A Canadian combat medic in Ukraine: ‘I looked at my children and thought I had to do something’
A Canadian combat medic in Ukraine: ‘I looked at my children and thought I had to do something’
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/24587194
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April Huggett traded her life as a homemaker in Canada for the trenches of Ukraine to defend democracy and freedom against Russia’s expansionist ambitions
Until 2022, April Huggett’s life revolved around caring for her three children, then aged two, seven, and 11. The Russian invasion of Ukraine shook her so much that she decided to trade that life as a homemaker for the trenches and daily bombings on the Donetsk front, one of the most active of the war, to defend democracy and the free world where she was born against the expansionist threat of Russia. “After the Bucha massacre, it was really hard for me to move on. It was so similar to World War II... I looked at my children and thought I had to do something,” she recalls at the foot of a trench in a Donbas forest, where she is training with her comrades from the Alcatraz Battalion. Huggett, 36, wasn’t content with being a volunteer; she enlisted and, since December 2024, has served as a combat medic for this battalion, part of the 93rd Kholodny Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade and made up exclusively of ex-convicts who took up a government offer of sentence reductions to fight on the front lines. Huggett disinfects the finger of a recruit who has just cut himself on a tool and says: “These people are my family. They are my friends.”
Damn, imagine your mother telling you she'd prefer being in a warzone than raising you.
Edit: did you guys not read the article? She says her family doesn't support her decision and that her unit is now her new family. This isn't a feel good story at all.
Yeah, if this was a Ukrainian or her kids were grown, I would understand. But, she has young kids who need her and probably can’t even begin to understand the situation in Ukraine.
If this were my spouse, I’d divorce and begin looking for another mother for the kids. I don’t know any mothers or fathers that would leave young children for a foreign war.
Need her? Yes. Require her? Not so much.
In many multiple studies across hundreds of thousands of single-parent households, it was discovered that a missing father produced about 98% of so-called “problem teens”, that engaged in crimes, drug use, teenage pregnancies, and many other issues. Many of these children also went on to have significant difficulties remaining in stable adult relationships.
There was no corresponding issues with missing mothers. Like, literally zero negative aggregate effect was seen across single-parent households that had a father, vs normal two-parent households.
Those kids will likely be perfectly fine.
Imagine telling your children you were willing and able to help those less fortunate than you but chose not to.
And I’m pretty sure she’d prefer not to have to be in that position.
Where do you draw the line who is worthy of helping? Your family? Your neighbors? Your city?…
Or is it solely because she’s a woman and expected to take care of the children? Would it be different if her husband was in the army and was sent to help?
What about doctors who help in foreign countries under heightened risk? What about firefighters helping everywhere they can?
She has a fucking two year old. She not only had no obligation to help (unlike literally all of your examples) she had ample reason not to.
She ran away from her family like a coward to get out of dealing with them, to play soldier and be used as a bad PR piece.
If she'd prefer not to be in that situation, she had every ability not to be, instead she could've been a parent to her kids, instead of daddy's first wife.