Saturday, April 25, 2009

Bohdan Taras Kondratiuk,Yevchenko Veterans' Sanatorium, Odessa, Ukraine


I met Bohdan Taras Kondratiuk, a war hero, in a room with out windows, dim, fluorescent bulbs, concrete walls, and unwashed cots. People here suffered from disorders. He first started the conversation with one word, chaos. Bohdan and his men just fought four brutal engagements. They were exhausted. Keiv was supposed to be the new safety zone. The safety zone was being shifted again, this time to Crimea. Keiv was being evacuated. Their company was ordered to oversee the escape route at Patona Bridge. Even before the crisis, it was a nightmare of traffic jams. Bohdan's men and random people were forced to do traffic patrol and infection patrol. I would hate that job because it would take forever.He said." How are we supposed to check for infection without dogs." There was so much chaos, fights broke out. People were getting severally injured. They'ed given up on the evacuation and were going to kill everyone. Jets were going to bomb the bridge. Bohdan was running and jumped in the nearest tank. It wasn't a bomb, it was a gas. It was RVX, It starts out as rain: tiny, oily droplets that cling whatever they contact. It enters through the pores, the eyes, the lungs. He said you could see the evacuees' limbs beginning to tremble, arms falling to their sides as the agent worked to their central nervous system. I would vomit if I ever saw that happening. It would be horrific. Bohdan ordered their company to withdraw, to head southwest and keep going. The last thing he saw in Keiv was Motherland, the tallest building in the city.

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