By Stephen Byrne, Wednesday, 18 October 2023
Day 1 – Thursday – Departure
The excitement and anxieties have been building for weeks. Amongst the eight of us was a common desire to make a positive contribution to Ukraine and show solidarity with the Ukrainian people who are defending the right to their independence and freedom while standing up to Russia on behalf of Europe. We are uncertain as to how the week will unfold or how we will be received. We’re about to find out.
We are off to a good start. We reached our fundraising goals, a combination of private and corporate donations. This generosity enabled us to acquire 3 jeeps. The jeeps were loaded with over €50,000 of donated medical supplies which were specific to the local need; dressings, bandages and drugs to keep injured soldiers alive and wheelchairs, crutches and walkers to help their rehabilitation. The jeeps will be primarily used to ferry injured soldiers and civilians from the frontline. The travelling team are all delighted we will help save lives and contribute to the rehabilitation of mostly young men.
The Greystones team were given an incredible send off and blessing from Rev David Mungavin, Canon at St Patricks Church in Greystones. Also, from the St Patricks school 6th Class. Out little convoy of 3 jeeps, proudly flying Irish and Ukrainian flags travelled on to Old Belvedere Rugby Club to meet up with our Dublin friends and a sendoff from Shannon Energy, our lead sponsor.
That night we stayed in a local hotel near the port of Larne, Northern Ireland.
Day 2 – Friday – Onwards to Hull in the UK
It was an early 6.00 am start to catch the 8 am ferry to Cairnryan in Scotland, a 2-hour trip. Around 10.30 we set off on the 6+ hour drive from the west to the east of the UK.
At 5 pm, in the grounds of the rugby league team, Hull Kingston Rovers, we met up with the Jeeps for Peace team. Jeeps for Peace is a UK humanitarian organization founded by an incredibly committed Scotsman Stewart Ford. This is the 6thconvoy to date. Stewart and his team have delivered over 150 Jeeps to Ukraine including boats, ambulances, and quad bikes and an additional €1 million in medical supplies and aid. They are responsible for organising the trip itinerary and managing all the details. And they did an extraordinary job, incredible organization. Check out their Facebook page here
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3317913371858628/
The bonding of the now 60 plus team began that late afternoon and got tighter through the following days. There was an incredible positive feeling as the 28 jeeps moved off in convoy. Everyone was there because of an individual desire and belief that we could contribute, do something good.
The overnight ferry to Rotterdam was a great opportunity for everyone to get to know each other.
Day 3 – Saturday – To Leipzig
A long day driving through the Netherlands and Germany. It was nice to get so many people honking their support as we travelled east.
That Saturday evening the Ireland V Scotland Rugby match was the highlight. The green of the Irish eight were greatly outnumbered by our Scottish friends in blue. German TV let us down and the first half of the match wasn’t shown, which was a disappointment to all. At the end of the match the Scots were good losers and wished us well, proper sports fans.
Day 4 – Sunday – Auschwitz Birkenau
A long emotional day. The Irish contingent have decided to visit the Auschwitz Birkenau extermination camps near Krakow, so it was another early start. Over the last few days, a couple of us have been listening to an audio book Last Stop Auschwitz by holocaust survivor Eddy de Wind. It’s a tough read/listen though breaks up the monotony of the long hours in the jeep.
Nothing can prepare you for the death camp experience. Before we went, we were told that if everybody on the planet visited Auschwitz Birkenau there would never be another war. I now believe this to be true.
The enormous size and design of the camps, over 500 acres, provides proof that mass murder and ethnic cleansing was planned over many years and involved many thousands of people, a cabal of evil not just Hitler; architects, engineers, doctors, scientists…….you can only imagine their conversations, of how to overcome the technical challenges and build a solution to exterminate over 6 million people. It’s really hard to grasp this.
The length of the train tracks bringing innocent people to die gave us a sense of the scale of the daily extermination. You can feel the fear and panic as the arrivals are met by ferocious dogs and heavily armed soldiers. You can only imagine the desperation, the torture they are enduring, the separation of families, their overwhelming panic in those last few minutes of precious life.
Over 4,000 of the weakest daily arrivals, including older men and women and young children were brought directly for execution. In their last moments, in a living hell, they were stripped, their remaining precious possessions confiscated and then immediately gassed to death. Afterwards their bodies were burnt in enormous crematoriums.
In Auschwitz Birkenau over 1.1 million people were tortured and murdered, mostly Jewish people though also Poles, the mentally challenged, gypsies and homosexuals. Anyone not considered an Aryan.
Auschwitz Birkenau is the saddest of reminders of the consequences of war. We did not hear any birds singing there, the overwhelming sense of evil still prevails today.
And tomorrow we will be in Ukraine with a personal window to the horrors of yet another war, a war started by yet another sadistic, narcissist, megalomaniac dictator. History repeated. It always does.
Onwards to Krakow
You could not leave Auschwitz Birkenau without some inner emotional turmoil, scarred, though with a better understanding of a horror inflicted on ordinary innocent people by a powerful, tyrannical leadership. No point fudging this point, it has to be said. It’s the sad reality we are facing today with 32 wars currently ongoing, all because of men’s greed, lust, ego, to acquire more land, wealth, and power. Very often using religious, right wing or other nationalist extremism to justify their insatiable gluttony at the expense of the huge majority of people who only crave peace, a safe place for their families.
The 1-hour trip from the camps to Krakow was a quiet one, the only cheer the honking support of passing trucks and cars.
Most of the talk that Sunday night was the about what we had witnessed in Auschwitz Birkenau, the unfolding Israeli Palestinian tragedy and the Ukraine war that we would expose ourselves to the following day.
Day 5 – Monday – Over the border to Lviv, Ukraine
I think we were all a bit nervous about the day ahead, crossing the border, leaving the EU. The headline news of the previous day atrocities committed by Hamas against ordinary, innocent Israelis is on our minds. Another war is imminent. Are we in the middle of a proxy world war? What next for the innocents in Gaza, and their lifelong suffering?
The Polish Ukraine border is only a couple of hours from Krakow. We rendezvous a few miles back and then travel in a convoy towards it. The Jeeps for Peace team led by Stewart and Vasyl our Ukrainian guide have managed to get us special clearance though even with this is takes between 3 and 4 hours and lots of paperwork to get through the bureaucracy. Other vehicles will spend days waiting to secure clearance.
We again rendezvous a couple of miles inside Ukraine and travel to our hotel. For sure the quality of the roads and infrastructure inside Ukraine are not quite to European standards though are decent enough. Lviv is a beautiful City. There is very little sign of war. We were warned that if the sirens sounded, we could move down to the relative safety of the basement. There was no alarm that night.
Over sandwiches and drinks we met with a team of soldiers fighting on the frontline, though on a break for a couple of days. One of these young men was Adam from Scotland. Adam left his family, friends, business, and home to fight in solidarity with the people of Ukraine. He goes into battle wearing his kilt.
Talking with Adam you can only wonder of how someone could be so brave, make so many sacrifices and risk his life to promote his core beliefs, and defend another country many miles from his home. A very poignant scene was Adam with his father Brian who was travelling with the Jeeps for Peace convoy from his home. Brian wore his pride all over his face and in the words he spoke. His son was heading back to the frontline for a five week stretch. He was bringing a jeep with him and the medical supplies. He was a very nervous though proud father.
A few of us chatting later all have the same opinion of this incredibly brave young man. This is real leadership, proper leadership sadly missing where it is needed most, amongst the political elite. A quote that haunts me comes to mind.
Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die. War: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other.
Day 6 – The Graveyard and then Kolomaya
Ukraine, Israel and Palestine. War feels so close now. And young men like Adam risking their lives because they feel they have to.
Our first stop is a graveyard in Lviv one of numerous we have passed since crossing the border. From a distance the flags and flowers look so colourful. Now up close we can read the names of the young soldiers, their date of birth, the date they were killed, their photograph, many smiling, happy in a previous time, before the war. We all walked alone, trying with difficulty to comprehend it all. Here and there was a mother, a wife, visiting a son, a husband. A young mother tidied up the flowers on the grave of her recently dead son, just 18. Beside her a newly dug grave waited the arrival of another brave boy.
The quiet, our private thoughts were broken by a lone piper walking slowly through the graves. That sorrow, the connection of the haunting bagpipes smashed into our emotional vulnerability and so many of us were overcome, tears flowing freely.
Out Scottish friends tell us the graves have doubled since they were last here in July. That’s over 500 new casualties, in this one graveyard, in just the last couple of months.
We move on, we have a 3 plus hour drive to Kolomaya, travelling deeper into Ukraine. We drive to a designated meeting point, and this is where we leave our jeeps and medical supplies. It feels like our journey has come to an end. It’s a bit sad, leaving our jeeps there, our loyal companions for the last week.
Vasyl, our amazing and incredible Ukrainian host has organized a bus for the last part of the journey. We stop off at a local secondary school where we are given an amazing welcome. As the 60 of us enter the school hall we are met with young girls on stage singing the John Lennon song All we are saying is give peace a chance. Wow.
What followed was a wonderful interaction with the schoolchildren and the ordinary people of Ukraine who were so appreciative of our small contribution. I think us showing solidarity with them is so important, that they are not alone in their fight. We donated a guitar to the school, a symbolic gesture, our What About Us belief that music can connect communities at war or in conflict, help heal.
On the streets there are very few young men. The 17-year-old boys we met at the school, smiling, cheery, flirting with the girls is in such contrast to what they will face on their next 18th birthday, conscription, then kill or be killed. What sort of a choice is that for a boy.
That evening Stewart and Vasyl organized an amazing farewell dinner for all of the travelling team, plus local soldiers and family and friends. Each of us that made the journey was presented with an appreciation of our contribution. That meant a lot to everybody.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Day 7 – The homeward trip
This was a long day, another 6.30 am start. I think everyone was physically and emotionally exhausted, starting to process all we had witnessed. “I just can’t stop thinking about it” was a regular expression, our thoughts engulfed with so many scenes, so many experiences.
A bus took us to the border. This time we walked over, it only took an hour, no vehicle administration to slow us down. A bus on the far side took us to Krakow airport where, too quick, goodbyes were exchanged, a bunch of our Scottish friends staying on the bus, staying in Krakow for the night. We will meet again.
The eight of us arrived back in Dublin Airport around 1 am. Beyond exhausted, though exhilarated too. We had achieved something, hopefully made a small, meaningful contribution.
As Stewart told us at the beginning, “the journey will change your life, give you friendships that will be with you forever”. He’s not wrong.
- A big thank you to the travelling team of Micko, Cruiser, Daragh, Sammy, Paul, Noel, Colm and Frank who all contributed with an incredible amount of their time, money, and energy to ensure the success of the trip.
- To Finola who organized all of the medical supplies and to St. Vincents Private hospital, VHI Swiftcare, Ray Power / Centric Health, Mary Ryan / The Rise Pharmacy, Suzanne Moloney / Hidra medical solutions and the Mount Anville past pupils’ union.
- To Stewart, Zerina, Vasyl and the Jeeps For Peace team for their incredible ongoing commitment to helping the people (and animals) of Ukraine.
- To all our fellow travellers and the Scots team, who made us feel so welcome and who inspired us.
- To all the people, our family and friends who donated so generously.
- To the people of Ukraine who are standing up to Russia, to Putin, for their own freedom and for the freedom of Europe too. Their sacrifices are humbling, the lives of their fallen sons’ a price too high.
- And to our sponsors for making this happen:
