Roman Soldier

He had a picture of Mercedes in his hand. She, a national symbol of the Ukrainian woman every young soldier wanted to marry and start a family with in the countryside. Yet she’d been taken away from the electro night clubs filled with house music and used to gain information on a Russian Mail Order bride site. Only the tale of her rescue spread across the frontline with soldiers facing each other, and the risk of coronavirus; the reason their mouths were covered with facemasks.

“Mercedes,” he whispered to himself, hopeful that a woman with her features could still be found in his hometown. He stood up, letting his hand feel in the dirt before he looked out over the trench he lived in toward the Russian line of advance. The initial hatred he’d felt when the Russians first invaded had now subsided into the indignant fulfillment of his duties as someone who’d been deeply disrespected.

His eyes peered out across the grass field to the dirt mound of the Russian trench more than a kilometer away. The brown stripe, the end of the vegetation and everything he loved. On the other side the enemy remained invisible.

He knew they were there. He had seen them from time to time through the sight on his rifle. He’d even shot at a few during times of engagement unaware of the outcome of the event.

Deep in his heart he felt the courage of one protecting Mercedes from men who wished to harm her with their unwanted flirtation into her home. These brutal men who wished to stain her rave girl innocents bred on nights of platonic dancing with her countrymen.

Now he stood dug into this trench with his rifle waiting. He didn’t know when the mighty Russian Red Army planned to move on this Ukrainian position with munitions, yet whenever it did, he would not fear the explosions. Ukrainian soldiers were men who could wait until their wedding night to take the hand of a childhood sweetheart from the village.

He had resolved to fight to the death already on a cold night with a blanket barely covering his toes. He would push them back in droves as they marched forward in mockery of Ukrainian sovereignty. He had nowhere else to go.

If he should fall back these threatening men would follow at his back. The only option he had; he must face them as a brave man meeting their eyes with confidence in the belief that he had the love of Mercedes.

When this war ended in the disco tech, on a night of drinking and drugs, it would be the beautiful women that would praise their victory without fear. They would do so because they shared the same faith, and when pressed down on by belligerent bully, fought back with power derived from the Holy Spirit.

That’s the strength of the Ukrainian soldier dug into the dirt of the motherland on the frontline of this global conflict. The rest of Europe might force them to defend their nation alone, yet it’s a burden the Ukrainian soldier gladly accepts with the deep base of house music.

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Today, the Ukrainian soldier has taken the momentum to the Russian army pushing them back off captured territory. While the battle constantly evolves with the use of drones and artillery; it remains the soldier in the trench grasping his picture of Mercedes on his heart, with a rifle aimed across the no man's land separating the two sides in this conflict, that keeps the enemy from marching forward.