SOLDIER FACTORY
Inside the secret British training camps where Ukrainian carpenters and office workers are turned into killing machines
BENEATH billowing white smoke, a dozen Ukrainian soldiers charge into a 200-yard-long Cold War-style trench, stepping over casualties to kill the enemy.
Shouts of “Vogon!” [Fire!] and “Negzche!” [Get down!] ring out across the surrounding open grassland.
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![Shouts of 'Vogon!' [Fire!] and 'Negzche!' [Get down!] ring out across the surrounding open grassland](http://www.mcb777.site/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/NINTCHDBPICT000754914500.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
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It looks like the Donbas region — Ukraine’s front line against Russia’s brutal invasion.
But they are in fact on the downs of southern England, where British troops, with the help of translators, are turning hundreds of untrained Ukrainian civilians into fully-fledged fighters who within weeks will be on the real front line.
Until recently they were carpenters, plumbers and engineers working on building sites and offices.
Last week marked six months of bloody war in Ukraine.
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Nearly 10,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed, along with 5,000 civilians. Nato estimates that as many as 15,000 Russians have died in Ukraine since February 24.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently travelled to Kyiv to announce £54million of extra military aid for the country, taking the UK total to more than £2.3billion.
As part of the deal, we have agreed to train 10,000 raw Ukrainian recruits, aged 18 to 55, to replace troops who have already been killed defending Ukraine.
So far more than 2,000 have been put through their paces at four training camps around the UK.
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And The Sun has been given exclusive access to one of those camps in the south of the country where British troops are turning 200 carpenters, bakers and computer experts into soldiers.
Infantrymen and women from the British 5th Rifles were due to go on holiday after being on exercise in Canada but all leave was cancelled so they could train Ukraine’s raw recruits.
One warrant officer told his wife: “Sorry, the holiday’s off. These men are fighting a war — war is what we do. We have to help them.”
While Cpl Angus Humphrey-Lomberg says: “We’re teaching them to survive and be lethal, making them hard to kill and to be efficient and effective killers.”
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After just a few weeks, the recruits, who were previously working on building sites and in bakeries, will return to Ukraine where most will be sent straight to the front line to replace comrades who have been killed.
Two of the men on the course were fishing at a lake in Ukraine when a military truck pulled up and asked them what they were doing for the war effort.
Daring and ferocious
When they said: “Not much yet,” they suddenly found themselves on a plane to the UK where they were kitted out in military fatigues and sent to this camp.
Here they have been training for more than 18 hours a day in the skills they will need to stay alive on the battlefield — weapons handling, marksmanship, fieldcraft, casualty drills, using explosives and close-quarters combat.
Under the watchful eye of Major Tom Brown, Officer Commanding B Company 5 Rifles, the crouching recruits step over their own “casualties” to drive the enemy out of the two-foot-wide trench.
Again and again, they launch themselves into the trench, each time becoming more daring and ferocious.
The Ukrainians are crawling through replica Russian trenches brought out of mothballs for 21st- century warfare after being built more than half a century ago to train British troops during the Cold War.
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In a few days they will be back in the twisting trench system learning to fight man-to-man with “swords” — the Rifles regiment’s name for a bayonet.
Major Brown says: “All armies in the world use cutting-edge warfare, like unmanned air systems and drones controlled from something like your mobile phone.
“But you will never replace the infanteer when it comes to clearing a hole. Controlled aggression is always key in warfare but especially in trenches.”
And a mile away in a disused village Serjeant Jay Harris is teaching his group — many of them former building site workers — to defend a home by turning everyday objects into weapons.
Paint cans and bricks that have been hurled from windows litter the garden where lethal traps, made from barbed wire and metal stakes, slow down any invaders.
Sjt Harris tells them how to fashion window screens to stop grenades and fill furniture with sand, blocks or soil to make barricades.
We are grateful to Boris Johnson, who is our hero.
Ukrainian recruit
If the enemy manage to breach their home-made defences “we are going to give them the worst time of their lives,” he says.
Captain Adam Pearson adds: “It’s like the film Home Alone but in this version, Kevin ends up killing the intruders.”
Soon, the Ukrainians will be firing live rounds with AK-47 rifles — standard issue in the war against Russia.
A Ukrainian recruit says: “No one is untouched. We’ve all lost family, friends, workmates and comrades.
“The training is hard, we are on our knees with tiredness but every day here makes us stronger.
‘Take back every inch’
“Great Britain understands democracy and we are grateful to Boris Johnson, who is our hero
“Every one of us is eager to fight for our country.
“Coming here to Britain will make us better fighters. We are not afraid. We’re grateful.
“We don’t know what our future will be but with your help we will fight to take back every inch that has been taken from us in the last six months.”
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Corporal Reece Baldwin says: “They’re very passionate about their training and eager to learn.
“They are here for a purpose and that purpose is driving them. I’m proud of them.
“Their determination is second to none. They learn from their mistakes and tend not to make them twice.
“Most of them came here from ordinary, average lives. Just normal people — carpenters, plumbers, engineers — and the skills they are learning here are an eye-opener.
“They certainly have the grit and determination to fight.
“Many people in the UK think Ukraine has been fighting for six months but the country has been fighting much longer than that.
“They know war. They have experienced it, whether they are civilians or military.”
Another corporal says: “Every day they thank their instructors and we often get a round of applause from them, which is an odd thing for us but quite nice. We could get used to it.
“The progress they have made in a few weeks is incredible when you compare it to the progress a British soldier makes in six months.”
The Ukrainians are accompanied by a team of mainly female interpreters who volunteered to travel to the UK to help overcome the language barrier.
One says: “We’re all traumatised by the war but this is one way we can help our country.
“These recruits are not just fighting for our own country.
“People have to realise that Ukraine is now the front line of Europe.
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“If our country falls, the enemy will not stop there.
“These men are willing to die for our country and for your future.”
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