Portal to Hell: Reflections from a Frontline Morgue

Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, summer 2023.

Calm night.

I stand smoking by the aid station after a hard night shift on medevac. It was a quiet night.

On quiet nights they retrieve the 200s [the dead].

I smoke. My hands shake. I stare into nothing, like those 200s do. Something is there, in that emptiness. The place the dead look at and few of the living see.

An experienced medic from our brigade noticed me. He had a thick beard and kind eyes with the call sign "Robert." He came over, put his arm around me and said:

"Don't worry. You never get used to this anyway."

Life never makes peace with death. So it goes. That's the way.

I'll go wash and scrub out the smell that really only exists as a memory's imprint in my head.

Our point called "The Pit" was the end of the line for medevac. I remember passing Bila Hora [white mountain] - and then you'd race straight through the darkness to where the turnaround had been churned up in the mud. I always missed it when no one came to meet us. “Unihorn”, an experienced medic and crew chief, taciturn and even hostile at first - never gave hints. He'd turn his head and stare at me for a long time. Then He'd finally be forced to say something like, "You heading to storm the position? There are already Russians behind that hill." 

"Did we pass that point?" 

"Long ago." 

"Why didn't you say anything?" 

"Well, you're the driver." 

I turned around - we'd really gone a couple kilometers too far. On the way back the boys were already waiting, waving their arms. 

It was hard with Unihorn at first. We didn't talk at all. He didn't talk to anyone. But once he actually praised me – an almost supernatural event. We were transporting a 300 (wounded) with traumatic amputation of the foot. In Kostiantynivka, where you have to cross the railway tracks - brutal potholes, impossible to avoid. The 300 screamed at every bump, but he was stable. The bleeding had stopped, so I took those potholes and tracks as slowly as possible..Still, it shook him. At the stabilization point I ask Unihorn, "Did I drive okay? Did I shake him too much?" 

Unihorn out of habit made a cutting remark. "Well, you heard him screaming."  But a second later He said, "No, no.. Good job.. Drove it right, the way it should be done." 

We started talking normally later, when he realized I wasn't a "tourist", as he put it. 

"You come for a couple weeks, wreck the vehicle and leave. And we have to repair it afterward."  That's when I lost it. I said, "I've brought twenty vehicles to the Armed Forces, and God knows how many more with volunteers from the Donbas to repair and back. If I wreck one - we're talking about suspension - I've earned the right. We're not out here joy-riding." Unihorn took a deep breath and fell silent. 

By then I was wound up. The unfair hint about being a "tourist" had gotten to me. I said, "You took me around the points once during the day as a passenger and expect that at night, under stress - which you add to with your silence - I'd remember every turn in this hellscape that all looks the same to me. Instead of chewing me out for hitting potholes, you could have told me long ago that there's almost never any need to rush. I tore around for two weeks thinking it was life and death, until I timed it and realized that if you drive calmly and take the holes slowly - the difference is two minutes that don't matter. Rare exceptions aside." 

He seemed to appreciate this pushback, and after that became more helpful. He would call out turns, tell me where the holes were, where not to hurry. 

Though maybe it happened after we evacuated some very bad, not-fresh 200s (KIA - killed in action); at the "morgue" point, which was actually a shed with a dirt floor for temporary body storage.  You had to undress the corpse, turn it over, describe the injuries and probable cause of death. Also find the call sign, usually written on clothing or inside boots. Sometimes at first you couldn't even tell if it was one of ours or one of theirs. Everything black, decomposed - couldn't even make out whose camouflage it was. The morgue attendant,, moderately drunk (worth noting it was moderate) - a huge tall guy - soon couldn't take it, asked us to help examine the body.,

While Unihorn and I worked, He quietly slipped outside for air. I, stunned by this surreal scene and bracing myself not to vomit and lose respect in my comrades' eyes, helped my colleague work on the bodies. Even Unihorn barely held back his gag reflex, periodically turning his head toward the gate.. Tears appeared in his eyes - whether from the impossible smell or the impossible sight of the swollen body. It appeared to be a whole body at first. When I took off the helmet, which initially looked unnaturally displaced, half of its head remained in the helmet. I guess an armored truck had driven over it. From the cut in the nasopharynx in the remaining half, air wheezed in and out with sound and bubbles in the rhythm of normal breathing. That happens when you move a body. But here it looked so impossible that if the dead man had stood up and walked away, I wouldn't have been surprised anymore. 

We had entered a portal to hell. So if a devil with a tail and pitchfork had walked by, I would have nodded and continued working, helping Unihorn. In my head was roughly this: just accept that you've landed in a surreal world where anything is possible. Don't lose your mind and keep doing what you must do. I probably had to break some innate reaction to horror and extend the acceptable boundaries of reality to infinity, in order to approach and start working on the body. The work consisted of cutting off the clothes, checking documents and personal items, turning it onto its stomach and back (this made the snuffling sounds even louder, sometimes becoming like moans). I don't know if Unihorn guessed that before this, I'd only seen dead people at funerals…  It doesn't matter. Words are out of place here.

Everyone is silent and stares into emptiness, trying not to think about anything, trying not to process what they've seen. Smoking one after another, masking the corpse smell that will haunt you for days. Smoking and driving to collect the body of the next fallen volunteer from the 3rd Assault Brigade.  In the summer 2023 battles for a small but very important village called Andriivka, in the lowland south of Bakhmut. The warriors of the 3rd Assault Brigade managed to liberate and hold the ruins of the village by September 2023.

Like many other occupied places, Andriivka is now just a reference point on the map. It's unlikely there will ever be life there again. The Russian world brings only death and scorched earth.

I regret nothing. It was an honor to be part of the best of the best, friends of the 3rd Assault. 

Honor to the fallen! Glory to Ukraine! 

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Some details have been changed to preserve operation security (OPSEC) of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.