Traveller Probo
59. England

“How do you expect us to feel Master Sergeant Hurley? We’ve again been pawns in the game of international politics between the Russians and the Americans and, as usual, our people have been left unsupported and struggling!” declared Vovk, who had taken on the role as spokesmen. The rest of the team sat silently which, to Hurley, was the calm before the storm. Very soon, the wrong comment could trip the calm and they would explode.

He knew how they felt. He had been this way once, before he was a family man.

“And now we’re to be informed that our instructor and mission manager is to be reassigned for additional training in Saxon Aengland. What are we to do? We can continue our training, yes but for an entire month? Our training should be ramping up to our expected Transportation in two to three months, yes?” continued Vovk quietly.

Hurley responded as best he could. “I’ve refused the mission to Saxon Aengland but my lack of participation was not to assist the goals of our team, it seems. While the Ukrainian Government’s justified anger at the slight in having our mission placed on hold is being shouted from every rooftop, there seems to be a concerted effort in diplomatic circles to alter the order of the missions. I don’t know who’s causing the trouble but it seems to be from the highest levels. Believe me, I’m as pissed off as you are!”

Professor Balanchuk spoke up. He, like each of them, spoke in old Slavic, his beautifully fluid, poetic speech always a pleasure for the ear. “Our dear Master Sergeant Hurley, we know you are a friend to us and, like us, desire our Kiev Traveller project to proceed to a successful conclusion. Yet you have to understand what it is to be Ukrainian. The Russians are not our allies and have never been our friends.” The slim scholar looked to his students and then gazed earnestly at Hurley over his round glasses as he continued. “You will know, of course, that in one year, from 1932 to 1933, over seven million Ukrainians were murdered by the Soviet Union in a tragedy we know as the Holodomor, which means ‘to be killed by starvation’. Today, this attempt to destroy Ukrainian nationalism is accepted as genocide, yet how many nations outside of Ukraine understand this tragedy? Hm? I suggest very few. Now, add to this the losses Ukraine suffered in the Second World War, for the Germans also attempted genocide against us and another seven and a half million Ukrainians were murdered or taken to labour camps and worked to death. The West makes so much of a noise about the Jewish holocaust, yet the Slavic races suffered almost three times that number of deaths. We are forgotten in history, as if ours was not a plight worth remembering. We shall not even try to calculate how many Ukrainians have been killed in defence of the Russian homeland and how many others have been murdered by Russians in the intervening years, for the numbers can only be guessed. Yes, we all know that a single murder is a tragedy, yet millions of murders are only a number. Believe me Master Sergeant, we know what it is like to be fodder to the machinations of the Russian bear. This is happening now!”

“So what to do?” muttered the baby-faced Sergeant Vasylenko quietly. “Do we allow them to treat us as a nation of openly despised fools? Do we allow the continued manipulations by the West and Russia while we lay down to die in our own Holodomor, or do we rise up and restore the honour of Ukraine?”

Lieutenant Vovk looked to Vasylenko in fury but the others barely moved, as if they had not even heard.