Late this past summer, I witnessed something that others could have seen, but, like me, they wouldn’t have fully understood what they were watching. It was the ultimate tip-of-the-iceberg experience.
I was about to catch the train from Kyiv heading west to Warsaw that afternoon. However, because I didn’t want to take the chance of missing that day’s only train to Warsaw, I arrived at the train station half an hour early. But as the minutes rolled by, it soon became clear that I was on the cusp of uncovering one of Ukraine’s carefully guarded secrets.
While waiting outside the station, I noticed an ambulance pulling up to the station’s parking lot. I figured that there must be someone injured aboard the train I was waiting for. Since it was coming from the east, that is, the direction of the front line, there could be an injured soldier on the train and the ambulance could be waiting for him.
Then another ambulance pulled up and parked beside the first one. And then another. By the time the train arrived, there were 50 ambulances.
What I had stumbled on was the secret hospital train. Attached to the regular passenger train that I would be boarding were special medical cars that were equipped like hospital rooms. In some cases, the cars attached to the locomotive of my train were equipped to the level of intensive care units. The doctors and nurses aboard care for the wounded on their way to hospitals.
I learned later, from Mariana Svirchuk, head of project management at Unbroken Ukraine, that the hospital train takes different routes and ends up in different cities to transport the wounded to different hospitals. The timing and destination of each trip is secret and unpredictable. Further, the cars are disguised. I couldn’t see from the outside that any of the cars of the train I was boarding were different from any other cars on the train.
There’s a reason for the secrecy. Since the Russians have to date bombed and destroyed more than 1,000 hospitals, Svirchuk believes that this evacuation train would make an attractive target for the invaders. If they knew its location ahead of time, they might choose to bomb it for the same reasons they’ve chosen to bomb hospitals: to cause demoralization and to interfere with the government’s ability to provide services.
She said that the 50 ambulances I saw was probably the upper limit of how many ambulances would be needed to meet one of these special medical trains. In a city like Kyiv, 10 or 20 would be more typical, and further, many of the evacuation trains never go to a major city. Instead, they go on secret routes to special military hospitals.
The special evacuation cars that occasionally get attached to regularly scheduled civilian cars are always a secret. The first medical train began on April 22, 2022, just two months after the Feb. 24 invasion. Brilliant planners in Ukraine were able to arrange for the train cars to be transformed into moving hospital rooms.
In the midst of warfare and chaos, the human spirit has an uncanny ability to persevere and innovate. What seemed like an ordinary day at the Kyiv train station turned out to be an unexpected window into the silent heroics of the Ukrainian healthcare system and military strategists.
The secrecy surrounding these medical trains not only ensures the safety of the wounded but also upholds the resilience and determination of a nation under siege. While many aspects of the war are brutal and tragic, there are always undercurrents of hope, symbolized by initiatives such as the secret hospital train. Amidst the cacophony of conflict, these silent saviors move like whispers, helping to heal the wounds of a nation. Slava Ukraine!
Mitzi Perdue, is the wife of the late Frank Perdue (former CEO of Perdue Farms) and a humanitarian. She is a Harvard graduate, a writer, speaker, and author of the award-winning biography of Mark Victor Hansen, the Chicken Soup for the Soul co-author.
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Most Americans Can’t Find Ukraine on a Map. That Doesn’t Dilute Our Duty to Defend It.
