Mark Zydga, a 27-year-old volunteer from western Ukraine, has spoken publicly for the first time about the harrowing work of retrieving fallen soldiers' bodies from the front line. Over four years of conflict, his team, called On The Shield, has collected more than 1,000 corpses, often navigating Russian 'kill zones' and dealing with the gruesome reality of war.
First-person account of the grim task
Mark, who runs a small business by day, told Metro: 'I have to open the body bag and read how the person died. When I bring the bodies back home to their mums and dads, you see a big man crying, weeping and screaming over the body. You cannot really erase these moments out of your mind.'
The smell is the first sign that his van is not carrying ordinary cargo. Driving through Ukrainian wasteland, his truck serves as a moving refrigerator, transporting the dead from the front to their families in the western regions of Luts'k, Rivne, and Zhytomyr.
Origin of the mission
When Russian troops invaded over four years ago, Mark and his friends from the local Baptist Church initially focused on evacuating civilians from the east. But as the war escalated into trench warfare, they noticed a critical gap: soldiers' bodies were not being returned home, and those that were often arrived decomposed.
'One of my classmates died during the battle. His mum will not calm down before she buries his son,' Mark said. 'Lots of soldiers were dying and the process for bringing bodies back home was not established yet. Other bodies were being transported in a very horrible way. They didn't have special cars or refrigerators.'
People in his town, knowing he traveled east, began asking him to bring back their dead. The Church pooled resources and purchased a refrigerator van, enabling the team to make countless 1,900-mile (3,000 km) round trips to collect the fallen.
Challenges and emotional toll
Each trip presents new challenges. Bodies are found in morgues, random houses, or cars. Sometimes they must be packed into bags, other times they are already sealed. The hardest part, Mark says, is handling light packages: 'Because when the package is light, it is just a part of the body, like someone's hand. Or it is a young guy who is just 18 years old.'
The psychological impact has been profound. Mark recalled delivering the body of a woman killed by a missile while in a trench with her husband, who carried her 8 km and then followed the van for 600 km, weeping. 'You cannot really erase these moments out of your mind. It has had a great impact on me and my psychological state,' he said. He has become reserved and closed off, but also admits to a rush of adrenaline when driving along the front.
Danger and resilience
The team faces constant danger from drones and Russian attacks. 'We have the kill zone, which can be like for 40 kilometres because you never know how far the drone can fly and where it can kick you,' Mark explained. They avoid refueling in the east due to drone strikes on gas stations. He described how drones can 'tear' people 'into pieces', but sometimes death is subtle: 'There was a time I was picking up a man and I could not understand how he died, as he looked well. But then it was written that under his heart there was a small hole, and that was the one injury he got.'
Despite the horrors, Mark finds meaning in the gratitude of families. 'Those families we bring the bodies to are extremely thankful. We become quite close friends after. People often say that these experiences can make you aggressive or uncaring. But I would say that it makes you softer because you start to appreciate the time that you have. You start to appreciate the life that you have.'
