Kneads must on the Ukraine border
AS a columnist travelling toward a war, I felt akin to Evelyn Waugh’s character William Boot in Scoop. Due to mistaken identity, Boot, a backwoodsman and Nature columnist for the Daily Beast, finds himself assigned to cover a revolution in East Africa. And there I was, a bucolic recluse, thrashing a Land Rover pizza wagon, a vehicle of mass nutrition, towards the busiest Polish-ukrainian frontier crossing, armed with rudimentary knowledge of how to conjure a margarita. Two of my children driving a van laden with food were equally unprepared.
For the 1,000-mile journey from Amsterdam, I listened to Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning’s account of the role of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police in the Final Solution. It describes the terrible ease with which the Nazis turned lowermiddle-class, middle-aged men from Hamburg into mass murderers of Polish Jews. Only a few hundred miles from our destination
Medyka, Putin’s soldiers were writing another savage chapter in the history of civilian liquidation.
When Browning’s history became too much—and, believe me, it does—i recalled the last time aid wagons had rolled into Poland during the economic crisis of the 1980s. Two ladies of a certain age, my godmother and a marchioness, filled a truck with food and clothing. Employing the HGV driver services of my friend Lupin, they set off for Poland. There, the marchioness, a celebrated plantswoman, kept an eye on the verge for specimens. A rap of her trowel on the dash would bring Lupin to a sudden halt, usually next to some military compound. A spry, petite figure in a wide-brimmed hat alighted and, under the 1,000-mile stare of the enforcers of Eastern-bloc martial law, a plant was liberated. Meanwhile, Lupin, who was going cold turkey from heroin, broke out in a cold sweat.
My brother-in-law David, who runs the Scottish humanitarian charity Siobhan’s Trust under the aegis of which we worked at Medyka, is a man of extraordinary drive. The trust, set up in memory of his late aunt, was among the first aid agencies to reach the border. Before our arrival, David and a trusty crew had established a field kitchen and were serving soup, stew, pizza, fruit, biscuits and hot drinks to refugees. Only a confusion over the pronunciation of the Ukrainian word for sugar—‘tsukor’—which can conflate with ‘suka’, Ukrainian for bitch, caused momentary surprise.
All staff are volunteers and tented accommodation is bracingly minimalist to ensure that the maximum of every pound donated reaches its intended beneficiary. Concern that our lack of Italian baking skills could only worsen the terrible plight of Ukrainian refugees proved unfounded. In a clear instance of ‘kneads must,’ our instructors soon had us knocking out pizzas like Neapolitans.
A constant stream of women and children passed the kitchen, towing what was left of their lives. Their dignity was humbling. Some had travelled for a week and then queued for 30 hours in temperatures down to -12˚C. Many had bid tearful farewells to their men staying to fight. Others were old and lame, inching their way to safety. As one elderly couple passed, the lady collapsed over her zimmer. Gently, her husband straightened her up and they shuffled on a few more steps before the next subsidence.
Like Boot treading again the carpets and creaking stair boards of Boot Magna, I felt grateful to return home. How precious the freedoms of our liberal democracy seemed and how urgent the need to arrest their erosion.
Many had bid tearful farewells to their men
Next week Jason Goodwin