Klynove, 2016The Ukrainian army gives me very little training. Everything I know about warfare I learn from [my husband] Illia: how to clean and assemble a gun, how to choose appropriate equipment, how to protect myself. We go to the shooting range almost daily. Illia teaches me the nuances of military etiquette, how to behave in a male environment. ‘Don’t ever show weakness, Pooka. If you want to be treated as a professional soldier, as an equal, then you must be better than the men.’
The German tryptic of
kinder, kuche und kirche is alien to Illia. He never says, ‘You are a woman. Stay home. Cook. Have babies.’ He may be my mentor in all things military, but ours remains a relationship between equals. It is important to both of us that we do this together.
In October 2017, Captain Latysh calls me into his office. ‘Yulia, I need a commander for the reconnaissance platoon,’ he says. ‘The position is yours if you want it. It is a bigger responsibility because you will no longer be directly under my command. You will have more assets at your disposal, and you will have to take initiatives. The job will require a lot of walking, and there will be skirmishes with the enemy.’
I tell the captain I am honoured and ask for a few days to think about it. I am only twenty-two years old. Just sixteen months ago I was a university student. I am not certain that I am ready to bear responsibility for the lives of twenty men on the front line. The mere fact that Captain Latysh asks if I am ready makes me doubt myself.
Illia and I discuss it and he assures me that he will help me, that I will make a fine reconnaissance platoon commander. He has a friend in an infantry platoon, a tall, strapping Ukrainian known by the call sign Sportik, meaning athlete, who agrees to transfer to my platoon, for moral support.
The Ukrainian army is not diplomatic. In fact, we sometimes say it is ‘hot anarchist’. Fist fights are not unusual. Volunteer battalions like ours lack the rigid discipline of professionals who have known a lifetime of subordination. When I tell Captain Latysh that I would like the job, I know there will be challenges. The first is to break the news to my platoon. It would obviously undermine my authority if my husband went with me. Sportik volunteers to accompany me to their tent. I will say I want to introduce them to a new comrade.
One evening after mess, Sportik and I walk into the reconnaissance unit tent. Some of the soldiers are away on leave. About ten are present.
‘Come in. Have a seat, Lieutenant,’ Mongol says, gesturing towards a camp bed.
Sportik and I sit down. Mongol and two other soldiers, who go by the call signs Apostle and Fedot, sit on the bed opposite. The other men hang back, standing or sitting, but staring and listening intently.
‘I have been appointed to lead the reconnaissance platoon,’ I tell them. ‘I want your full cooperation. I realize there are some things I don’t know. I am ready to learn from you. I want to have a dialogue.’
‘You? You don’t know anything about reconnaissance!’ Apostle scoffs. He is in his mid-thirties, with black hair. He has a certain moral authority over the others because he has served in the platoon since the beginning of the war three and a half years earlier.
‘I did military research and analytics for the SBU in 2013 and 2014, when I was at university,’ I say. I instantly regret attempting to justify myself; it shows weakness. I have descended to Apostle’s level.
‘When I was at university,’ Apostle mimics me in a high, whiny voice. It was a mistake to remind them that I have higher education and they do not. ‘You? Working for the SBU? For whom? Who was your supervisor? I don’t believe it!’ Apostle continues. He spits out the words in bursts of saliva. Sportik tenses up beside me and I am afraid he and Apostle will come to blows. I see him sizing up Mongol, Apostle and Fedot, as well as those who are hanging back. Fedot is a tall, sly, redhead from Kherson who follows the mob. He’ll blow whichever way the wind blows.
‘Everything is secret at the SBU. I can’t tell you anything about it,’ I say. I too am assessing the line-up. Sportik and I would be no match for the ten of them. I want to defuse the situation without losing face.
‘I am not leaving. I will command this platoon,’ I say sternly, fixing my gaze on Apostle. ‘I could discipline you for insubordination, but I won’t. I’ll give you a day or two to think about it. If you don’t want to serve under my command, you don’t have to. If you want to transfer to other units, you may. That’s true for all of you.’
Sixteen of twenty men in my platoon move to other units, though some, including Mongol and Fedot, ask to return a few months later. In a petty show of pique, they take nearly all the unit’s equipment with them, including tools and household items. I am left with only my assault rifle, a BMP tracked fighting vehicle and the Gaz 66 truck which I travelled in from Klynove. The BMP and Gaz 66 are broken down and need serious repairs.
I am devastated, all the more so because I know everyone in the platoon and thought of them as friends and brothers-in-arms. But as soon as I crossed into their masculine territory, I became unprofessional and unworthy. Had they decided after a few weeks or months that they did not want to serve with me, I might have accepted it. But they just assumed that the role of a woman was to do paperwork. They did not even give me a chance.
It is the greatest crisis of my military career. When Illia and I discuss it, I am determined to keep my composure. I fear he will think less of me if I fall apart.
‘The bastards,’ I say. ‘Can you believe there is such blatant sexism, in a war in 2017?’
‘Forget it, Pooka. They don’t deserve to work with you. You’ll be better off finding other soldiers.’
For the first two months, I have only four men in a platoon that is supposed to number twenty; two of Illia’s friends and two drone pilots whom I’ve recruited. Drones have not yet come into wide use for reconnaissance, but I know intuitively how important they will be. I believe the shortage of manpower – starting with my own unit -- can be compensated only by technology. My platoon’s strength builds gradually, reaching a maximum of fifteen. I never forget the soldiers’ mass defection at the prospect of being commanded by me, or Illia’s support when I needed him most.
[Later, with Illia,] I cannot sleep in the Mir Hotel, thinking about recent events and our new plan. The lumpy mattresses and poking springs don’t help. Illia offers to tell me a story.
‘Odin is the leader of all the Viking gods,’ my husband begins. ‘He lives in a silver tower with his reconnaissance ravens, Hugin and Munin. They fly all over the world like drones, then return to headquarters at Valhalla. Hugin embodies thought and he sits on Odin’s left shoulder. Munin represents memory and he sits on Odin’s right shoulder. The ravens murmur what they have seen into the All-Father’s ear. For his own expeditions, Odin uses an eight-legged horse called Sleipnir as his armoured personnel carrier. His pet wolves, Geri and Freki, look like the wolf on the Georgian Legion emblem.
‘Odin sees everything, knows everything,’ Illia continues. ‘He gave one of his own eyes to Mimir, the keeper of the well called Mímisbrunnr, so that he could drink from its waters and everything hidden would be revealed to him. He hanged himself in Yggdrasil, the tree of life, for nine days and nights to enable him to visit other worlds and decipher the secret language of runes. Odin heals the sick and calms storms. He casts spells over women so they fall in love with him. He can adopt the form of any animal or person.
‘Half of all warriors who die in battle go to Valhalla, where they eat and drink mead and wine with Odin,’ Illia continues. ‘If anything should happen to me, darling Pooka, know that I am laughing and feasting and having a glorious time with Odin and the warriors.’
Illia intends his tale to be humorous, but it is serious at the same time. We are surrounded by violent death, which makes thoughts of an afterlife attractive.
I take a photograph of Illia from a crooked angle. He is lying back in bed, and you see his bare chest in the foreground. His bushy Viking beard takes up much of the frame. His eyes stare at the ceiling. The date stamp in my telephone tells me we spent our last night together on 27 January 2018.
Svitlodarsk Bulge, 22 February 2018Three weeks later, fighting flares again around Svitlodarsk. Illia’s unit is in the sector. I ask my drone pilots to reconnoitre the area and I study their footage to summarize enemy movements. I hear a report on the battalion’s radio frequency that two of our soldiers have been wounded in shelling between Svitlodarsk and Luhanske. They do not give names or call signs on the radio, but for some reason I think it might be Illia. I look at his WhatsApp to know when he last checked his phone.
‘Are you all right?’ I text my husband. He does not reply.
I contact the communications engineer. ‘Is Illia your guy?’ she asks. One of the men in my platoon is also called Illia.
‘Which Illia?’
Illia Serbin, my husband, has sustained a shrapnel wound to the chest. ‘Pray for him,’ the communications engineer tells me.
I run to the commanding officer who is stationed in a nearby building. ‘Now. I must go now. Give me a vehicle. Armoured or not. I don’t care. I must save them.’
‘Calm down, Lieutenant,’ the officer says. His voice is weary and condescending. ‘The platoon is pinned down under enemy fire. I cannot risk a vehicle and a medic until the shooting decreases. Have you forgotten that we lost a woman doctor and an ambulance near Svitlodarsk last month?’
Mila, my close friend and a medic in my company, has heard the news and rushes into the commander’s room. ‘Please, Captain. He is Yulia’s husband. Let me take a Humvee or a BTR. Let me go now.’
‘I said no. No means no,’ the commander says. He is irritated. Mila and I exchange desperate glances and leave the room.
A vehicle finally sets out, but it breaks down and a second vehicle is dispatched to replace it. The rescue takes two hours. I wait at Svitlodarsk clinic. The surgery lasts many hours, until 10 p.m. or midnight. Time is dislocated. My brain is on fire. Illia greets me in Tamara’s apartment. Illia waves goodbye at Kyiv train station, seals our engagement with my grandmother’s ring, makes love to me in our honeymoon cabin, teaches me how to shoot…. He cannot die. He must not die. Please, God, don’t let him die.
The head doctor walks into the waiting room. She looks at me and I know that my husband is dead. I know it and I do not know it. I sit down and try to reason. There were two wounded soldiers. The doctor has made a mistake. It was the other soldier who died. There is still a live soldier on the operating table. That must be Illia. He must survive.
I ask to see Illia before he is taken to the morgue. I peel back the black plastic bag. His eyes are closed. There is a gash across his chin and a tracheostomy tube stuck in the top of his chest. I am shocked to see my strong, athletic husband naked and helpless. He was a rock for me, a waterfall that surrounded me with waves of love and understanding. I slip the wedding ring from his finger and hug him. An orderly stands a few feet away, apparently indifferent to my sobbing. When I have finished, the orderly pulls the black bag over Illia’s head and pushes the hospital gurney down the corridor.
Three years earlier, an invisible thread tugged at my heart when Illia Serbin boarded the train in Kyiv. Now I imagine my own chest blown open, a mirror of my husband’s wound. My heart is wrenched from its cavity and thrown into the black bag beside Illia’s heart. My life rolls away on a clanking trolley.
Two days later, a coffin is delivered to [my mother] Tamara’s apartment near Kyiv. The mortician has sewn up Illia’s wound and dressed him in his uniform. His face looks peaceful. He even has a slight smile. But the image of him wounded and helpless on the hospital trolley will stay with me for ever.
I should have disobeyed orders, hijacked a vehicle, gone to save him. I did nothing. He would have come to me on the battlefield. He would have saved me. It is my fault he died.
The funeral in Kyiv is packed with soldiers in uniform, many of them from the Georgian Legion. Illia’s parents did not even know where he was serving, but somehow the army has notified them, and they attend the funeral. I have seen them only once before. Illia was so uncomfortable that he cut short our visit. His father insists on making a stupid speech about this being a political war. His father and mother demand two-thirds of Illia’s death benefits, which they receive, contrary to his wishes.
Illia’s comrades order a bronze plaque to mark the place where he was fatally wounded. I am touched that they care so much about him, but I fear the Russians may seize the territory and I cannot bear the thought of them vandalizing the plaque or urinating on it. In 2020 I ask the comrades to send the plaque to me. I place it under the walnut tree in Baba Lyuba’s garden, the tree that was planted on the day I was born, where Illia and I decided to join the army together. The Russians seize Svitlodarsk in the spring of 2022 and still occupy it.
I have Illia cremated and take his ashes to Mariupol, where he had been happy during his first tour of duty in the army. His best friend Javier, the medic-who-kills-cats, meets me at the station. We scatter his ashes on grey rocks at the seashore near Shyrokyne, where Illia once served.
The Harry Potter novels are the books that most marked my childhood and the childhood of many in my generation. Since Illia died, I think often of the scene where Dumbledore, the headmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, discovers Professor Snape’s secret love for Harry’s long dead mother, Lily.
In Harry Potter, when you love someone, you share their Patronus, a unique animal aura that protects you. As Dumbledore and Snape argue over Harry’s future, a luminescent silver doe races through the room and walls and Dumbledore says incredulously, ‘Lily -- after all this time?’
‘Always,’ Snape replies.
Lily married someone else, Harry Potter’s father. Seventeen years have passed since her death. Snape discreetly protected Harry because he still loved his mother. ‘Always’ is a key word in
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and it has become the key word in my life. When you truly love someone, you love them always.
Illia Serbin was the kindest, most intelligent and dignified person I have ever known. He taught me what a real relationship between a man and a woman can be, as equal partners. He showed me what it means to be a true warrior.
At night I pray that he will return to me in [a] dream, but he does not. I console myself with the thought that he is eating, drinking and laughing with Odin in Valhalla.
Copyright © 2025 by Lara, Marlowe. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
