Menzarev Oleksandr, 17years old

Winner of the 2024 essay contest, 2st place

Vocational school No. 92 town of Siverskodonetsk, Luhansk region

Teacher who inspired to write an assay - O.V. Kravtsova

 

«1000 days of war. My way»

A thousand days of war means a thousand almost sleepless nights. How do I remember them?

My mother gives me a photo that she accidentally found among the pages of her favourite book that she had taken from home. I look at it and the memories swallow me up. The photo shows me with my friends by the river.

It's a warm summer day, bathed in sunshine, kids are splashing in the water, and teenagers are playing ball nearby. It is clear that we have just come out of the water, we are laughing, everyone's faces are smiling.

How old am I in this photo? Twelve or thirteen? Were we happy? Who ever thought about that at that age?

Every morning I woke up to my mother's gentle touch. She was in an early hurry to get to work. My grandmother, my best grandmother, used to feed me a delicious breakfast. The house always smelled like pancakes, pies, or something else delicious. In the summer, he would spend time with his friends by the river or on the sports ground. I liked to ride a bike and skate in the winter.

Of course, my parents taught me to work. I worked in my grandmother's garden in the village, helped with the housework. It was not hard, burdensome, everything was done with joy, because my family was there.

I loved going to school. Girls and boys would get together, and on the way someone would tell us something interesting - we'd laugh! Back then, we laughed at nothing. How happy we were then, carefree, confident in the next day.

The morning of black February 24, 2022, began with the terrible news: just like the Nazis, the Rashists attacked my homeland at dawn.

We were excused from class. My classmates, like me, received the information, but did not fully realise that the war had started. We thought that after the weekend, life would continue as usual.

Our world, so bright and happy, was stolen by an insidious enemy.

My hometown of Siverskodonetsk passed the test of fire in 2014 and survived with honour. Now the war has returned to my hometown, which was almost immediately on the front line. Daily shelling began, and it became more and more intense. The heat and power plant was hit, and the houses in my neighbourhood were left without heating, and March was very cold. We slept with our clothes on, lying on the floor in the corridor, keeping two walls protected.

It quickly became dangerous to stay in the apartment. When the Grads were hitting, I felt that our nine-storey building seemed to be shaking.

During the shelling, we started hiding in the basement of a neighbouring house, and we had to run there. It was terribly cold there, no matter how you dressed, your feet would freeze to the soles. The little children, not understanding what was happening, were naughty and crying. People calmed them down, entertained both their own and other people's children, supported each other, shared tea and some goodies.

Sometimes they stayed in the basement all night.  The Nazis, like vampires, came at that time.

Every day my hometown looked different: broken houses, burnt cars, trolleybus wires broken and lying on the road, glass everywhere, a sea of glass underfoot. One day, during a lull, I went with my mother to the shop. The neighbours said they were selling fresh bread. We passed by my school.

My heart clenched with pain - not a single window was intact, one side was broken; the birch trees, once slender and beautiful, seemed to have been cut down to half, and there was a deep hole on the sports ground.

Looking at this horror, I remembered the words of Lina Kostenko: ‘Oh people, people, God's likeness, what have you brought this land to?’ At that moment, I realised how dear and precious the school was to me. One day, after a massive shelling, our apartment was hit: the windows were smashed, the balcony, walls, and ceiling were pierced by shrapnel.

We decided to leave for a safe city, hoping that it would be for two weeks, but the separation lasted for years.

We left the city after the curfew, taking only the most necessary things.  It was very dangerous because shots were fired everywhere. At the checkpoints, our soldiers let us through, giving us advice on how to travel safely. We didn't risk going on the road again, we mostly used field roads, but even there we saw burnt cars, and we could only guess about the fate of their passengers.

Every village we passed through looked like a horror film: broken and burnt houses, terrified pets in the pastures, which their owners let out of the yard when they left home. My grandmother was crying quietly most of the way, and my mother seemed petrified.

We were lucky to get to Talne, a small town in the Cherkasy region. A family of believers took us in. They provided shelter, shared food, and warmed us with a warm word. We started to come to our senses. I continued my studies remotely. I was very happy about it, it was the only opportunity to communicate with my friends. It was cosy and calm there, but there was no place for adults to work, and I had little money left.

We moved to Dnipro. We rented an apartment, my mother got a job, but we had to leave this city as well, because the flights to Ukraine started.

We moved to Uzhhorod and got used to a new city, someone else's house, someone else's bed, someone else's dishes. My mother started working here, and I transferred to a local school. My classmates welcomed me and another young man from Mariupol with kindness and tact, and did not ask about our experiences. This year, I finished the 11th grade and entered a school in my hometown of Siverskodonetsk to study to become a cook. In my free time, I work to help my family.

We live as if in a daze, never letting go of the phone, following the news. A thousand days of war. My journey fits on two pages of a story; how much pain, fear, but not despair is behind it.

Neither I nor my family lost faith in victory, in our defenders. The insane enemy is trying to wipe our cities off the face of the earth, to deprive us of our historical memory, because museums are destroyed in the fires of war, historical monuments and books are burned. Not only people suffer, but also nature.

Don't the fools in the swamps understand that the burnt forests, polluted lakes and rivers, and the destroyed Kakhovka reservoir will not be passed on to their children and grandchildren in the future?

By destroying civilian homes, hospitals, schools and kindergartens, the enemy is trying to intimidate us. But where do they, the foolish ones, know that no one has ever succeeded in bringing a people whose genes contain Cossack valour and courage to its knees and will never succeed? No one can defeat a nation that lives by the precepts of the great Kobzar:

«… and sprinkle the will of the enemy with evil blood’       

‘Fight, you will overcome, God helps you!

For you is truth, for you is glory

And holy will!»

Men and women are fighting shoulder to shoulder in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. People in the rear have also united to support their defenders. My mother and grandmother went to weave camouflage nets, my grandmother knits warm socks.

The damned enemies will not destroy our faith in victory or our language, because Ukraine is an indestructible bump. We will still hear the whisper of rye in the field, and the singing of birds, we will still laugh, sing, dream. And we will definitely return home.