Arthur Smith, 25, transported medical supplies and patients in Ukraine
(Picture: Supplied)A London bus driver who spent seven months voluntarily transporting medical supplies and patients across Ukraine said he feared for his life.
Arthur Smith stayed overnight in a house just metres away from shelling in the east of the war-torn country and described it “like 100 fireworks going off in the next room”.
He transported humanitarian aid to the frontline and helped Ukrainian soldiers move bodies that had been unattended for weeks.
“I was a Coastguard and I’ve worked with emergency services. I’ve seen bodies, but the stuff you see out there is so different, it’s personal,” Mr Smith told the Standard.
He recalled transporting a young Ukrainian girl, who had a tumour that was untreated, to a German hospital.
“There were hundreds like this, but this one in particular, she was in an ambulance that had broken down because it had travelled all the way from Donbas and it was in Kyiv. At that time I was in Lviv.
“So we got in an ambulance, I took a girl who spoke Ukrainian, we blue-lighted to Kyiv, picked up this patient and blue-lighted her through Ukraine and Poland and to Germany to a hospital.”
Although Mr Smith has returned to the capital for “some form of normality”, he said he wished he could have done more to help the people of Ukraine.
“Even if we’d gone over there and given one person what they needed, the fact that we gave thousands, I am happy about it. But I wish I could have done more,” Mr Smith said.
He led a convoy of healthcare volunteers from across the globe to Ukraine in February, using a number of vehicles that he purchased off the back of selling his mechanics business.
Under the name ‘Road to Ukraine’, the group delivered 95 tonnes of medical supplies, sent from private practices in the UK, Ireland and France, to pop-up hospitals in Ukraine, including blood and insulin.
Volunteers also supplied generators, food and hygiene products and fuel from Poland, but it quickly became apparent that more ambulances were needed.
Mr Smith said the team stripped buses and vans and retro-fitted them into make-shift ambulances to help out.
“I’ve got a blue light licence, so when I got out there, I realised they needed urgent transport for things like blood and insulin,” Mr Smith said.
“About three months in, I turned a lot of the vehicles into ambulances and was basically driving blood and insulin from Germany and Poland into really bad parts of Ukraine.
“We ended up in occupied regions a few times as we were delivering a lot of stuff to the frontline.
“We’ve gone through and seen cars that have been smouldering, the previous convoy that has come through had been ambushed.”
Mr Smith said when travelling east to Kyiv or the Donbas region, often there would be shelling.
“At night, in a convoy in that area, it’s so dangerous. You’re very visible with headlights.
“So we’d have to take breaks. We’d use 11pm to 4am to rest then we were back on the road.
“Overnight we stayed in a house. It was the only house left standing in Kharkiv, in this village. There must have been a good 100 houses, all obliterated.
“A family that one of the volunteers knew invited us to stay there, and during the night the whole house was shaking. It was something I have never experienced before.
“It was like 100 fireworks going off in the next room. It was just bombing all over and somehow it didn’t get the house.”
Despite the challenges, Mr Smith said Ukraine is “a fantastic country”.
“I would happily live in Ukraine,” he said.
“It is such a fantastic country, and there is so much culture and the people. I didn’t meet one Ukrainian person that I wouldn’t get on with.”
Road to Ukraine said 14,600 people were transported to safety using their vehicles, 95 tonnes of medical equipment distributed in Ukraine and 112 tonnes of food and hygiene products.
