The young Ukrainian doctor was driving me from a medical training centre to the hotel. We were in a southern region of Ukraine. He had been to the front line as a tactical medical trainer and combat medic and was due to go back again soon.
Before the war, he was a civilian doctor. Up to now, he had never mentioned his direct experience of combat to me (nor had I ever asked him), preferring to discuss our training course content – and Ukrainian and Russian literature.
On this occasion, however, the conversation took a different turn when I asked him how close he had been to the Russians on the front line.
“Less than 20 metres away”, he replied. “Close enough to hear their voices. I have also seen many dead Russian soldiers.”
Fluent in English, he chose his words carefully as though he was avoiding the word “kill”. His mood was sombre.
We were stopped at the traffic lights. After a long pause, he added: “I am not proud to say that I have also had to take human life.”
“The tragedy of war,” I replied – for the want of a more appropriate platitude.
“Yes, indeed”, he said.
After a longer pause, he explained how he had also looked after a Russian prisoner of war.
Later that night, I wrote the conversation down in my notebook. Even without reading back over them, the words have continued to haunt me. I did not expect him to say what he said. The proximity to the enemy was shocking to me, and his admission that he had been responsible for the taking of human life even more so.
Before our conversation, I had avoided (deliberately or subconsciously) considering the dual reality of being a combat medic.
How could a doctor who cares for one person turn around and kill another?
The naivety of my question astounded me. No one had ever tried to kill me or any of my patients when I was trying to treat them.
I had once publicly criticised the actions of Kevin Barry who, as a young UCD medical student, had taken part in a fatal ambush on British forces in Dublin in 1920 – for which he was hanged.
Even in these circumstances, perhaps, my judgment of Barry had been overly harsh. War is bloody – not black and white.
So, what would I do if my country were attacked? And what would I do if I were 20 metres away from an enemy trying to eliminate me, my patients, my comrades, my family? Would I turn the other cheek? Stick to being a pacifist? Run? Hide? Surrender? Call for help? Fight?
What if there were a drone carrying a grenade above my head and I knew the location of the drone-operator? What if I knew the location of a long-range missile launcher that was firing on my city? What if, as an EU citizen, an enemy was attacking the citizens of another EU country? And what if the enemy is attacking citizens who are not in the EU – but who are asking the EU to help them?
And although I would prefer to negotiate and increase sanctions and send humanitarian supplies and non-lethal military aid such as minesweepers and air-defence systems, are these going to stop the tank commander hell-bent on destroying the village, or the general who ordered him to do it, or the tyrannical president who ordered him?
Are we happy to let a coalition of the willing protect Europe while we keep our heads down and our fingers crossed, praying that we will be forgotten about because we live on a small island and are neutral and can’t even defend ourselves, never mind others?
And are we just going to ignore the enemy’s drones and the fighter jets in EU airspace and the ships and submarines lurking off our coast and the cyberattacks and the people who warn us that this is how a world war starts?
The taking of human life is a brutal fact of war. In an ideal world there would be no need for war or for coalitions of the willing – but we live in a broken world in which difficult moral decisions need to be taken to protect our freedom.
The responsibility for such decisions clearly weighed heavily on this courageous young Ukrainian doctor’s shoulders.
As he left for the front line with his medical kit, I gave him Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy. It was the very least I could do.
Professor Chris Fitzpatrick is a member of the UCD Trauma Project. These are his personal views.
