Homage to Ukraine, Part One

From the journals of Haim Shweky

A couple weeks ago, we posted a dispatch from Haim Shweky, an Israeli-American TGS fan who volunteered to fight in Ukraine. In addition to his responses to Nikita’s questions about the war, he also sent in excerpts from the journal he has been keeping to document his experiences there. Haim has given us permission to publish an edited version of these journals. We’ll publish these journals in installments over the next month or so, along with photos by Oro Whitley. In order to read them, though, you’ll need to become a subscriber! (Though Haim also has a Substack of his own.)

I hope you’ll find Haim’s firsthand account as enlightening and entertaining as I have. Enjoy!

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Photo by Oro Whitley

As mentioned in my last letter, I had originally been attached to an intelligence-gathering unit comprised of four Americans (including myself) dubbed “the Horsemen.” But a “technicality” dismounted me, and I ended up back at what was termed “the School” to be reassigned. 

Every aspiring legionnaire passes through the School, where he will be interviewed by Majors Andre and Bullit. If the first is the school's principal, the second is its disciplinarian, a spitfire with a personality as lethal as his name implies. I gave Bullit my CV, which I thought impressive, but only derision showed on his face. 

“All your little specialized skills,” he said, tapping with his finger, “are deleted under a Russian artillery bomb.”

I would learn that Major Bullit’s temperament vacillated between mouse and martinet. He welcomed me and an Australian, Link, who also had a military background. “Thank you guys for showing up,” Bullit said. Walking off, he added, “Normal fucking people finally. God knows we’ve had our share of lunatics.”

A Hostelry 

The Legion attracts as eclectic a group as a European hostel. Eclectic and at times illicit. A slurry of the physically and metaphysically wandering, the misplaced or displaced, and the outright lost. Some of these wash-ups were adrift, sailing and rudderless. Some were addicts to drugs attainable only in the deep alleys of the mind: adrenaline, serotonin, endorphins. Most of these would-be soldiers were harmless, perhaps a danger only to themselves. A few were suspect.