Tim Scalita was pretty sure he had died.
He was, after all, in a war zone in Ukraine. The Memphian had gone there this spring to be a combat medic with the idea of saving fighters who were casualties in battles against the invading Russians. But his reckoning with his own mortality was not from incoming artillery or hostile gunfire. “It was an allergic reaction to something combined with a bacterial infection,” he said. “It was just a mess. I couldn’t open my eyes to see. I was breathing fire. Everything was pain.”
I did a Memphis Flyer cover story on Scalita in May, about a month after he’d arrived. He’d joined a multi-national medical evacuation outfit and was kept busy training Ukrainian soldiers on combat life-saving techniques and battlefield tactics. He was still angling to get into the field, but bureaucracy was holding things up.
In the months since, Scalita has had to change the groups he’s been with for various reasons. For a while, he was with Dnipro-1, an equivalent to the national guard. “But they got hit. They had a spy in their midst, and it ended up that we lost about 15 guys, and another 40-something wounded. I have no idea which of those guys passed away or were wounded. There were people on the front page of the Memphis Flyer who are no longer with us, but I couldn’t tell you who that is.”
Scalita, a filmmaker and writer who was a corpsman in the U.S. Navy, continues to look for ways to get meaningfully involved. There was a time he and several other Westerners were ready to donate blood, but the offer was foiled by bureaucracy.
He continued giving training to the Ukrainians. “It’s fine, you know, good to train everybody,” he said. “But as time went on, there was just more and more of nothing happening. A whole lot of standby.”
A Ukrainian officer told Scalita that there wasn’t much prospect of getting around the bureaucracy. Unless he joined Dnipro-1. “I couldn’t do that. I’m not joining the Ukrainian military. I’m not swearing allegiance to another country. And as a veteran, I lose all of my benefits if I take active-duty orders from another country.”
There has been another problem that he hadn’t imagined until he saw it when he got there: Americans. “It’s totally understandable,” he said. “Some of us are good. Some of us came as professionals with great intentions in our hearts and we’ve come to help and we’ve been very good. Then there are those other Americans, not as many as you think, but they’re loud and they’re rude and they stand out. I was in Lviv because of volunteer opportunities and a lot of people to talk to, but Lviv was also where everyone comes into. There were a lot of loud, problematic Americans. And I’m like, yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and leave. I’m gonna go to Kyiv.”
He was able to do some teaching, but that wasn’t entirely useful. “In a classroom setting, it’s absolutely calm,” he said. “But in the field, we teach how to set up tourniquets. I’d tell them to thread it and put it on that person. I got a loaded rifle and when they’d go to thread it, I start popping on the ground. And they can’t do it.”
He spent some time in Kyiv and some time closer to the action. He was with a group working out of a hospital in Dnipro when he got sick. But the presence of his outfit was proving to be a danger to the staff and patients at the hospital, so they decided to relocate to a safe area. “They all moved out and forgot about me,” Scalita said. “For 24 hours, I can’t see, and no one speaks English. I was absolutely alone, no food, no water. I’d given myself over to the void because I had an insanely high fever. The next morning one of the guys wakes me up and he goes, ‘Hey, we’re gonna take care of you, buddy. It’s gonna be okay.’ I look at him and I say, ‘I’m pretty sure I died, man.’”
In his time over there, he’s made and lost friends, gained an appreciation of the Ukrainians, got a splendid tattoo for his birthday, lost at least four phones, and refined his ability to read the people in a bar. He’s had good times and hardship.
Scalita hopes to be back home around Christmas. “Do not forget there is a great war happening. Do not forget that we are doing our best to keep it here. The Ukrainians are a wonderful people and worth fighting for. Never stop supporting them regardless of popular politics. The future is here.”
Last month, he wrote: “The Russian propaganda machine has me as a Ukrainian Nazi. I’m not sure if I should be offended by the accusation or proud that I am on their radar. Not a Nazi. Hate fascism. Love democracy and equal rights for all. Also, fuck you Russia for the attempt.”
Last weekend he wrote: “I was in the attack this morning. First time I’ve ever run for my life. They killed civilians. A married couple expecting. It’s 10:41 p.m. and they’re coming at us again. Ukraine is wonderful. Their people sweet.”
Come home safe, Tim.