Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1526110
15 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 1 SEPTEMBER 2024 to get there and as we are driving it starts to rain. A rainbow comes out and the crew point out national landmarks as we speed along. A disused mine, too close to the ac- tion, a town abandoned in 2022 with in- habitants now starting to return, a water reservoir, and in the distance, a grey hazy scar cutting across the flat landscape – the front line. The crew tell me that it's unusual to be driving in the daytime, and that at night you can see the flashes of ex- plosions and the beams of aircraft torches in the distance. Soon we're driving through Kramatorsk, Donetsk oblast's second largest town. It's been bombarded throughout the war, an industrial city where strikes targeted factories and export lines. There are de- stroyed buildings at every block and the council buildings and community build- ings have all their windows boarded up. The most infamous attack on Kramatorsk came in April of 2022 when a missile strike hit the railway station, killing 63 civilians, including nine children, and wounding 150 more. The attack happened while between 1,000 and 4,000 civilians were at the station awaiting evacuation following heavy Russian shelling. This is just one of many examples of the indiscrimination of the devastation and violence that has characterised the invasion. Mutanka the small yellow doll In a small nearby town, the ambulance turns off the highway into a maze of lanes, passing one last military checkpoint be- fore coming to a stop in front of what looks like an abandoned building. Two stories high, with windows boarded and no signage in sight. The good luck talisman of the ambu- lance I'm in, a small yellow doll called a Mutanka, sways gently in the silence and I notice some washing hanging to dry on a nearby tree. The MOAS 68 crew step out of the vehicle, and I follow. It's only then that I notice a cluster of blood-soaked stretchers piled up against one wall, on another there's a row of ancient wheel- chairs. Dotted around are a few solitary figures, smoking under rusted awnings, all with limbs and faces bandaged, some clearly too short or small to indicate any- thing but amputation. We're at the pickup location. I'm asked to wait by the ambulance with the driver as the medics go inside to arrange for the transfer. My eyes follow them through a heavy door and on the walls that line the corridor are countless pictures drawn by children with messages on them, mostly coloured in blue and yellow. The rain picks up, but neither myself nor Kalenda make any effort to avoid the weather. We stand together waiting for our patient to be brought out and loaded into the ambulance. The patient comes out with Horb and Babenko. The stark difference between the old, handheld stretchers rusting along the hospital walls, and our own shiny backboard on collapsible struts is alarm- ing. The atmosphere on the ambulance is immediately different, everyone is focused on the patient. Babenko checks all the handover paperwork and fills in our own MOAS patient card before signalling to Kalenda that we can leave. We drive faster now, all eyes ahead on the road. Kalenda knows where he is going from experience and instinct; at the start of the war the Ukrainians destroyed all road signs and markers to make invasion more difficult for the Russian forces. He only uses the sirens when there's traffic or at the many checkpoints we are waved through. Some soldiers at the checkpoints salute us as we speed past, a sign of respect for their fall- en comrade and the humanitarian team fighting to save him. The patient is 32 and he has a traumatic abdominal wound. In the ambulance he is wrapped tightly, none of his injuries visi- ble above his dressings and hypothermia blanket. His resemblance to my partner makes me uneasy. He has already had emergency surgery and will be reviewed in Dnipro, our drop off location. The crew respond to every change in our patient. Every beep or flash on the machines prompting a check, or adjust- ment. The patient is sedated and intubat- ed, breathing rhythmically with the pulsa- tion of the ventilator. He won't remember this journey. I wonder if he can hear them murmuring as they treat him and main- tain his sedation. They explain each step to me, reassuring me the noises or lights are only due to the movement of the am- bulance, the shift in weight, the need for a little more sedation. They're seamless. Efficient but not panicked, professional and caring. We are driving between 140 -160km/ hour, but the journey is smooth. All the while the team deftly tend to their patient. They have an innate ability to communi- cate his needs between them, indicating to one another when we need to slow down for a blood pressure check, avoid bumps when preparing perfusion, they are efficient, clean and professional but also caring and respectful. To them this is a brother, he is a hero. Horb tells me that they work on each patient as if the family is watching. 'They think war is faraway' Coming into Dnipro the traffic is worse, people are lazy about moving out of the way, the sight of ambulances must be so common now they can't muster up any sense of urgency. Horb notices me get- ting agitated as we come to a stop behind a queue at an intersection, "They think the war is far away," he says simply. He's right, life even here is pretty unaffected, and in Kyiv you'd be forgiven for forget- ting there's a war on. The soldiers, ci- vilians and humanitarian organizations in the Donbas are using themselves as a shield to protect this way of life, a phys- ical barrier between the horrors of life under occupation and the normalcy of life beyond it, but it shouldn't be so eas- ily forgotten. Kalenda is from Dnipro, so as we make our way through the city toward the hos- pital he talks of his family and life in Dni- pro before the war. He says it's strange to be so close to them on such a regular basis without being able to see them. Sometimes they come to the hospital in Dnipro when he is on a drop off, even in the middle of the night, just to wave at him from the bar- riers as he drives in and out, a cherished sliver of contact that sustains them all until they can be reunited. Pulling up to Dnipro hospital, we are back to a medical system I can recognise. Sig- nage directs us to ambulance drop off, and the A&E sign glows neon in the dark. The doctors and nurses are waiting for us as we pull up and I barely have time to bestow a silent prayer onto the patient before he is whisked inside. Job done the crew do not pause for breath, disposing of their waste, disinfecting the ambulance, prepping for their return. I go straight to the hotel. It's late, and we have an early start the next morning for our drive back to Kyiv. I sleep sound- ly this night. If there are air raid sirens, I don't hear them. Nothing can penetrate the emotional and physical exhaustion of the weekend. I'm amazed by the stamina shown by our staff in the field, their abil- ity to re-deploy, re-focus, re-commit, over and over again. DIARY OF A VOLUNTEER Relief and pride for MOAS teams as they drop their patient off at referral hospital Kalenda's lazer focus as he navigates the roads, accompanied by his good luck charm, a mutanka