Homage to Ukraine, Part Two

From the journals of Haim Shweky

As you likely know, our foreign correspondent Haim Shweky put in time volunteering in Ukraine. He’s been keeping a journal, and we’re publishing it here in installments. Below you’ll find the latest entry. If you want to catch up on Haim’s exploits and his views on the war, we’ve got everything he’s written for us right here. But in order to read most of it (and this post), you’ll need to become a subscriber! And if you’re interested in more Haim, head on over to his Substack.

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The author with fellow soldiers (faces obscured). Photo by Oro Whitley

The Horsemen

Worse than not achieving one’s goal is to have it taken from you at the brink of its achievement. I admit I was a shade petulant. I was embittered by again finding myself at the recruiting stages, having to stumble again through the process of placement. Thinking of my friends felt like looking at a portrait of a dear, departed relative. Before going on with the story, I would like to sketch this portrait for the reader.

The School siphons off volunteers with some army background for placement in operations teams. That’s how Adam, Luc, Gideon, and me, so distant in origin and temperament, came to share a tent for a month and a bond for life.

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Dossiers

Name: H., Adam

Profile: Mid-30s, nearly 7 ft, the beard of a noble tsar or a lowly hunter

Place of Origin: California

Identifying marks: A tattoo which, beginning at his wrist and ending at his midriff, loops round his body and lists all the places of the world he has lived “long enough to pay rent.”

Remarks: If Adam were an historical figure, he would inevitably be written up in textbooks as one of those “contradictory” personages. A twenty-first-century philosophe, paradoxically blending the more mature strains of stoicism with the darker ones of existentialism. A storm in the heart of a diamond throwing off dark refractions. Of military family stock, going back to the Civil War. Wife deceased [inhalation poisoning], also a soldier. Generous to everyone and everything, one wishes he were more generous to himself. The self-questioning soldier-hero, if ever there was one.