It wasn’t even 8 a.m. and Captain Fritz, a Ukrainian infantry officer, had already smoked a half-dozen cigarettes. He’s 24, but his pale blue eyes seemed older than his years, reflecting the weariness of war but also maybe something else, perhaps a flicker of mischief. If he stood up, he could be easily shot by Russian snipers concealed in a thick tree line a few hundred yards away. The trench walls and mud floor shook from explosions, the steady pounding of Russian artillery that erupts each day at dawn with an almost absurd regularity. “See those bushes?” said Captain Fritz, who identified himself by his call sign, as many Ukrainian soldiers do.

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Persons: Captain Fritz, ”, Fritz Locations: Ukrainian