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There are heroes among us. The old man with the ribbon bar and cane and soiled jacket, the young man with the scars… what are their stories?

Soldiers who want only peace and safety for themselves and their comrades are thrown into cauldrons of insanity, danger and death. Sometimes they perform magnificently. We often think of them when we imagine our heroes. We give them medals and we make movies about them.

Still other men and women will leave peace and safety behind to help others in the face of heavy odds. We see these unsung heroes at every natural disaster and catastrophe, even during holocausts. They’re there, they perform and they leave. These heroes are seldom honored or even remembered. We give them few medals or movies.

The Russian-Georgian War of 2008 was full of tragedy and pain. Russian soldiers did what soldiers always do, they killed enemy soldiers. The Georgian army didn’t prevail in a single engagement. Georgian special troops had limited successes here and there without effect on the battlefield or outcome. Marauding drunken bands of South Ossetian “militia” following the Russians roamed and looted and murdered without mercy.

Someone led a Georgian infantry battalion into an open field with no apparent objective and no cover. That sort of thing hasn’t been done since the advent of flight. The inevitable happened. A flight of nine Russian SU-25 “Frogfoot” close air support attack aircraft spotted the troops. The SU-25s -- ironically made in a Tbilisi factory – were mistaken for Georgian aircraft, even though there were only three SU-25s in the entire Georgian inventory. The hawks dove on the prey and in moments a 500-man battalion ceased to exist.

Yet there were moments of sanity in the conflict. Here are the stories of two of them.

Retreating Georgian troops picked up twelve lost children, put them in army trucks and took them to the large Georgian army reserve base in Gori. Once there they were left to fend for themselves. The base was under heavy shelling by artillery, tanks and helicopter gunships. The troops who remained were panicked and defeated. There was only chaos and hurried efforts to escape.

Our colleague and friend Amiran T. knew of the children through friends in Gori. He and his family were safe in Tbilisi, or as safe as you can be when your airport and communication towers are being bombed and Russian tanks are approaching the city limits near where you live. That kind of safe.

Amiran organized a small convoy of his friends in their private cars and drove west toward Gori, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. They put themselves in harm’s way, got through during a lull in the bombing and found the children. They had heard of a refugee camp high in the hills south of Gori. It was for Georgians from the general area of South Ossetia where the children had lived. They drove off towards the hills, often in sight of circling Russian SU-25s and attack helicopters, but this time the hawks stayed high in the sky.

Over rough dirt roads in cars suitable only for Tbilisi streets they made their way up into the hills to the camp. Once there they found Georgians who were willing to take in the children despite their own sudden forced poverty. The camp conditions were appalling. Water from dirty creeks, no sanitation, no shelter, only enough basic food to sustain life. Relief efforts had not yet caught up to the war’s survivors. Amiran wasn’t done.

As he drove back to Tbilisi he pondered what he could do to help the children and the other refugees. He spoke to his employer, a Turkish building company, and asked them if they would help. They would and they did, generously.

Soon Amiran had a large truck full of food, water and tents supplied by his company. They drove west toward the hills until they were stopped at a checkpoint. A Georgian soldier told them there was fighting ahead and they couldn’t proceed. Amiran replied that he knew the area and that they would be turning off the road before they reached the fighting. That was the plan.

Then the driver refused to go any further, saying he wasn’t getting paid enough to risk his life for a bunch of village children. Negotiations followed, with the promise of a sizable bonus. Still the driver refused. The Georgian soldier manning the checkpoint had taken an interest and he stepped in. Pointing his rifle at the driver he said “They need you and they’re paying you. Maybe you’d better drive.” That was the clincher. Off they drove, turning into the hills just before the fighting.

By the time they got to the camp some of the children had been reunited with their parents. Soon enough, eleven of the children had found their families, but one was told that his father hadn’t survived the attacks. Even that father was eventually found alive. Twelve lost children reunited with their families. It was a good couple of days’ work.

We have no contact with those children. We spend as much of our limited time with Amiran and his family as we can but it’s never enough. Our friend Levan works for a project that is building safe “play houses” for refugee children in the conflict zone near Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Each site is in easy range of Russian mortars and artillery, some are near obvious targets. Russian snipers still do their deadly jobs nearby. His project's driver won't go out there. Too dangerous. Levan puts a magnetic sign on the hood of his car, his employer’s logo, and hopes not to be killed. He goes anyway. He’s a hero, too.

In our imaginations, some of the twelve children find their way to these little islands of safety. They play, read and talk to the counselors. They can forget about the deaths, the chaos and the camps for a while. But even if they don’t, other children do. Every day children at these little refuges smile, play and rest.

The shelling has stopped for now. The marauders still come occasionally, pillaging without consequence. The crops are gone and so are the farmers. Some of the Georgian villages that once existed peacefully side-by-side with their South Ossetian neighbors have been bulldozed out of existence. That’s a WW II German tactic often used when a Russian village was suspected of harboring partisans. Returning residents can’t even find their old homesites. Every landmark, every intersection is gone. Insanity.

Viktor M. is a Red Army close combat veteran of the Afghanistan War, a hard man from a hard time. He lived outside in a Tbilisi courtyard during the August fighting. He and some friends wouldn’t stay inside; the bombing was too near and too shattering. They gathered together in mutual support. They chatted, dozed when they could, smoked and played cards, listened to the news and the bombs.

Another friend arrived. “Viktor, my son has been killed in the war. Will you help me find his body?” The Russians were burying Georgian dead in mass graves. Months later some of the remains would be disinterred in horrifying scenes reminiscent of Katyn, Crimea and Stalingrad. But that would only come later.

You can’t say no to a request like that from a friend, from a grieving father. Otherwise, what would friendship mean? Viktor and the father got into their beat-up Russian Ladas and drove toward the war zone, without a plan and, mostly, without a hope. Viktor knew only too well what they were likely to find.

Things were quiet by then in most sectors. They drove into the conflict zone itself, stopping only when forced to by Russian troops. Viktor M. is a retired Russian army colonel and he carries his retired officer’s identification card. At each stop he carefully got out of his car under armed, watchful and suspicious Russian eyes and identified himself. At each one he was told the same thing, “No, comrade colonel, we don’t know anything about the boy. And comrade colonel, this is a very dangerous thing you are doing. Why don’t you just go back home?”

Then, at one stop, a different answer from a young officer: “We don’t know anything about dead soldiers, comrade colonel, but we have some POWs. Want to take a look?” Viktor and the officer walked back into the small camp, past soldiers cleaning their weapons, eating, resting. There was a wire pen and inside the pen, seven young Georgian soldiers. One of them was the missing son.

The young soldiers were huddled together, exhausted and frightened. They were new 18-year-old reservists from the Gori base who had just reported for basic training when the Russians invaded. They were issued rifles and ammunition and little else and thrown against the Russian onslaught. They never had a chance. Most of their friends were already dead. It was likely they would soon join them. Prisoners are an inconvenience.

“Comrade lieutenant, that is the boy, that one over there with the other six. Comrade lieutenant, will you let me take my seven children home?”

It isn’t supposed to happen this way, of course. Civilians, even retired colonels, aren’t supposed to approach enemy camps and ask for prisoners back. No, there are protocols for things like this, rules that must be obeyed, prisoner exchanges, tits and tats and quid pro quos and photo ops for the international press.

The young officer thought for a moment. “Yes, comrade colonel, you may have them. No one wanted to kill them anyway.”

Viktor thanked the young officer and led the soldiers out of the pen. As they drove away in their overcrowded Ladas the boys were sobbing. They finally found a safe place to pull over and drink some water.

Viktor asked the boys what had happened. “Oh Uncle Viktor, it was so terrible. We had rifles and they had tanks. We were so frightened. We ran and ran and they killed us.” Viktor held the crying young soldier to his chest. “Don’t be afraid, my boy. I’m taking you home now.”

The war is over now, mostly. The killing is only sporadic, the tanks and artillery have pulled back. Levan still drives the roads into the conflict zone and the magnetic sign is still on his hood. He’s not dead yet and he’d like to keep it that way.

No hawks prowl the skies looking for prey in the open. They may be just over the horizon but you can’t see them from here. From here, most days, it looks like sanity has prevailed in the Caucasus. It hasn’t… but there are moments.

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I am speechless my friend. Wonderful stories-well told. Thank you

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