PRAVDYNE, Ukraine -- Yevhenia was making the dangerous trek home near the front line when she first spotted the gravely wounded Ukrainian soldier who was part of a unit attempting to liberate her village from Russian occupation.
"I saw a soldier crawling," Yevhenia said of her encounter with Bohdan Artemchuk, a 35-year-old soldier she remembers fondly by his diminutive, Bohdanchik.
In September 2022, nearly seven months after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Bohdan and his unit had entered Pravdyne, in southern Ukraine's Kherson region, with the aim of freeing it from Russian forces.
"I ran up to him and said, 'Son, let me help you,' but I couldn't lift him."
Providing only her first name to Current Time, Yevhenia recalled recently that she could immediately see Bohdan was suffering.
"I looked and saw that he had a big wound on his side and back and there was a lot of blood on the ground," Yevhenia said.
Despite his injuries, Bohdan managed to point out he was not alone. He directed Yevhenia's attention to her yard, where she discovered 31-year-old Ukrainian soldier Kostyantyn Khakimov, who was also seriously wounded.
Yevhenia wasted no time doing what she could to help.
'Give Me Some Water'
The first call of order was to grant Kostyantyn -- or Kostya, as Yevhenia remembers him -- his first wish.
"Grandma, give me some water," she recalled him saying.
She had been stockpiling fresh drinking water ever since Russia's all-out invasion. Soon afterward, Russian forces moved north from already occupied Crimea, took the strategic city of Kherson, and were advancing toward Mykolayiv.
Pravdyne, just 30 kilometers southeast of Mykolayiv, came under the control of Russian forces but found itself on the front lines when Moscow's advance stalled.
By September 2022, Bohdan and Kostyantyn's unit had retaken neighboring villages and was launching raids to liberate the village.
Kostya gulped down the water and Yevhenia ran for help. Her first thought was to find someone with a car who could help get the soldiers to a hospital in a nearby village. But most people with a vehicle had fled long ago; there were only about 180 people left in the village that was home to 1,500 people before the war.
Neighbors she found were unwilling to help initially, warning Yevhenia was going to get them all killed.
Returning home empty-handed, she saw two Russian soldiers looking for Ukrainians who may have survived their earlier firefight.
"Guys, don't touch them. They are wounded, they can't do anything to you," she pleaded.
The Russians interrogated Kostya and Bohdan and took their documents but did not take them away.
Yevhenia set out again, this time for medicine and clothing, eventually returning with two other pensioners -- Dusia and Valia -- who instantly set about tending to the wounded Ukrainian soldiers.
Yevhenia tried to nurse them back to health by feeding them broth. "I begged them, pleaded with them, I cried," she said. "But they didn't want to eat anything."
Bohdan appeared resigned that death was near, saying simply, "It's coming for me."
On the fourth day, "He asked for a glass of water, drank it, and asked to sit," Yevhenia said. "He hugged Dusia, then put his head on her shoulder and died just like that, with his eyes open.”
A day later Kostya also passed away, she added tearfully.
Last Respects
Yevhenia, Dusia, and Valia made sure their would-be liberators would one day be given a proper burial by their relatives.
Risking retaliation by occupying Russian forces, the three pensioners got neighbors to dig a hole in Yevhenia's backyard. The bodies were carefully wrapped in sheets and then plastic to help preserve them, before being lowered in one by one.
First Bohdan's remains were entered, then covered with a large slate. Then went Kostya, his body also covered with a slate to prevent dogs from getting at his remains.
Their bodies remained hidden until a few months later when the Ukrainian Army's 28th Brigade -- Bohdan's and Kostya's brigade -- liberated Pravdyne.
Yevhenia led the liberating soldiers to their comrades' bodies and handed over their documents so they could be identified.
Eventually, Yevhenia's wish came true when the families of the soldiers she had watched over arrived in the village to take possession of their bodies.
She recalled the thankful father of one of the dead soldiers sharing that his son had spoken to him in a dream, telling him, "It's so heavy, as if something was crushing me."
"And indeed, that's how it was," Yevhenia concluded. "There was a slate lying on him."
