There are two main sorts of flak jacket that you can buy: a very expensive one with metal inserts, and a rather less expensive one without. The second is lighter and more comfortable to wear, but much less good at stopping shrapnel. However, something may be better than nothing. Together with a helmet (steel or resin, with the same set of advantages and disadvantages), they represent the common-sense options for anyone venturing into the war zone.
I thought about this carefully and decided that this equipment would make you look like a soldier, and therefore might attract the wrong sort of attention – in other words, attract fire. How about I dress like a minister or priest, and therefore avert that problem so far as possible? Therefore, I dug out my old black cassock. I thought this would be more conspicuous in a particular way, and therefore less likely to trigger a knee-jerk reaction.
In the end, though, things turned out to be different from my expectations in two regards. First, we were not subject to small-arms fire at all. The only brush we had with the Russian military was shellfire, which whizzed overhead and exploded not so far off. Had it come closer, the flak jacket and helmet would have been comforting.
The second point is that the cassock had a symbolic importance for the communities which we were visiting, and even for the team. I say this with the greatest humility. It indicated the close involvement of the church, and evoked deep-seated beliefs concerning the reliability of God’s care and support, such as we find in these words[1]:
Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms;
Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.
I had not thought of our mission as one of protection, more of essential material support and of a sort of solidarity with those who are suffering. This was our mission, religious in motivation. The attitudes I encountered in relation to comfort and God’s protection extended this considerably, because I had failed to take into account fully the strong spirituality that can govern the lives of people who encounter suffering each day and endure it. The people we visited in these benighted places felt the link, and our arrival for them was an emotional event that brought tears to some eyes. My companions, very motivated evangelicals, also emotional at the encounter, felt a strong sense of God’s protection. Adi told me this was his eighty-fifth mission into Ukraine; he is enabled to do his work by confidence in his own safety despite the conditions, and, he said, “you have to live in miracles”.
Most of us, even as churchgoers, find it hard to credit such beliefs, and are inclined to put the production of good solutions out of troubles and difficulties down to nifty management and good luck. Yet, if you are inclined to follow this line, you would have to agree that extraordinary amounts of good luck are involved, at every level. I could give you a list, but let me just recount one instance.
Our main mission was to the industrial city of Kostyantynivka, in Donetsk Oblast, or county. It had 67 000 inhabitants at the time the war started; on 26 August mandatory evacuation was declared; by 7 September the population was about 25 000. There had been some major bombing, including the central railway station and a missile attack on a supermarket. More recently, a targeted attack on trucks from the French Red Cross killed all five people on board.
We arrived at the military checkpoint, to be told that the front line had moved closer, and the city was under bombardment every day. It was therefore closed, and a special military pass was required to enter. This was a new thing this week, not required on the team’s previous visit. We therefore had no such pass, and were probably not eligible for it anyway. We were facing the need to abandon our plan and te groups that were expecting us, and simply do the best we could in other places near (or not quite so near) the front line. The young soldier we were talking to said, by way of consolation, that he could explain to us how to get to another road that has no checkpoint. We talked about using that road, but Adi thought it a bad idea to enter the city without permission if there was any possibility of us getting it. In any case, once inside the city we were quite likely to be stopped by a patrol, and there would be trouble if it turned out we had been evasive.
We therefore asked the soldier to go into his bunker and ring up his officer, and ask permission. He returned ten minutes later, confirming that we were approved to proceed. This was completely against the odds, and there was a chorus of ‘halleluiah”. The soldiers joined in.
The city was quiet. We got to our distribution point which was a small church community based in what had once been a medical school campus. It had become a billet for Ukrainian soldiers, and the Russians, who are well informed, hit it with a rocket attack one night in the early hours. Several buildings were badly damaged, but the one used by the church was not hit. It is an old stone building constructed of rubble. Any hit would cause a disastrous collapse, so the church community had put up a tent outside as a worship space, on the spot where a rocket had come down but not gone off. All of this is perceived as full of symbolic meaning.
[1] Based on Deuteronomy 33:27. The song ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms’ is by Showalter and Hoffman, 1887
Through an interpreter, I told the people how they were not forgotten, how we think of them and pray for them, far-distant as we are. The appreciation evident was such that I resolved to try and set up direct links between the besieged churches of Ukraine and our churches in Britain.
After the food parcels had been distributed, they gave us lunch, then they wanted to show us their recent catalogue of war, rocket fragments and damaged buildings. We were just completing the tour when a couple of shells whistled overhead and exploded a few hundred yards off. We thought it time to leave. The window of opportunity, that protected space, was closing. We left thinking of the frail group left behind who had no option to leave, but did what they could: waited for a better time, and hoped and prayed for the best.
© James Mather, 2024
Thank you James. I will pray for the community. I feel that you were there on behalf of us all