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In his new book, The Mad and the Brave, journalist Colin Freeman explores the foreign volunteers who joined Ukraine’s International Legion – men and women driven by courage, madness, and a search for meaning.
By Colin Freeman
Coming up with a title for a new book is never easy. First, it has to say what it’s about – secondly, it has to do so in just a few catchy, zeitgeisty words.
So I was rather chuffed when I thought up the original title for my book on Ukraine’s International Legion, which I was going to call It’s Not Like Call of Duty.
This, I thought, would sum up the experience of many of the fresh-faced volunteers who came to Ukraine at the start of the war – many of them combat virgins, whose only knowledge of a battlefield was playing video games.
Alas, when I suggested this inspired title to my agent, it was my own turn for a reality jolt. The games firm behind Call of Duty, he said, might regard it as copyright infringement.
We then tried to brainstorm a substitute. Zelensky’s Foreign Legion? A bit plodding. Homage to Ukraine, in honour of Homage to Catalonia, Orwell’s classic on volunteering in the Spanish Civil War? “A bit grand to compare yourself to one of Britain’s greatest writers,” said my other half.
Eventually, it was the publisher, HarperCollins, who came to the rescue, with The Mad and the Brave: the Untold Story of Ukraine’s Foreign Legion. This, I think, encapsulates the two qualities that most foreign volunteers have (albeit in varying ratios).
The “Brave” bit is self-explanatory, as anyone who has visited Ukraine’s frontlines can attest. Just as it isn’t Call of Duty, it isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan either, where Western armies wielded the upper hand and could call in air strikes and helicopter medevacs.
In Ukraine, Westerners are on the side of the underdogs – constantly outgunned and outmanned by a bigger, stronger enemy. Spending any time on those frontlines requires a degree of courage, given how the odds are stacked against you. As one volunteer once told me: “We’re like the White Taliban.”
It is the “Mad” bit, though, that really marks the volunteers out from other soldiers – and which partly inspired me to write the book in the first place.
For what they nearly all have in common, be they Afghan-hardened ex-Paras or raw novices, is that other people – partners, parents, peers, pals – all thought they were bonkers.
Ukraine may well be as noble a cause as fighting Franco’s Fascists in Spain. Yet when they first mentioned their plans to sign up for the Legion, very few at all got an encouraging pat on the back.
Instead, loved ones pushed back hard. You’re crazy. You’ll get killed. Why fight in someone else’s war, even if it’s a just one? Some even had their mental health questioned. Family and friends would inquire, gently, whether they were feeling suicidal, whether this was all just a cry for help.
Most were perfectly sane. But it still made volunteering in Ukraine a very different experience from fighting in any other war.
No friends and family cheerfully waving them off. No insurance or medical cover. And nobody but themselves to blame if all went horribly wrong, which it might well do.
Quite a few got told they were selfish, downright stupid, that this was all about them, not the cause. Not the words any soldier wants ringing in their ears as they head off to war.
That, though, is what makes the Legionnaires an interesting study in human psychology. After all, what kind of person abandons a comfortable civilian life in the West overnight to go and fight in someone else’s war?
Not just any old war either, but the biggest since World War II, and up against a superpower army that cares little for the niceties of the Geneva convention?
The volunteers in my book reveal a wide range of motives. Some, indeed, see themselves as modern-day Orwells, fighting a Russian version of Franco’s fascists. Others, particularly the professional ex-soldiers, are keen to test their infantry skills against a peer army.
Many, though, simply feel bored and restless in the safe, cossetted West, and want to see if they can handle full-on, old-school warfare of the kind their forefathers did. Reviewers of the book have described it as “Fight Club on steroids”, which I think is a valid comparison.
To quote Fight Club’s Tyler Durden: “We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives.”
This, I think, is what sustains many of the volunteers through thick and thin, through the horrors of combat, and the deaths and injuries of comrades.
It’s not just that they’re fighting the gauntlet of tyranny thrown by Vladimir Putin – they’re also fighting a gauntlet thrown by themselves, to see if they can be heroes of their own version of Band of Brothers.
For example, one volunteer, ex-Royal Engineer Jack Knight, was seeking to follow the footsteps of an ancestor who’d won the Victoria Cross, rescuing wounded comrades while under fire.
“I’m from a military family, and it’s quite a thing to have in your bloodline,” Knight, 32, told me way back at the start of the war. “I’d always wanted to know if I could live up to his reputation.”
For Knight, who had missed out on serving in Afghanistan, Ukraine was also likely to be the only opportunity he would ever have to fight. So off he went – and in late 2023, duly won a bravery medal for rescuing wounded comrades from a minefield.
He is now back in the UK, his fighting days over. But like nearly every volunteer I’ve interviewed – including some who endured months of torture as Russian PoWs – he credits the war with giving him a renewed sense of purpose in life.
Whether the volunteers have made much difference on the battlefield is another matter. At most, it’s thought that only around 20,000 have served with the Legion over the past three years – which, in a conflict with roughly half a million participants on either side, is no game changer.
Arguably, the Legionnaire’s biggest contribution has been to Ukrainian morale, reminding that for some Westerners at least, the slogan “We Stand with Ukraine” meant more than just cheerleading from afar.
Yet if and when the war ends, the Legionnaires will probably return home as unceremoniously as they left. There will be no homecoming parades, no medals, and no Prime Minister welcoming them back (HMG advises against anyone volunteering).
Indeed, so far, the only organisation that intends to mark their contribution is the Ukrainian Embassy in London, which has plans for a memorial once the conflict is over.
It falls somewhat short of the recognition given to Orwell and his fellow volunteers in Spain, who have come to personify the selfless, noble freedom fighter. There are plaques and memorials commemorating them in town halls and trade union HQs nationwide – and a movie, Land and Freedom, by the film director Ken Loach.
That, though, is because most were members of communist parties and trade unions, who actively encouraged their members to do their bit for the cause.
Ukraine’s volunteers, by contrast, have nobody urging them to go except themselves, and made that momentous decision alone.
That, I would argue, requires a special kind of bravery – and yes, probably a little madness too.