The Alligator and the Drone — W Lance Hunt

One evening not long ago

In Eastern Ukraine, a soldier hunches over her control panel and examines the dark image sliding across her screen. It’s evening. She can make out trees. A strip of road. A field pocked with fox holes and craters left from Howitzer shells and HIMARS blasts. A tank sits behind a ridge of earth, its turret upside down a few meters away. Black fills a wide, round hole at the center of the tank’s body.

Only Hours before

Two hours ago, that tank had been shelling a position of Ukrainian soldiers working to cross a trench. The soldiers were pinned down. Over the radio, the soldier heard the call for support, acknowledged the call, then shifted a small joystick next to the screen and flew her drone in the direction from which the shells hammering the soldiers were coming.

In the afternoon light, she finds a T-72 tank hiding behind an earthwork, a smoke trail curling from the muzzle of its gun. Nearby, a dozen soldiers dig at two deep craters left by Howitzer shells. Picking up her radio, she calls for an artillery strike. Gives the coordinates. Then waits, hoping the cannon on the T-72 stays silent.

A minute later, a shell hits the field. Too far to the left. The troops scatter, some jumping into the mud-filled craters.

She calls in a correction in minutes of degree.

Small arms flash in white bursts on her screen. The enemy knows she’s looking at them now. Two of the Russians have spotted her, and one take more time to aim at the drone she’d named Shalom. She moves the joystick this way and that, not letting the grey-green figure get a bead on Shalom.

The next artillery shell explodes on the earthwork directly in front of the T-72.

Starting up its engine, the tank lets out a gout of black smoke.

“блядь!” she curses.

The tank starts backing up. Soon, it will drive away, set back up, and resume shelling her soldiers.

She must work fast, calling in a second adjustment, figuring in the direction the tank is turning and how far it will move in the next minute.

Again, she waits. At least the soldiers she’s protecting will get a few minutes of relief.

Then, a large flash bursts from the back of the T-72. Moments pass-the armored machine studders. Then, the turret jumps off as the shells intended to kill her countrymen explode inside. Her soldiers are safe. For now.

Once she lets the artillery crew know they’d hit their mark, she returns to listening for distress calls from her soldiers, all the other men and women protecting their homes from invasion. As she does every day. †

The Alligator

Across the continent of Europe and the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, in an apartment in Brooklyn, I look to my right. Perched on the back of the sofa sits a crocheted alligator, grey, anthropomorphized, and wearing a tutu with a red ball atop a pointed cap. She, or it, or he, who knows, is cute. My wife bought it recently at an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. From a Ukrainian friend who works with a network of other Ukrainians and their supporters here in NYC and across Europe. The money for this alligator made its way from that apartment and into a fund that had ultimately bought the drone named Shalom, which then found the Russian tank firing on the Ukrainian soldiers. And helped destroy it. Supported, in this tiny way, the soldiers pinned down by tank fire that day. Men and women who will never know of this crocheted dragon on the back of my couch. The soldiers of that small country defending itself from a much larger and deeply cruel enemy.

The Report

Not long ago, my wife was forwarded this thank you from the person organizing this group of Ukrainian patriots:

“Drone report: Shalom entered service January 1, 2024
Thank you to everyone who has contributed!
Unfortunately, I can’t tag everyone, so help, please tag in the comments who you know from this list [last names initialized to protect the supporters of Ukraine]:
Larisa S., Inna K., Anna N., Elena B., Maria P., Eugene G., Sofia G., Martina H., Nataliya G., Inna S., Ilya R., Maksym N., Vladimir V., Aleksander L., Natalia W., Katia M., Sampsa S., Ernesto O., Alex L., Kevin C., Arkadiy K., Garri A., Martа н., Janice A., Osip S., Gleb G., Angela P., thank you for redirecting your gift money to this bird! Who says a girl’s best friend are diamonds? Foolishness! A girl’s best friend are drones! Well, more collimators, medical tactical kits, thermal imagers, walkies, РЕби (Electronic Warfare), helmets, armor… Well you got it

GLORY TO UKRAINE! DEATH TO THE ENEMY!”

Private Online Message

An Ambulance

The alligator sitting on this couch reminds me every day of those men and women fighting in miserable conditions, protecting their families, their cities, their country from invasion. It reminds me of friends, of people I know from Ukraine doing what they can from afar. Crowdsourcing not only drones and radios but even an ambulance filled with supplies.

This life-saving vehicle was purchased from the sale of artwork held at my son’s art school. A piece of that sale hangs on the wall above and to the left of the crocheted alligator. In that sale, my son sold artwork. The money going not to him, but to save lives in a land he’s never even visited. A land where his art teacher and several of our friends were born.

No one wins alone

It’s a team effort here as well as there. For no one wins a war alone.

† This dramatized account is based on actual reports from the drone operator as recounted to me one afternoon not long ago.

Originally published at https://wlancehunt.com on January 22, 2024.