Border Guard Yuriy Datsenko Finds Solace in Words While Fighting War and Cancer
Every word in one’s native language is an act of resistance. Every Ukrainian book is a step towards victory. What Russia has tried for centuries to ban, repress, Russify, destroy, mock — lives and will live thanks to the word, because the Ukrainian word is a weapon.
Wounded but not broken, his words are his armor, border guard of the 7th Carpathian Border Detachment Yuriy Datsenko. He has been in the ranks of border guards since 1997. For over 30 years, the border guard has been writing poems. He first felt the war in 2014 when he served in the Berdyansk Border Detachment, which included checkpoints to temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory.
The Start of the Full-scale Invasion
At the start of the full-scale invasion, he served in the Sumy Border Detachment.
“The first moments of the war caught me right at the border in a border patrol. I watched the enemy’s actions with binoculars while they looked at our patrol from a drone and subsequently opened fire with machine guns. It was around 3.40. They missed. By 4.30, they were shelling our territory with Grad rockets, and I understood that this was a large-scale war,” recalls the border guard.
Under the constant bombardment, Yuriy and his comrades held the defense of Chernihiv. During another shelling, a projectile hit the trench where the soldiers were. When the border guard came to his senses, he saw the dead and wounded comrades beside him.
“I tried to bandage one of my comrades, who had lost a leg. I succeeded. The bleeding stopped. It was certainly difficult because the shelling continued and I was bleeding myself with my head hard to bandage, but we managed. When the shelling was over, we were pulled for evacuation,” the border guard recounts.
Afterwards, the group of wounded soldiers was stabilized and practically under the nose of the Russian invaders, evacuated to Kyiv for treatment. After recovery, he returned to the Sumy detachment. Now, the border guard serves in the 7th Carpathian Border Detachment. In his free time, he writes poems and fights for his life. Yuriy was diagnosed with the third stage of cancer… He first confronted oncology at the start of the full-scale invasion, but he continued the struggle for Ukraine.
The Power of Words in Poems
The border guard went through battles, witnessed loss, and felt pain… But neither the disease nor the war could destroy the human in him. When his body healed from wounds, his soul found solace in words. His poems are the voice of those fighting and those who will never speak again… They are pain and hope, sorrow and the dream of a peaceful and free Ukraine. War takes away, but it also reveals our true selves.
***
It’s been almost a year since you died,
My friend, comrade, almost brother,
As another angel, you flew on high,
Fragment was several carats in size.
I remember our youth,
Those carefree, bright days
I look at the photo, my throat tightens,
Memories alone remain.
You were genuine, like forged iron,
And wisdom, where did you find it?
Without hesitation went where evil climbed,
How brilliantly you played the guitar.
As if we recently talked,
You again taught me how to live
It was quiet there, birds sang,
But you still went to serve,
Though you could have stayed quietly at home,
But you went, as you were always genuine,
And on the frontline at 53, you knew no fatigue,
Killed, Lord, take him to heaven.
***
On the outskirts, beneath the city, a fight, a deadly fight,
Two dead, three injured, but the guys hold the line,
Bombed by Kab, bombed by Grad, and constant mortars,
They haven’t slept for three days, what’s their secret of courage?
These guys are flesh and blood, not of titanium or armor,
Nailing the evil between the eyes with an aspen stake,
Ten remain, those who can still stand,
Fighting an unequal battle, they won’t retreat,
There, a deadly battle rages and adrenaline boils,
Thank God there are bullets, the enemy pushes from all sides,
The field is littered with them, and whose sons are they?
Not humans, a cursed breed, offspring of evil, of Satan,
We won’t forgive anyone for the mothers’ pain,
Though the captive Muscovite says – “it wasn’t me, I didn’t want it.”,
On the outskirts beneath the city, the guys held again,
Sat, smoked a bit, washed the blood from their bodies,
These are the real heroes, they don’t need awards,
Eternal memory and respect, let’s not forget them, people.