“Dad, I’m in Ukraine, and I’m joining the International Legion,” he said. “Can you tell mom?”
You have to tell her yourself, Adam replied, and handed the phone to Lucy.
She listened in shock as Austin explained his decision. He’d seen the refugees from Ukraine spilling into Portugal, he told her. He’d seen the exhausted faces of the women and children and read reports of civilians being killed. He couldn’t just sit there and watch. And what if the war spread to engulf the whole world? So he wanted to fight for his brothers and sisters too.
So Native, as they often called him, became the guy they most wanted to have beside them when things got rough. He always saw clearly. On one mission, when a fellow soldier began trembling from shell shock, it was Austin who first spoke up to say the man needed help; on another occasion, when a tank blast nearly smashed through the ceiling of the root cellar in which they were hiding, Austin didn’t flinch, but just calmly put on his helmet.
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