“I did nothing special” — Dmytro, the owner of a car service station who joined the Armed Forces and evacuated dozens of people under shelling
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine keeps sharing stories of heroes who defend Ukraine in the ranks of the Armed Forces.
“People were standing on the road, crying, begging me to take them out of Chernihiv, and I could not refuse. The small van was sometimes packed with up to fifteen people. Elderly people, women, children… Once I even took out a 5-month-old baby,” Dmytro recalls how he was evacuating people from the city in the north of Ukraine that was almost encircled by Russian troops and constantly bombed for more than a month.
Dmytro is the owner of a car service station in Chernihiv. When the war has started, he decided to defend his city, family and business with weapons.
“I was working at the service station while I was still useful there, because people needed to fix cars to leave the city,” says Dmytro. “On March 1 I went to the military registration and enlistment office. What moments I remember as most difficult? […] Very “spectacular” were the trips across the pedestrian bridge, which was constantly under mortar fire. At that time, the main bridge at the entrance to Chernihiv was blown up, so the only way out of the city was the pedestrian bridge.
Dmytro was using this bridge to take the civilians out of the bombed city: “I was warning everyone that this is not a “green” corridor, I can not guarantee security, because the enemy wasn’t paying attention to the fact that the car was peaceful and continued to shoot. But people were ready for anything so long as they can just leave the city, that was becoming more and more like hell every day,” says Dmytro.
“My family was in Chernihiv for a long time also under shellings. I did not expect such large-scale hostilities in the city itself. At first I persuaded them not to leave, but when it became very dangerous, my wife, who was driving the car, took the children and left for the west of the country. Now she has returned home.”
