As a veteran that went to Ukraine, here’s what I saw
By Rachel Nostrant
May 3, 01:51 PM
KRAKOW, Poland — As someone who dreamt of growing up to be a journalist and spent their childhood watching their parents deploy to Africa and the Middle East and work with special forces at home in Virginia, being a war correspondent has been my goal for as long as I can remember. Adding to that, I also served for five years in the Marine Corps as a Middle Eastern Cryptologic Linguist, deploying once with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit in 2017.
Now that I’m a civilian again and have some time before starting a master’s program in the fall, I decided to chase that childhood dream. And, while I certainly don’t recommend anyone blindly enter Ukraine — or any war zone, for that matter — here’s what I saw when I did just that.
It was mid-April, and I was following a story about an American woman who travels alone, evacuating fleeing Ukrainians, bringing them into Poland. I tagged along, sitting in her blue evacuation van for 15 hours as we drove from Krakow, Poland, to Odesa, a port city in the southern portion of Ukraine.
https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/ukraine/2022/05/03/as-a-veteran-that-went-to-ukraine-heres-what-i-saw/
