Disappearing Men

I was a secret soldier; working at night and out of the headlines. My last missions were to Ukraine. They were my last missions because my body and mind became frayed. They were also my last missions because I found love.

After twenty years of war, from Afghanistan to the place I eventually called it quits, I said enough is enough. Well, to be fair, it wasn’t actually I who said it, it was something inside of me, something soldiers know well.

A year later, at the height of the war, I returned to Ukraine with my partner. She, to visit family and friends, and I, to be there for her. And, I hoped, make some sense of what I had done over the last two decades. We traveled towards war, and we traveled cautiously; war was part of both our lives.

You cannot fly into Ukraine. Due to the obvious threat of Russian air. You must take a rickety train from elsewhere in Europe. The train cars are humid and packed. The ride takes somewhere between twelve and fourteen hours with sporadic delays and checks by authorities. Women lean out the cracks between the cars and blow cigarette smoke into the black countryside. The cyclical clack of the tracks briefly quiets their thoughts. Little boys run and play up and down the carriage late into the night. Parents no longer care about bedtime; one of many things that burns out along the way as a single parent during wartime.

We share a cabin with a young mother and her son, Max, of about seven or eight. He hasn’t seen his father (an officer in the army) for eight months; and he hasn’t lived with him in years. His mom moved abroad to raise him with family. They tried to settle on the east coast. But the stress, hard work, and dedication has wore her thin. They’re returning to Kyiv to be a family again, despite the obvious dangers. 

Max isn’t doing well in school or in the community she says— hard to control, doesn’t fit in. He’s been asked to leave the after school programs. Possibly ADHD says the doctor... Yeah, possibly. Or possibly he’s struggling because his life has been turned upside down from the biggest war since World War II. And possibly because his dad, and all the dad’s of his friends, are in the trenches fighting for their lives and the lives of their countrymen. And, just possibly, somewhere in the back of his young mind, he thinks he might be there next. And a rational mind would be lying if it told him it wasn’t possible.

It’s been a full ten years since Russia started its war on Ukraine, and almost three since the full scale invasion. Things in the city are status quo at best. But mostly they are precarious. Life moves on the best it can, and Ukrainian life moves on the only way it knows— via struggle.

Ukraine is beautiful. And the city Kyiv is no exception. After we arrive I begin to go for walks in the afternoons, alone. It’s late summer and the streets are busy and noisy. Women are everywhere. They patrol the streets trying to remain distractedly-busy. Riding the metro to a fro, keeping a sense of normality; hitting the shops and bazaars in an attempt to hold up the household, or multiple households; commuting to work and forcing smiles for the customers— making ends met doesn’t stop when your country is invaded; and some, in an attempt to pull the sheets over their eyes, or drown out the bedroom all together, drink, party, and carry on as if nothing is happening.

I see a couple sitting together at a popular lookout over the Dnipro. No words are spoken, faces unchanging. I watch them for some time. I’ve seen these expressions before. He’s leaving, return: unknown. Clutched together she holds his chest like a child holding her little bear. Eyes red and swollen— there’s no more tears to produce. Months, maybe years, of dreadful anticipation finally realized. Her lover has been plucked by the controlling forces. He’s despondent, frozen. Staring off in his first (but surely not last) thousand yard stare. He’s run out of words of consolation. They never seem to work anyway, like rubber balls bouncing off stone walls. So he turns inward and asks himself: What will it be like? What will I be asked to do? Will I lose friends? Will I have to kill? What about the drones? But a more palpable question is written all over their faces— What if he dies? The call has come and he must answer. Ukraine depends on it, freedom depends on it. Some men must disappear.

I break at a popular lunch spot in the Podil neighbourhood. There’s fourteen women and one man. The server tells me where the nearby shelter is incase of an air raid. They’re almost daily now. I scan my phone, a BBC journalist reports from a Ukrainian military bootcamp near the frontlines, in the Kursk direction. The TLDR: some of the men are worried that the training might be too short, too quick. There’s a stark reality in the few photos attached with the article, it’s even noticed by the civilian journalist: almost all the recruits are in their 40’s and 50’s. And then slowly, like a sinking ship, the facts eventually settle on the ocean floor. And after they’ve sunk, the questions begin to float back to the surface— Where are all the men? And then… How much longer can Ukraine hold on?

“All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.”

—The Sun Also Rises, Earnest Hemingway

What does a nation lose when it loses a generation? How many books will never be written because their authors lay dead in the ditches of Bakhmut? How many ballads and anthems will never be sung because they faded away with the heroes of Azovstal? And what about the works of art, the poems, and the plays? The inventors, the athletes, the leaders? We can only imagine what the world will never get to experience because of the lost Ukrainian souls who died defending Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mariupol, and the countless villages in Luhansk and Donetsk.

Ukraine’s culture runs deep. Poets, writers, musicians, artists, freedom fighters, heroes, and martyrs. Taras Shevchenko wrote and spoke about Ukrainian freedom almost 200 years ago, eventually becoming exiled. Lesya Ukrainka a female poet from the 1800’s, wrote and spoke about freedom and liberty. And say what you will about Bandera, the means were worth the end to him— Ukrainian independence.

Those who remain hold on strong to the culture they have. There’s no loss of pride. Others are inspired to create more, to create anew. Art and music are everywhere. In the tunnels, along the walkways, and centred in the squares. Proud for their heroes, happy for the partial freedom they enjoy where it’s safe. People cycle, walk, laugh, and drink. Concerts pack stadiums, street performers gather crowds that ‘safe’ societies only wish. Ribbons and flags are passed out. And every event is punctuated with the energetic shouts of the crowds; Slava Ukraini! Heroiam Slava!

I stand in Maidan square watching little blue and yellow flags of memorial flap in the warm breeze. The flags are surrounded by wreaths and flowers and pictures of the fallen; they look brave. A flag for each. There’s thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. They’re stuck in the soil, the soil of their ancestors, the Kyivian Rus, the cossacks, the heroes. They flags dance in the wind. They sparkle, they come alive, they move and shake between the photos; kissing their edges and making a pattering. It brings them alive, just briefly. It whispers to them. The wind still blows my friends. The sun still shines. And so does Ukraine, thanks to you.

I think back to the height of my war years, Iraq and Afghanistan. The flags that dotted the front porches. The bumper stickers and the rallies. The faces on the TV, and the newspaper clippings that now sit faded in a shoebox under my fathers bed. Was it the same? No. We had a choice, we could have said no. I look around the square at the people, the Ukrainians. Their faces are tired; everyone is tired. But when you have no choice, the choice is simple.

“There is nothing to look at,

No one to speak to.

You don’t feel like living in the world,

But you have to live.”

—Taras Shevchenko

The fourth turning has turned for Ukraine. Young men and women have a large task ahead of them. Holding the line and then, rebuilding. Rising up from the broken buildings, torn up streets, and dusty ashes. A generation has been lost but a people have grown stronger, once again. It’ll be on them to tell the stories, the stories of their heroes and why they died. Like kickboxing champion Vitalii Merinov, the defenders of Azovstal, nineteen year old Ruslana Danilkina, the brave souls of Zmiinyi Island, and the Ghost of Kyiv. But also of their own personal stories. Of children without their fathers and wives without their husbands. Holding fast and long in a serious of never ending alarms, strikes, breakthroughs and setbacks. Failed peace talks, threats of nuclear war, mass evacuations, and death. Always there is death.

A generation has been lost but a new generation will grow in its place. It will stand on the backs of those who sacrificed defending freedom for the people of Ukraine. The young men and women must grasp what has been given to them from those who’ve laid down their lives. They must seize the opportunity.

".. To you from falling hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.."

—In Flanders Fields, LCol. John McCrae

On the train ride in Max craves male-ness. Some masculinity. He climbs onto my bunk and rubs shoulders with me as he shows me the latest game on his tablet. It’s a war game. He shoots down Russian planes over makeshift landscapes with a selectable range of aircraft. It isn’t long before he’s pulling at my beard, thumb wrestling, and showing me his pushups and pull-ups. We joke and laugh. I speak one and two word phrases in Ukrainian, he speaks four and five word phrases in English. We become pals on the fourteen hour journey back home. Back to war.

Max doesn’t know it yet but he will be responsible for what Ukraine will become. The men are disappearing and he will need to step into their great big shoes. Max gives me hope that something is passed down through the generations in the hearts of Ukrainians. Something he won’t know for quiet some time, if ever. But inside him is a flame. A flame that burns and never goes out. A flame that was lit generations ago by men and women much greater than you or I.

For me, I didn’t make much sense of war and why humans do the things we do. But on that trip I did see hope. And I saw the beauty of humanity and our tenacity to get through difficult things. It really is a wonder of the world; our ability to lean on each other in difficult times, we don’t do anything alone. And hope seeds a better future.

Will Max become the first generation of Ukrainians who don’t write, petition, sing, dance, paint, draw, scream, fight, kill, starve, and die for their independence? Will Max step out of the ashes and stand proudly independent alongside the heaps of Ukrainian souls who’ve laid down such a price the likes the world has never seen for the independence of their people?

I believe it. It’s been a long time coming.