The war for independence, like every war, leaves behind a trail of markers—moments and memories etched so deeply they become part of who we are. For each of us, those markers are different. They reveal themselves in offhand comments and carefully weighed words, in instinctive gestures and deliberate routines, in what we wear, what we eat, how we relate to others—or how we don’t. Like the lives shaped by this war, they are at once alike and utterly personal. In our minds, they’re boundless and defy neat definition. But they all live in our emotions.
It’s our feelings that have become the true markers of this war. You think about them—how to capture them in language, how to pin them down on a page… We need to hold onto them, if only to explain to those untouched by war what it means to live inside it. And to remind ourselves, over and over, of the cost we’re paying—so we don’t one day “crack,” “sell out,” or “lose our nerve.”
A frontline town. A young mother walks along the riverside with her son, a child of war born in the summer of 2022. As she chats with a friend, I catch her sigh: “Another New Year’s come and gone—still no fireworks. Can you believe it? My child’s never seen fireworks.”
And that’s when it hits me: how rarely we pause to consider what children of war have missed. That the things we once took for granted—bright explosions of celebration lighting up the sky—are fading from their world. Or were never there to begin with.
I listened to that young mother and thought—what a brutal marker of war that is. Fireworks. Just one small thing her child has never known. And then it struck me: they’re only the tip of the iceberg. A symbol of everything these children have missed, of all the simple joys that make up what we call childhood.
In the summer of 2022, a group of lads from my battalion made it back to headquarters after a stretch on the front. They’d been granted a few days’ leave, but before heading off, they needed to collect their leave passes. The officer responsible? Off somewhere having a coffee. When one of the blokes, clearly tense, asked, “Any idea when he’ll be back?”, another member of staff replied with a shrug: “Why are you so worked up? He’s just having a coffee. Give it an hour.”
That was the spark. “A coffee? We’ve just crawled out of the trenches—two days ago! We’ve waited months for even an hour with our families!”
But the staffer, working regular hours and sleeping in safety, couldn’t begin to grasp the urgency. Couldn’t understand what leave means when you’ve been living under shellfire.
And that’s the thing. In the army, days off aren’t some casual perk—they’re sacred. Each one is a lifeline. That moment, that clash at headquarters, quietly laid bare one of the starkest markers of this war: the razor-thin line between the ordinary pace of civilian life and the soldier’s fierce, urgent grip on time—especially the time spent with those they love.
I remember heading off on leave to the Carpathians, and somewhere in western Ukraine, a police patrol pulled me over—a young man and a woman. They had questions about my car, painted in camouflage. It was my own vehicle, but we’d once used it as a medevac. Still riddled with bullet holes.
I didn’t want any hassle—it was my leave, after all. The policewoman asked for my documents, asked why I was travelling, then tossed off a line with a shrug: “Alright, let’s see this bit of paper then.”
And that’s when my wife leapt out of the car. “A bit of paper? A bit of paper? Do you even have any idea what that means to me? How long have I waited for this?”
The young man clearly felt awkward, mortified on her behalf. But she just stood there, genuinely baffled. “Why are you getting so emotional? What did I even say?”
But of course, it wasn’t just about the leave pass. It was about what it stood for. The months of waiting, the anxiety, the counting down to one brief sliver of time together—away from phone screens, away from worry, just a few fleeting hours of presence. Of holding hands in silence.
Of course, my wife’s outburst wasn’t really about the paperwork—it was about the life of waiting she’d been enduring. The endless countdown to a fleeting moment of happiness, to the rare chance of actually being together. A brief opportunity to speak in person, not through the haze of a phone screen. Or even just to sit quietly, close enough to feel the presence of the one you love.
It’s that moment of waiting—perhaps that’s the essence of what keeps us going through this war. Waiting for a message, a smiley face from your partner, your parents, your comrades. Waiting for them to appear online. For me, beyond my family, staying connected with the veterans from my mechanised company has become a lifeline. We’ve long since been scattered across different units, and some have returned to civilian life after being wounded. But every time someone drops a message in our group chat, it brings an unexpected warmth, a quiet joy…
I remember once, a deputy battalion commander I knew—someone who’d often chatted with historians before the war—half-jokingly, half-seriously accused me of neglecting my old colleagues at the institute where I used to work. I took it as a clumsy challenge to my bond with my brothers-in-arms, and it struck a raw nerve—it provoked a sharp reaction. Over the years, my whole world has revolved around my fellow soldiers—not just the ones still with us, but those who are no longer here, yet whose memory continues to rise up inside me, never truly fading.
And that too is a marker of war: who matters to you, who has become part of your life, who shapes your sense of justice and your deepest values.
If you want to witness the highest concentration of kisses during wartime, just watch a train pull into a frontline station. It’s in that moment—when women step off the carriages, and their soldier husbands wait on the platform—that you see the raw explosion of passion. It’s a storm of emotion, a surge of joy, all poured into kisses: shy and bold, long and tender, quick pecks and fiery embraces. Every one of them radiates boundless happiness and sincerity. The freedom to show emotion in such an unguarded, unfiltered way is profoundly moving. It makes you grasp, with startling clarity, the true value of those fleeting reunions and relationships.
Once, during a conversation about personal life, one of my comrades said, “What kind of shared life do I have with my wife? It’s not really a life together—it’s like an endless date.” And it struck me then: all the waiting, all those platform kisses, the smiley faces, the brief leaves from the front—it’s all part of one long, never-ending sequence of dates.
We live in an age of war, which also means we live in a time of perpetual reunions. And this era has become a test of what’s real, of our ability to feel genuine emotions. We’ve learned to recognise and cherish true, deep feelings in ways we never have before—the value of human connection and emotion has never been clearer. And perhaps, one day, we’ll look back on this War for Independence and remember it not just as a conflict, but as an era defined by reunions.
I stopped making plans for my personal life a long time ago. It happened naturally—what’s the point, when everything can change in a heartbeat? So now, when there’s a chance to do something, I do it. No time for long reflections—that’s what this era of reunions has taught us.
