Congressman Steve Cohen with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week (Photo: Courtesy Steve Cohen)
We hear a lot these days about “bullet trains,” which whisk commuters from place to place with incredible speed. The train which took Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen last week from U.S. ally Poland into Kyiv, the capital of wartime Ukraine, took all of 10 hours. But the ride was surely worth it.
It was Cohen’s privilege, as ranking member of the congressional Helsinki Commission, to ride that slow train (hampered by security precautions) into harm’s way so as to present the gallant Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with the formal support of the commission for himself and his beleaguered nation.
The Helsinki Commission is an official government body created in 1975 to support compliance with that year’s Helsinki Accords, a nonbinding agreement pledging the nations of Europe and the Americas to the pursuit of peace and detente.
Accompanied by fellow House members Joe Wilson of South Carolina and Victoria Spartz of Indiana, Cohen was ushered into the president’s office as an air raid siren blared, reminding the visitors of the potential dangers involved.
The American delegation spent an hour with Zelenskyy, who, says Cohen, was the affable and resolute figure the world has grown familiar with during Ukraine’s courageous stand against the nonstop attacks of the Russian invader.
According to Cohen, Kyiv itself, relatively unscarred, remains determined to persevere and comports itself like any other busy metropolis. He described seeing workers rebuilding a bridge that was demolished during the war’s early phase to prevent Russian access into the city.
The American group also visited suburban areas — notably Bucha, the site of widespread massacres and other atrocities by occupying Russian troops, who were later forced to withdraw. Aside from that, says Cohen, “Bucha is actually an upscale sort of place, kind of like Germantown,” but one marked by numerous mass graves.
How would the congressman rank his Ukrainian experience? “Inspiring, and right up there with anything I’ve ever done.”
• However the tangled matter of mayoral residency requirements gets resolved, and it likely will get sorted out on a May 18th hearing in the courtroom of Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins, former Mayor Willie Herenton remains unworried, insisting that, as a new online broadside of his puts it, “My residence has never changed.”
He cites an official definition by Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett of a residence as a “place where the person’s habitation is fixed and is where, during periods of absence, the person definitely intends to return.”
In Herenton’s case, that means a house on Barton Street, near LeMoyne-Owen College, an ancestral place of sorts where Herenton’s mother lived, as did the former mayor, despite his subsequent acquisition of other dwellings, including one in Collierville which he later sold.
Herenton contends that would distinguish him from two other mayoral candidates, Sheriff Floyd Bonner and NAACP president Van Turner, both of whom lived just outside Memphis before acquiring dwelling places in the city during the past year.
The issue to be determined by Jenkins is whether, as a vintage city charter maintained, a five-year prior residency is mandated for mayoral candidates or was made moot by a 1996 referendum of Memphis voters that imposed no such pre-election requirement.
Ukrainian squad trained by Tim Scalita on combat life-saving techniques and battlefield tactics.
Scalita is wearing sunglasses next to the soldier sitting on the vehicle. (Photo: Courtesy Tim Scalita)
Two weeks ago in Lviv, Ukraine, Tim Scalita stepped out of his hotel, propped up his phone for a FaceTime call, and fired up a cigarette.
“It’s a nice town,” he says. “The Russians have been blowing it up a little bit the past couple of days, but nothing too terrible, mainly just aiming for power stations.”
He’d been in Ukraine for just under two weeks, ready to pitch in as a combat medic. Scalita has the experience. He did it in the U.S. Navy, including working with the Marines in Afghanistan a few years ago.
He’s a Memphian who is a writer and indie filmmaker. Now he’s been in Ukraine about a month and is near the town of Dnipro with a mostly Canadian tactical medical evacuation team. “We have trained two Battalions on combat life-saving techniques as well as battlefield tactics,” he said early this week. “We are basically training the front to fight and care for the injured soldiers until we can arrive and extract the wounded and transport them to the hospital.”
In the four weeks he’s been in Ukraine, there have been some false starts, a few surprises, and plenty of rigorous training. He’s gotten to know his team and he’s observed a country that sometimes seems perfectly normal until the air-raid sirens split the air. He’s been ready to get at it, although the worn-out (but accurate) phrase “hurry up and wait” has been fully realized. Until he finally got to Dnipro with his team, it was all about the logistics, sometimes hit or miss. Early in March, he posted his intentions.
Tim Scalita (Photo: Samuel Sutherland)
The Journey March 9th Facebook entry: My military friends. How do I get to the Ukraine?
It was on that date that a Russian air strike hit a maternity hospital in the port city of Mariupol. “Children are under the wreckage,” raged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “This is an atrocity!” Scalita also felt the rage then, as well as days later when Russian forces bombed a theater/shelter in the same city, killing about 300 people. News reports say the Russians are making at least two attacks a day on the country’s healthcare infrastructure.
“The moment they started blowing up civilian targets,” he says, “I was like, you know what? I have skills. I was a corpsman with the Marines in Afghanistan and I was very good at my job. And I don’t have a family. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be doing this.”
He didn’t dawdle.
March 20th Facebook entry: I’m making it official. As soon as my passport comes in (which will be a few weeks) I’m leaving for the Ukraine. They are in desperate need of experienced field medics and I refuse to do nothing while the innocent are being slaughtered.
Scalita didn’t want to wait around for the passport to come through, so he contacted U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) to see if the process could be expedited.
March 30th Facebook entry: Passport came in. Thank you Congressman Cohen for pushing it through.
But there was still more to be done, not the least of which was acquiring funding to deal with travel and equipment. And he is planning for an indeterminate stay in hostile territory.
April 3rd Facebook entry: Central BBQ is buying my plane ticket to Poland!
Scalita has been working at the catering kitchen at Central BBQ. The restaurant’s Elizabeth and Craig Blondis stepped up to effectively be his sponsor, providing the ticket and some money for gear — medical supplies, flak jacket, helmet, safety equipment — and other expenses.
It was coming together.
April 15th Facebook entry: Alright guys. Hard going away party at Hi Tone lower bar starting 8ish. Honestly last chance for most of you to see me before I’m off to save the world.
April 21st Facebook entry: And I’m off! See you when I see you.
Now, in the first week of May, Scalita says, “I’m feeling pretty good. My goal was to get here, join the Legion and be a combat medic.”
The International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine was founded on February 27th, three days after the Russian invasion. News reports say that up to 20,000 volunteers from around the world have signed up.
Scalita followed the instructions on the organization’s website but it didn’t take long to encounter bumps in the road. The first one was immediately after he landed in Poland where he was to be met by Legion representatives.
April 22nd Facebook entry: Hitch hiking into Ukraine like a boss. The Legion apparently no longer picks up in Poland. I have to enter the country on my own. They need to update the website.
From there, things didn’t improve much.
April 25th Facebook entry: Not going to lie. Conditions in the Legion camps are pretty terrible. Apparently the one I’m in is the Hilton compared to the others and it should be criminal. Things like drinking water we have to buy ourselves.
From left: Speedy (French Canadian), Harry Bennett (U.S.), Zach England (Canadian), Samuel Sutherland (Canadian), Chase Webb, Sean Malone (U.S.), Tim Scalita (U.S.) (Photo: Samuel Sutherland)
Plan B Scalita finally got to meet with Legion officials and told them he was there to work as a medic.
“They said, ‘Ah, a combat medic — that’s great. So, you want to join a special ops team and go behind enemy lines and kill Russians in their sleep?’ And I’m like, no — gotta save lives when stuff’s blowing up. That’s my thing. And they’re like, ‘Cool, cool, cool. So you want to go behind enemy lines and kill Russians in their sleep?’”
Scalita assured them that he was not interested in commando infiltrations. He’d already trained with them doing interminable fire team drills in the swamps, but he could see they didn’t put a priority on what he was offering. “I’m sure once I’m on the front line, I may not have a choice in certain situations, where I have to pull a trigger on somebody. But I didn’t come to fight another man’s war. I came to make sure everyone gets home okay.”
Disappointed, he ditched the Legion, gathered up his gear, and went looking for a Plan B.
On a FaceTime call two weeks ago, he said, “At the moment, I’m waiting. Tomorrow there’s a paramedic team coming in from Canada that I’m going to join. We’ll be taking casualties from the front line and then rushing them to aid stations and hospitals.”
Scalita is hoping the arrangement will work out, but everything is fluid. “There’s a lot of uncertainty, especially with a lot of these paramedic groups,” he says. “They come in and they’re like, oh, we’re only here for a month. And I’m like, I plan on staying here at least till Christmas. I want to go to London for Christmas and then go home.”
Tim Scalita filming one of his video projects in 2021 (Photo: Courtesy Tim Scalita)
On the Ground Meanwhile, he’s been gathering impressions and memories as he hurries up and waits for his opportunity to get into the field. Over the last several days, Scalita has been sending his impressions and observations.
For one thing, the language barrier, he says, has been intimidating. “People do speak a decent amount of English here, so I’m not completely lost, but it’s still just strange. It’s like I’d rather take on a legion of Russian soldiers than go to the grocery store, because all I can do is point and hand cash.”
And yet Scalita was surprised at how un-foreign things often seem. “It looks like everywhere,” he said. “I was expecting to land in Poland and it just be like this alien landscape. But it all looks like Pennsylvania. Driving through Poland and coming into Ukraine and it looks exactly like everywhere I’ve ever been.”
When Scalita’s team finally came to Lviv, it looked like his Plan B was going to happen. “We met up at the Dream Hostel in Lviv,” he said. “Let me tell you, it was nice to have some guys to hang out with. I met with the whole team at an outdoor cellphone kiosk a block or so from the hostel. The streets were teeming with, honestly, the most beautiful people I’d ever seen. I don’t think myself a super attractive person, but I never felt more butt-ugly.”
The team leader is a Canadian named Zach England. “He was happy to have a corpsman on his team and I was glad to have the gig,” Scalita said. “The gig: hard/high-risk extraction of casualties from active engagements on the front. I will be one of two medics to receive the casualties. We will have a driver and two to four shooters depending on the vehicle. We race in, receive, and run like hell to the nearest field hospital.”
Soon, the team would be on a train to Dnipro. “The bonding was good and honestly important, because a situation arose that needed to be addressed, and this next part is important,” Scalita said. “Especially for people who are thinking of coming over here.”
One of the team members was Farva, a nickname in reference to the movie Super Troopers. “He was showing disturbing signs of not having the mental stability needed for the task ahead,” Scalita said. “This began to be recognized by others days before it became very obvious the more he drank. It came to a decision that he would be reassigned when we arrived to Dnipro. He was obviously upset, so as a stranger to the situation and as a ‘doc,’ I sat him down one-on-one and explained that a team must feel safe with their teammates and trust that their teammates are there for the team. Our concern is that he was looking for a blaze of glory in which to leave this world. We refuse to facilitate that. To be successful, we must be professional. Being he was a former Marine, he trusted me enough to listen and understood. He is now with a humanitarian aid group, and I hope he finds peace in it.
“I only go into great detail on that story because I’ve read accounts, and since I’ve been in Ukraine I’ve encountered twice now, those who come here with ill intentions. They either want to just kill people out of blood thirst or see it as a good opportunity to take their own life and be remembered a hero and not the person they see themselves as.”
“My Heart Goes Out for the Lost” Meanwhile at the train station, Scalita noted that there are many tents and services for refugees coming from the east. “And a lot of volunteers which we were thankful for. A couple of good people brought us up to the military lounge where we were well fed and allowed to store our gear while we waited for the train. They also helped with our tickets. They fed us a feast of spaghetti with meatballs and pickled radishes. The mixture didn’t work. It was interesting. They also brought fresh bread, apples, potatoes, and individually wrapped sandwiches to take with us on the train. We were all very thankful.”
As they were waiting, Scalita got his first call for “doc.” “At first I thought I was being summoned to come out for a smoke and chat, but once I was outside I saw that on the platform two tracks over was a man holding another man having a seizure. We rushed across the tracks. The convulsions had stopped by the time I got to him. The man holding him, I would come to learn, was his brother who was trying to protect his head, which is really all you can do at that point. I checked his vitals and then asked about the medics. It was obvious from his disheveled state that the man didn’t have any meds with him. They took me to the doctor who was at the aid station where I learned the man had been there for days and had had many seizures but refused treatment, and that pretty much tied my hands as well. I left my guys with him in case they needed an extra hand with him. He was coming around and after a few minutes was able to continue on his own. We then just returned to the lounge.”
The team finally boarded the train and headed out. “It was nice,” Scalita said. “It was my first time on a cross-country train ride. We were able to secure spaces together on the sleeping car. But when it came time to sleep, I remembered why I love living alone. People snore, and did they. The volume was unrealistic and I seemed to be the only one who couldn’t sleep through it. Utterly maddening. I got a couple hours after everyone started to wake up, but it wasn’t long before we arrived in Dnipro. Once off the train, we set up in the parking lot and waited for our ride. There was a similar relief setup at the train station, but we found ourselves being approached by people that aggressively pleaded for money. We tried our best to lead them to the tents but they weren’t interested. That’s when we noticed people giving these poor people food and supplies and they would hide what they received and just continue to beg for money. I thought back to the man at the train station. Then I thought back to the homeless in Memphis and realized that you can’t help everyone no matter how much you wish you could. I was reminded that it’s a hard world even without this terrible war. My heart goes out for the lost.”
In Dnipro Finally, the team got transport to a hospital and Scalita noticed the differences between Lviv, an old and beautiful city, and Dnipro. “It has a nice downtown but is a poorer area. The people are just as nice and were very welcoming to us as volunteers coming to help against Russian aggression. They tell of the horrors committed to them and their loved ones by the Russian soldiers. The stories of the rape of women and children are true and terrible. The stories of murdering civilians are true. It’s in their eyes.”
Such a situation is also a call for introspection.
“I read that there are a lot of American vets over here because we all feel like we need a little redemption from Iraq and Afghanistan,” Scalita said. “I mean Iraq, which is now widely accepted was a horrible and illegal war, was basically what Russia is doing to Ukraine. We did to Iraq, and the irony is not lost on anybody here. And the way that Afghanistan ended, which was the only way it was going to end. When I was there in 2012, they were just like, oh, what’s gonna happen when America leaves? And we’re like, ‘You’re toast. They’re waiting in Northern Pakistan.’ It was inevitable. A lot of us are looking for a little bit of redemption. We don’t exactly feel like the good guys, so we would very much like to be the good guys now, you know?”
And that has become just another part of Scalita’s motivation. “Our spirits are good although we are tired. We are a good group and have more that will be joining our team as the conflict continues. Let’s hope it ends soon. Glory to Ukraine and to its heroes.”
Editor’s Note: We will follow Tim Scalita throughout his tour in Ukraine.
