How to spot mines…

This week I drove more than 1,000 kilometres through the hardening Ukrainian winter. The fabled eastern cold has definitely arrived and has settled into everything.

The earth is suffuse with a painful chill. Everything stings. Sub-zero temperatures have become the norm; even the mercury is surprised when it manages to struggle north of nought.

But we knew it was coming. It is cold, but we can cope. We have important work to do and we are determined to do it.

The reason I drove over 1,000 kilometres this week was to help take our first Legend-led teaching session. It went great. The participants were receptive, inquisitive, attentive. They know that what we are teaching is important. They know it might save their lives.

Accompanied by an interpreter, a sapper, and an administrator, I drove the four-by-four across icy roads; some were pretty good motorways, others were small village roads, narrow and treacherous, impassable in a normal car.

I’ll tell you what happened when we reached the end of our epic drive.

Police academy

IF you’ve been reading over the last few weeks, you will know that Legenda – the NGO I work with – have signed an official pact with the Ukrainian government.

When we reached our destination earlier this week, we had arrived at a police academy. There were 40 men and women there who formed our class. Most were police officers, but a few were members of Cargo 200 teams from across the south.

This was a historic session in a sense; our first training class since signing the agreement with the The Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories.

In another way, however, it was just business as usual.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the knowledge and skills we impart in these classes is beyond grandiose concerns like ‘history’. It is more basic and fundamental, practical and essential. It is life or death. Survival or succumbing. Making it home or dying on the battlefield. That is the truth.

A change in plans

WE were initially supposed to conduct the session in something that resembled a conventional classroom. However, the lesson was dismissed before it even got going, after the air raid sirens sounded.

We made our way to the bunkers. You never know how long an air raid might last. You could be stuck below ground for half the day. With this in mind, we took everything we needed to conduct the class down with us. We held the class in the bunker.

Contents of the class

FIRST of all, we went through mine awareness. All 40 participants in the class learned about the dangers of mines, how to spot them, test for them, avoid them.

While we were in the bunker, we taught the theory of mine detection. We prepped them for how things would look when they got into the field. Then, when the sirens stopped, we climbed out of the bunker and into the light of the day. From there, we went into an area where we set up drills to mimic scenarios that they might encounter in action. Using training grenades and mock mines, they had to demonstrate how they would safely search a body for boobytraps. We put everyone through a series of drills which aimed to teach them how to enter a dangerous area. Crucially, we want to help each of them get to a place where they are able to cultivate the appropriate mindset for entering a dangerous space

The mindset

ANYBODY who goes into a potentially deadly area needs to understand some that they are now in a place where their fellow man wants one thing; to kill them

However, you must have all the vigilance that such an acute threat naturally summons, but you must also refrain from allowing that to grow into a paralysing paranoia or panic.

When I met with the commanders, I made sure to reiterate that it is their responsibility to ensure that everybody has that requisite mindset before stepping foot on an area that might be rigged with boobytraps.

It is by no means easy to maintain these two almost contradictory psychological states at once, but that is the optimum equilibrium for surviving on the field.