Ukraine Soldiers at Camp Zulu, Iraq

Three pictures below of the Ukraine soldiers were involved in the Jan 9 incident where it took 8 Ukraine soldiers lives. I left off their names because I couldn't get hold of these soldiers families to ask permission to use their names.

You can go to the 9/25/2005 posting to read their names, I can do this memorial but I couldn't put a name with a face

We used this truck to get water out of the canal a few miles down the road from Zulu until a Ukraine officer was killed in it by an IED. The thing laying on the ground beside it is a 15,000 gal water bladder, there are four of them which two of them is where the dirty water went and two is clean water that went through our water treatment system.

Notice there are no windows and side mirrors on the truck. The little dots is where the shrapnel entered the truck and killed this Ukraine Captain, Capt Yuriy Ivanov, I can mention his name because there is no picture of him. The Captain wanted to drive the truck because it was new and they didn't have anything like in Ukraine. He went to the watering hole three times in a row at the same time each day, the third day is when he was killed by an IED. The blast blew the truck on it side and all the windows out of it including the side mirrors. When they brought his body back to camp the Commanding Officer ask us if we could build a coffin for him so they can ship his body home, which we did and there was a little ceremony for him afterwards.

The truck still drives good but it is hard to backup without side mirrors and we only drove inside the camp.

He was a Captain

Me and this guy came to become good friends. He told me I was his first American friend and I told him he was my first Russian friend. He was from Odessa on the Black Sea and was married and had two girls. What was strange he told me his father was a Pilot in the Russian military and flew Migs and was shot down over North Vietnam by an American Pilot during the Vietnam war. This is when he told me I was his first American friend. He like to drink cokes and I would always sneak a couple when we had them from the mess hall at chow time and give them to him. He would never take them and I always had to threaten to pour them out and then he would. He was a good man and I notice his fellow soldiers would always look up to him.

Another good friend, he was a member of the Russian Army Special Forces before joining the Ukraine army. He made a point one time to show me pictures of his family which I felt honored, there were about 30 pictures in a photo book. He had a good looking wife and I told him she could be a model in the USA, he laughed and said she already is one. There were pictures of his son who just graduated from a Russian military academe and pictures of the graduation and is now an Officer in the Russian army. There were other pictures and I thank him for letting me see them.

The last time I saw and talked to him was around one in the morning at Ukraine Headquarters in Camp Zulu which he was fixing lead the convoy I was in going to Al Kut, Iraq.

He was a strict Ukraine Officer and a professional soldier in everyway and am glad to be his friend