Chapter 3
The train bumped along and stopped several times, which made the passengers nervous, fearing that they would be more vulnerable to bombs if they didn’t keep moving.
They finally picked up speed, and at one-thirty in the morning, the children were almost all asleep as the train pulled into an old country station and stopped.
Men were lined up along the sides of the train and they motioned the women out.
There were a handful of elderly men on board, and the women helped them get out.
Everyone was tired by then. Wherever they had come from and whatever they’d done before, they had all waited up to fifteen hours for the train and been traveling cramped and crowded or sitting on the floor, without food other than what they’d brought with them, and they had their children to care for, and most of them had no idea where they were going.
One of the men on the platform helped Daryna down, and Pavlo jumped down next to her with the dog, as Yulya stumbled on the step and a strong hand behind her grabbed her and kept her from falling.
Yulya turned to thank whoever it was and looked into the face of a pretty blond girl with a serious expression. They were all exhausted.
“Thank you.” Yulya smiled at her, as the women poured from the train in a steady flow.
“Where are we? Are we in Poland?” the women asked.
There had been no sign of planes for several hours and no sound of bombs.
It was an enormous relief after the nerve-shattering explosions that had gone on relentlessly for three days since the war began.
There were no houses or a town anywhere around the station.
They were deep in the country. On the other side of the train there were dozens of buses lined up, and men and women were directing the tired travelers to the buses with warm smiles, and handing out bottles of water, which the women gratefully took for themselves and their children.
It was just as cold as it had been in Kyiv and there was snow on the ground.
The women were asking where they were going, and the guides explained that there was a town five miles away where people were waiting to help them.
There would be medical care if they needed it, and food, and a place for them to sleep.
They were being taken to a refugee camp, established with the help of NATO, that had been set up to receive them.
Everyone was kind. One woman was struggling with four young children and one of the men carried two of them for her.
The people welcoming them were civilians, locals who had mobilized to receive the refugees from Ukraine.
Several other trains were expected that night, as well as buses from several cities, and the people who drove there were welcome too.
It was one of the first Polish towns to organize to receive them, and the refugee camp had room to accommodate them until they were relocated to other cities, once they got Polish ID passes to identify themselves as refugees from Ukraine.
It took two hours to get them all into buses, and Yulya noticed the pretty girl who had helped keep her from falling when she tripped leaving the train.
They smiled at each other, and the girl looked shy, and glanced out the window as they rode to their temporary location.
She was seated across the aisle from Yulya and Daryna, next to Pavlo and his dog.
He was wide-awake now, looking eagerly to see where they were going.
When they drove into the camp, the buses stopped on a tarmac outside several huge hangars, which had been set up as mess halls, infirmaries, and dormitories, and organized into groups.
There were cots for the adults and cribs for babies.
Everyone was wearing military gear in the uniforms of different countries, and spoke different languages.
There were American, French, British, Italian, Irish, German, and Polish soldiers, male and female, helping the women find spots to settle in the hangars.
There were heaters to warm them, military personnel with clipboards, and Ukrainian translators to help them.
Each of the Ukrainians would have to get a number to register as a refugee, so that the military forces could help them.
It was impressively well organized. There were already a few Ukrainians there, who had arrived the day before.
But they were all in the first wave that had fled the country as soon as the war broke out.
The locals and the military were estimating that there would be many more to come.
They ushered each busload into the hangar together, to deal with them in small, manageable groups.
Yulya felt dazed as she walked in. The size of everything was overwhelming, and there were bright lights.
She heard that there had been hundreds, maybe even close to a thousand women, children, and elderly men on the train.
Yulya wished her parents had been among them, and she hoped they were still safe in Irpin.
She realized that the blond girl was in her assigned group, and that she had made friends with Pavlo and Max, who was excited to see other dogs in the various groups.
Pets of all sizes had been allowed on the train, and an exception had been made.
No health certificates were needed for the animals.
And local vets had volunteered to vaccinate animals that weren’t vaccinated.
There were no rules applied to people’s pets.
And Max was enjoying barking at dogs bigger than he was and was wagging his tail.
“Hello.” Yulya smiled at the girl standing next to Pavlo. She introduced herself to Daryna and Yulya. She and Pavlo had already made friends on the bus.
“She’s a ballerina, Mom,” Pavlo announced, and Daryna looked at her, intrigued.
“I go to ballet class on Tuesdays, and they let us wear sparkly tutus for recitals,” she explained. “Do you wear a tutu?”
“Only for performances,” Tatyanna said with a shy smile. “For class I have to wear a black leotard and pink toe shoes. And I have to go to class every day, except Sunday,” she said.
They were assigned military cots then, with blankets and pillows, and Tatyanna chose one next to theirs.
“I can’t wear toe shoes yet,” Daryna continued the conversation, and Tatyanna remembered hers in her backpack, rummaged in it, and took them out to show Daryna, whose eyes opened wide, duly impressed. “Did you bring a tutu too?” she asked her new friend.
“I didn’t have room in my backpack. Just my leotard.” Yulya smiled at her, grateful for her kindness to the children. Tatyanna looked very young and was alone.
The refugees went to the mess area in groups, and there was hot, steaming substantial food waiting for them, vegetables and potatoes and sausages.
When a soldier in a flight officer’s jumpsuit walked by, Yulya asked him how far they were from Warsaw, and he said about four or five hours by train.
He explained that there would be desks set up to help them get where they were going, and contact relatives and friends in the places they wanted to relocate to.
And they would find housing for the others who knew no one in Poland.
“I have a brother and his family in Warsaw,” Yulya explained casually to Tatyanna.
“Do you have people in Poland?” Tatyanna shook her head.
She was more comfortable speaking to the children than the adults, and Yulya invited her to come to the mess tent with them.
It was four in the morning but they had hardly eaten for the past twenty-four hours, and she wanted to feed the children and then try to get some rest before she tackled trying to make arrangements to get to Warsaw.
She was going to call her brother in the morning to tell him they had arrived.
She had texted him to warn him they were coming.
He cried in relief when he heard her voice.
He had been afraid that she and her family were dead.
He couldn’t get through when he called her.
The food was plentiful and delicious, and as soon as they had eaten they went back to their hangar and cots, and Yulya got the children to lie down, and Tatyanna did the same.
She lay with her eyes closed and thought about Vlad.
She texted him that they had arrived safely, and she planned to call him in the morning, but she knew he would have begun his military training by then, and she didn’t know if she could reach him.
When she looked over at Yulya and the kids, they were sound asleep, and Max was lying on his back snoring, with his paws in the air and his red sweater on.
Tatyanna was happy she had met them. The children were really sweet, and she liked their mother. They seemed like nice people.