CALL OF DUTY

Hundreds of brave British volunteers signed up to fight for Ukraine after Russia's invasion in early 2022. Veteran foreign correspondent COLIN FREEMAN, who interviewed a dozen of them in hospital beds and war bunkers, reveals their stories in a brilliant new book

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JACK Knight still remembers the day he asked his bosses for time off to go to war. It was February 2022, and Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky had just issued an urgent appeal for foreign volunteers to help fend off Russia's invasion.

Knight, an ex-bomb disposal expert with the Royal Engineers, was sure his skills would be useful. So he requested a sabbatical from his warehousing job at online grocery giant Ocado, hoping they'd treat it like a request for a gap year. They didn't.

"They said the company couldn't get involved in politics, even though this was about fighting a dictator," smiles Knight, 32, who was raised on a south London council estate. "So in the end I just shook everyone's hands, handed in my notice, and off I went."

Even if they had kept his job open, Knight's employers would have had good reason to doubt he'd ever come back. Few thought Ukraine's military would last more than weeks against Putin's superpower army, and for ex-British soldiers like Knight, it would be their first experience of fighting as underdogs.

No bomber jets to support them in battle, as in Afghanistan. No helicopters to evacuate them if they were wounded. And many people warned them it would be suicide, with nobody but themselves to blame if it all went horribly wrong.

For Knight, however, nothing was going to stop him going. It wasn't just that it was for a noble cause. It was also a one-off chance to see combat a chance he thought had passed him by, having only enlisted in the Engineers as the war in Afghanistan was winding down. His own great-great grandfather, William Young, won the Victoria Cross in the First World War, and Knight had always dreamed of following in his footsteps.

"A lot of generations of my family have served in the military, and having never served overseas, I felt I hadn't done much," he said.