The Frontlines in Ukraine: A Perspective from US Veterans

Drew Peterson, a U.S. Air Force veteran of the war in Afghanistan, at
the Ukrainian fort in Marinka. (Photo: Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal)

By Nolan Perterson 

MARINKA, Ukraine—In the night I wake with a start to the sounds of artillery and gunfire. The shelling is loud enough and close enough to shake the walls.

A stir from the body lying next to me. I look over at my brother, Drew, sleeping there. Both of us cocooned in our sleeping bags.

Above our bunk, Kalashnikovs, body armor, and grenades hang from the walls beside Ukrainian flags. On the table next to us, letters from the families of Ukrainian soldiers alongside bullets and grenades.

Ukrainian soldiers sleep in the room too, but I’m only aware of my brother’s breathing.

There’s a smell of burning wood and dust. A furnace heats this small room. We’re on the top floor of an abandoned building the Ukrainian army’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade has made into a fort in the embattled front-line town of Marinka.

The shelling rumbles through the brick and concrete walls. A sound of dust spilling like a waterfall while the windows creak from the cold winter wind outside.

I think back to when Drew and I were boys. I imagine these are the sounds of a Florida thunderstorm, and my brother and I—now 30 and 34, respectively—are sleeping in a fort constructed of pillows.

Then the hard metal snarl of a machine gun nearby. Reality. 

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Source: The Daily Signal