The Story Behind a “Golden Cross”: A Battlefield Evacuation on a “Combat Wheelbarrow”

Border Guard “Tykhyi” Recounts How He and His Comrades Spent More Than Three Days Pulling a Wounded Soldier Out from Under the Enemy’s Nose

We speak with Staff Sergeant Mykola Vasyliev, a border guard with the call sign “Tykhyi,” in Mukachevo. A year and a half ago, he received the Golden Cross, an Armed Forces of Ukraine award given to privates and sergeants for courage and heroism. His account of that evacuation sounds like a real action story.

CONSCIENCE DREW HIM TO WAR

Mykola is originally from Kryvyi Rih. He ended up in Zakarpattia as a conscript in 2017.

“At that time,” he recalls, “ compulsory service had been suspended for eight years. We were the first group drafted when it was reinstated. At first we were promised we’d serve not far from home — maybe 200–300 kilometers away. We dreamed about Odesa or Mykolaiv, somewhere closer to the sea. But then the command announced: you’re going to Zakarpattia.

Later I met my future wife here, signed a contract, and stayed to live and serve in the Khust district on the Romanian border.”

By the time Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, “Tykhyi” already had three daughters.

“I had the right to stay home and not go to war. But I felt I couldn’t stand aside. I watched my comrades constantly heading out on rotations, and I felt ashamed in front of them. At some point I decided to go and serve alongside my guys. My conscience told me it was the right thing to do,” the soldier says.

At first, his unit was stationed in Rivne region, near the Belarusian border. Later they were redeployed to Kharkiv region, near Vovchansk.

“We arrived just as the Russian offensive of 2024 began. We were positioned directly on the border with Russia. No one expected such intense pressure from their side — we thought we would simply have to hold our positions.

But on May 9, hell broke loose: massive shelling, armored vehicles, infantry. We fought our first battle and then kept withdrawing closer and closer to the city. Soon street fighting began.”

“THE COMBAT WHEELBARROW” AND ITS “PASSENGERS”

“Tykhyi” was assigned to an evacuation team.

“I had completed combat medic courses — that turned out to be enough. I could provide basic first aid, but our main task was to pull the wounded out and carry him from the red zone to the evacuation point. There were four of us in the team.

We had no combat medic and no driver — so we literally carried the wounded in our arms.

Later we found an ordinary wheelbarrow from local residents. Naturally, we called it the ‘combat wheelbarrow.’ It helped us enormously: dragging someone on a stretcher for four or five kilometers under constant shelling is almost impossible.

We learned to strap stretchers with two wounded soldiers onto the wheelbarrow and ran with it through the streets of Vovchansk to the evacuation point,” Tykhyi says.

His call sign, he notes, is ironic. Mykola earned it because in stressful situations he would shout loudly at the guys. He became “quiet” only when the group received especially dangerous missions and no one wanted to volunteer. At one point he was assigned two older mobilized soldiers whom he jokingly calls “busified grandpas.”

“They were nearly 60 and liked to drink. With them, I was the ‘quiet one.’ I especially lost my temper when one of them was supposed to lead the group. They gave him a Kropyva tablet — with maps and coordination software — and he said, ‘Can someone show me how to turn this thing on?’” the soldier recalls.

Mykola says his first experience evacuating a wounded soldier was the hardest.

“A guy from my unit died in my arms. Their group was supposed to replace another one. They set out but didn’t even reach the positions — enemy artillery hit them.

We got the report about the wounded and it took us almost a day to reach them, moving between drones and Grad rocket strikes.

Unfortunately, support from adjacent units was insufficient, and we lost precious time. By the time we reached them, it was already too late — and we still had to get out.

That soldier had severe leg injuries and a pneumothorax… His heart just couldn’t hold on,” Mykola pauses for a moment.

“But we managed to pull the other three out,” he adds.

THE PRINCIPLE: “WE TAKE EVERYONE BACK”

“Tykhyi” was uncompromising about one principle: he tried to bring back both the dead and those who died during evacuation, even though carrying them out under constant Russian fire was extremely difficult.

“Sometimes the command would order us to leave the fallen, saying we could retrieve them later, when things calmed down. But I always insisted: everyone must come home. I told the guys — we don’t know when we ourselves might end up in their place.

For me, the worst thing to imagine was someone’s parents, wife, or children waiting and hoping their soldier would come home, not knowing where his body is. That’s why we evacuated both the wounded and the dead. I have a wife and children myself — I put myself in the place of that fallen soldier.

More than anything in the world, I would want not to be left behind on the position, but for my body to be taken home and returned to my family.”

Mykola admits that this principle often put both him and the men in his evacuation team at considerable risk.

THE HOUSE WAS “BROUGHT DOWN” BY AIRSTRIKES

“Tykhyi” recalls the evacuation for which he received the Golden Cross.

“We moved out to a position held by our guys — border guards together with an adjacent unit. A group of Russians had thrown grenades at six of the men there. Only one survived; his legs were shattered.

He had applied tourniquets himself and sat there for three days, right under the enemy’s nose. For this evacuation I asked to replace my ‘grandpas’ with younger guys — we needed to move fast and react quickly.

We reached the position. The dead were buried under the soil. The wounded man wasn’t a border guard — he was from the adjacent unit. He weighed about 110 kilograms.

We pulled him out of the position under covering fire. The enemy was less than a hundred meters away, but they didn’t spot us immediately and didn’t pursue us at first. They started shelling only after we had already run some distance with the ‘three-hundred.’

We stopped briefly to catch our breath — and they dropped a VOG grenade on me. It landed just a couple of meters away. I told the guys: ‘Grab the three-hundred and run — now.’

We ran with him toward the apartment blocks, managed to get inside one of the entrances — and then they started hitting the building with everything they had: artillery, aviation… The only stroke of luck was that they got the wrong entrance. They dropped a KAB glide bomb on the neighboring section of the building.

We stayed in our shelter until nightfall, and around 11 p.m. decided to take the risk. I went out first — and a mortar round hit nearby. I didn’t even feel the impact, I just saw a flash in front of my eyes. I was thrown aside and buried under bricks.

I lost consciousness. When I came to, my helmet was gone, and I started firing because I thought we were under assault. The guys dragged me back by the shoulders. They said it had been an overshoot — and that I’d been lucky.

After the strike we managed to run into another building. The Russians then began pounding the one where they thought we were, using aircraft. They brought that building down right before our eyes. It was a horrific sight.”

“Did they think there were about twenty of you inside?” I ask.

“No. They didn’t spare any of that firepower even for the four of us. They’ve got plenty of that ‘stuff’…”

THE BODY CAN DO MIRACLES ON ADRENALINE

“Tykhyi’s” group left Vovchansk with the wounded soldier at dawn. They managed to reach the outskirts — arriving at an evacuation point where the “combat wheelbarrow” had already been prepared. They loaded their “three-hundred” onto it and made their way to the river.

By that time, the evacuation had already lasted more than two days. In total, the group had to cover 7.2 kilometers.

“There was fog, but even so they spotted us at the river. Mortars and multiple-launch rocket systems started firing. From time to time I was losing consciousness — the effects of that mortar blast were catching up with me.

Only later did I learn that I had suffered a stroke back then. The guys told me they saw me falling and getting back up again. Sometimes the left side of my body would stop responding.

But I’d throw up, cough it off — and get back up, because we had to keep running. On adrenaline, the human body can do miracles…

There, at the river, one of our guys started to panic. He couldn’t carry the wounded man anymore, but we wouldn’t have been able to drag him along as well. I told him to go ahead.

We had about two kilometers left — we needed to cross a field from the river to our positions in the morning fog. And that’s when artillery spotted us.”

“Two mortars were working against us for forty minutes. Explosions kept covering us with dirt and water. All we could do was lie there and pray we wouldn’t be hit… I’ll never forget it: you’re lying there thinking that any second a shell will land between you — and that’s it, you’re gone. But God spared us.”

Mykola says that once the shelling subsided, he went to look for the young soldier who had panicked and run ahead. He found him. At the same time, he came across another wounded fighter: the man had been lying there with a tourniquet on for more than a day, and during the shelling a wooden splinter had pierced his leg — straight into a vein.

“When the mortar fire stopped, we ran across the field with our ‘three-hundred.’ We got him to the evacuation point and handed him over. Then I said I was going back across the field for the other wounded soldier with the splinter in his leg.

The guys tried to stop me — my left eye had already started drifting, and I was twitching. But I grabbed the wheelbarrow and went for him, and they came with me.

We managed to evacuate him — but sadly, it was already too late. He died later in the hospital…”

What pains him most, Mykola says, is that the wounded soldier weighing 110 kilograms, whom they had spent more than three days trying to save, also did not survive.

“At the stabilization point, during the amputation, his heart gave out. When I heard that, I said I would never go on another evacuation again. It’s very hard to live through something like that…”

As Mykola notes, after that mission he himself had to be evacuated.

“They admitted me to the hospital — it turned out I had suffered a stroke. I received treatment and stayed in hospitals in Poltava and Kharkiv. After I was discharged, I was awarded the Golden Cross for that evacuation.”

A MONTH AND A HALF IN “THE PIT”

After recovering, Mykola faced another ordeal on the front line. In 2025, he spent 45 days in a “pit” position in the Serebrianka Forest in Luhansk region.

“After the hospitals and my leave, I returned to duty. This time it was the Serebrianskyi Forest near Bilohorivka. Our positions were about 150 meters from the enemy’s, and we were almost surrounded.

The position was so cramped that you could only get into it after taking off your body armor. There was no communication and no way out. We drank melted snow, and when it was gone we filtered water from a small well we dug near the dugout.

Someone had to fetch the water — most often it was me, because the other three guys were afraid to climb out. Some of them had become so unused to daylight that they could barely stand it. Sometimes food was dropped by drone, but there were weeks when nothing arrived.”

Mykola recalls that they entered the position while snow still covered the ground, and when they finally left in May, the forest had already turned green.

“In fact, we might have stayed there longer than 45 days. In a way, we were ‘lucky’: one of our soldiers stepped on a ‘petal’ mine and it tore off his leg.

Once again we had to carry out the evacuation ourselves. As squad leader, I was the first to enter the position and the first to leave. The distance wasn’t too far — about two kilometers. We carried him out and then returned.

After that there was another drone drop, and I was concussed again — soil collapsed on me. Combined with the earlier stroke, the second blow to the head made me feel very bad. That’s when I finally left the position.”

He also remembers occasions when Russian soldiers came right up to the dugout and shouted: “Is anyone alive in there?”

“One of them almost threw a grenade into our dugout, but we managed to open fire first. He ran off and even left his grenade behind. I joked then: ‘Oh, humanitarian aid from the Muscovites.’

There was another one — he went to fetch water, got lost, and came straight to us carrying bottles of it. We took him prisoner,” Mykola says.

Now he continues serving as an instructor in the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. He travels to training centers for basic training courses, sharing his combat experience with new recruits.

At the same time, “Tykhyi” still faces a long road to recovery. He has lost vision in his left eye and continues to feel the effects of two strokes.

But his conscience is clear.

The soldier says he does not regret his choice. His main takeaway, he says, is that he survived — and managed to pull out as many people as he could.

Tetiana Kohutych, Mukachevo

Photos courtesy of Mukachevo Border Guard Detachment of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine and via M. Vasyliev’s personal archive