identify the body. We opened the bags, maggots crawled everywhere. The smell hit me like a punch to the face. We made our attempt at identification and zipped him back up. The unbearable stench now in our DNA.

This was no fancy city morgue. It was a small concrete room illuminated by a single incandescent bulb. The windows were blacked out with plywood and the walls were lined in plastic, like a kill room from a slasher film. The fresh ammonia made the floor slick and teared my eyes. My nose burned from the ammonia and the putrid smell. I gagged involuntarily as we heaved the heavy body in, placing him on the floor. The job was done. 

I would visit this place more, the smell of death ever present. Some bodies had only been dead a few hours. Some were merely bones. A soldier’s still helmeted head lay between his feet. We had to try and identify each of them. We dug through maggots and slime and rat poop. Through the pockets and under the armor, searching for personal effects or anything that might help. I reached under the plate carrier of a headless soldier, digging out a necklace, in the process putting my hand in the void space that once held his heart and lungs. We were always on the lookout for grenades and other hazards. Sometimes we only brought one body to the morgue, sometimes we brought many. 

It would come time to return to the blindazh, we would assess the aerial threat and make a plan. Sometimes we waited there. Sometimes threats would pop up while driving. We had to duck off the road and hide in the trees.

Back at the blindazh we would decompress and try to sleep. I was always hungry after those runs for some reason. I would eat one of our open-faced cheese sandwiches that had been sitting in a Tupperware on the counter all day, and try to distract my mind from the smell. We would rack out and wait for the next job.

The task was grim but necessary. The mood was always somber. The Ukrainians treated the dead with a reverence that us foreigners couldn’t match, though we would try. These were their countrymen. Their brothers in arms. Each one we carried was another small victory for the enemy. A stark reminder of the challenge Ukraine faces.

(Next week Matt describes life away from the front but still dealing with drones and war…)