discovering the doctors and rescuers of the Hospitallers battalion, responsible for evacuating the wounded from the front line

Every day, fighting leaves hundreds injured in Ukraine. The Hospitallers battalion was created ten years ago, with the mission of searching for and evacuating the wounded in the trenches on the front line.

In Ukraine, fighting continues on the front line, to the east in Donbass, to the south, but also on the line north of Kharkiv where Russian soldiers have made their biggest breakthrough in recent months. The Russians have been pushed back since several countries, such as France or the EUnited States, agreed to have their weapons used to strike and push back the Russian army on the border.

Doctors and rescuers are particularly targeted by the Russian army, which sometimes strikes a second time in the same place to reach them in the middle of an intervention. A shortage of doctors and first aiders is therefore felt. But there is a battalion of volunteers, the Hospitallers battalion, created ten years ago with the mission of searching for and evacuating the wounded in the trenches on the front line. The battalion trains volunteers behind the front, in the Donbass, so that they can reinforce other units or take care of civilians, as noted by franceinfo.

The Ukrainian army has set up situation simulations at the front to train its apprentice rescuers. They learn to help injured soldiers by applying tourniquets to them but above all by evacuating them quickly, because the Russians often shoot a second time to reach the doctors. Kalash, a chief doctor within the Hospitallers battalion, estimated “thatthe simulation must be as close as possible to the reality of combat“.

“The doctor at the front must first have a tactical and strategic vision of combat and iHe must know how to shoot. If the war doctor does not shoot, he is not a war doctor, because he must carry out his duty under attack, assures the specialist. He must know what can serve as shelter, transmit correctly medical information For the following evacuation steps and coordinate your medical unit so as not to have other injuries.”

Among the students, Kasper, a 22-year-old first aid leader with no prior medical training, practices within the Azov regiment which is deployed north of Donetsk. “There are so many elements in the composition of medicines, what dosage, what dosage, that’s what I learned. Maybe I could have saved a soldier’s legs. When I was a beginner, I didn’t know much and couldn’t help enough”, he regrets.

The trainers also introduce civilians like Sasha, an actress in a Kharkiv theater who has been under bombs again in the last two months. “At first, I wanted to do this training for myself. But the more I learn, the more I understand that I have acquired a lot of knowledge. I would like to join the Hospitallers battalion or another volunteer battalion to help not only civilians, but also soldiers on the front.”

In two years of war, the Hospitallers battalion evacuated more than 5 000 soldiers from the front line. Twenty-four first aid soldiers or doctors out of the battalion’s 500 died in combat, not counting those taken prisoner and the missing, the battalion not wanting to communicate these figures.