Berlin to Johannesburg: Visions of the War

A Shortsighted Narrative on Violence & Destruction

taken from the journal War Accounts

We had been running cross-border raids into Ukrainian territory for small arms & munitions. Since
the OSCE had shown up, it was hard to get resupplied. We would receive enough munitions and
food supplies to keep us shooting back at the perpetrators, but Russia was under sanctions and had
been having a hard sending supplies to us. We had been running these cross border raids since some
polish guy showed up. He had come up with the idea of running a special force units of 5, it was
actually pretty ingenious. When set up like a pentagram, each person was covered, to his left & his
right. His name was Mio, Mio Tromp or something like that. We used to make so much fun of
that guy. He came over with a 2nd year Estonian Sargent patch on his arm. He fractured his knee on
the first day, we used to joke & call him a gimp after that. I miss vegas, he would say. You ever
been? we used to ask. Only once, he said. I fell in love with a woman that up & disappeared.
Great city. Hey shouldnt you be tromping through the woods? we used ask. Or shit like, Hey
shouldnt you be back in America running for president? He would never answer. He was a quiet
guy, only liked to talk to the Generals and high commanders, kept himself holed up in a tin shack
most of the time studying maps, making plans for attacks we would run. They were successful most
of the time, so he had a good eye. We found out later that he was a real weird guy, wanted in Poland
for arson, necrophilia, real sick ass fucking shit. He was on the most wanted list, but we dont know
if the generals ever found out, if they did, why the hell would tell us? They probably just kept their
mouths shut, is very hard to bring in volunteers now. God damn fucking war, he used to say. He
didnt go on many of the missions with us, but when he did, he was pretty good. After Ukraine
started pulling howitzers up to the grey zone, he got real weird. Refused to talk to the generals.
They got a little worried that maybe he was a plant come in for Ukraine so they kept him under
close watch. I specialize in techniques on the use of explosives & demolition, hed say. Said he
picked it up from Ukraine, when he was infiltrating their news channels. They get the job done, he
used to say. It was his idea to hit the howitzers, so we made him front line. Were gonna get those
fucking tanks with sticky bombs, he said. It was difficult to mobilize with OSCE being so
prevalent in both Lugansk & Donetsk, but that was why our special forces units were set up real
small, I mean it was for a reason. It wasnt until we came under attack and the OSCE ran for cover
that we could move about freely, so when Gorlovka came under fire, we were ready to move. We
were going out through Debaltseve then come down & see what we could do about outflanking
them. Before we even got out of Gorlovka I got hit in the leg with shrapnel. It was bleeding like a
mother fucker but I had a mission. I taped it up as best as I could, stopped the bleeding at least but it
pinched like a mother fucker when I would move. The things we do for love of country huh? We
made it to our exit point & as I was moving forward (we had holed up in a trench for ten minutes or
so under machine gun fire) & I got stabbed from behind in the right side by one of our guys. So
this is what the jesus felt like, I thought. Fucking perpetrators! Apparently we had been moving
with two ukrainian infiltraters, they werent about to let us get on their I guess, but we able to
subdue, tie them up before they could contact their guys across the line, before they could do any
more damage. hey had to be tried & hung, so we tied em up making sure they could still breath,
left one guy behind to make sure they didnt move so we were down to two. Just me & Milosc. He
smoke like a train, I started feeling like my intestines were spilling out my right side, so Milosc
moved first. It was horrible. It was real foggy that day, not like usual. So he moved out across the
road just as a mortar came down. He went down hard, both of his legs blown off. Fucking shit, I
heard him yell, falling on the ground hitting his face in the dirt. Roll, I yelled at him from across
the road, but we had been picking up whatever bullets we could on the way up to the line, so his
pack was too large, he could barley even move. I saw his face- he just looked stunned, shocked. I
couldnt even believe what had happened. Move, I yelled at him and I saw him start to crawl, his
legs a bloody mess in the street. He was crawling backwards out of the road on his two hands. We
looked at each other & just of kind of knew it was the last time. He looked content, I mean he knew
he was gonna die, he just had his legs blown off for christ sake. It was like he accepted it, I dont
think he had anything on his mind at the point, I think he was just relieved. They got him with a
headshot through the back of the skull. I saw his brains come out his forehead through the front of
his face, a bullet got hit him in the back of the head. There goes that mission, I thought, radioing in
for medic. I was bleeding out my side real bad by that time, I just couldnt pull it off alone, being
injured and all. I been in hospis now for 30 days know, I cant imagine being in hospital any much
longer than that.