“The intensity of the fighting is increasing every day, so the number of wounded is also increasing,” admits volunteer Vasyl Kusiak, call sign "Laurence”, as he braces for another full day of medical evacuations. He is a 25-year-old Ukrainian paediatric surgeon and a paramedic of the volunteer medical battalion Hospitallers - and for the next month he oversees the evacuation bus. The medical evacuation bus called "Austrian” was named after the call sign of the Ukrainian doctor Natalia Frauscher, who lived in Austria, and died in a traffic accident during her duty on the previous Hospitallers's medical evacuation bus in June 2022. Kusiak explains they usually do three trips a day - which takes about five hours both ways - to move soldiers wounded in fighting in the Donetsk region to larger hospitals elsewhere. His fellow volunteer Olga Gavura was motivated to become a medic after her husband, who is a soldier, was injured in 2022. “I think our work is very important, because it helps to return the soul to the body of the wounded,” she says. With the relatively high average age of Ukrainian soldiers and intense fighting, Kusiak says they sometimes see the same soldiers onboard their bus. Despite the long hours and stressful working environment, Kusiak says he started volunteering on ambulances two years ago to be useful to the soldiers on the front. “I work so that I won't be ashamed to look my children in the eye." IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES