They flew to Poland, then drove for 18 hours, through a war zone, to say goodbye to Steve Munroe.
The 33-year-old had left Washington seven months earlier to fight in Ukraine. He now lay dying in a Kharkiv military hospital. If his fiancée and mother wanted to come, despite the danger, he would be kept on life support. “[Neither] his mom nor I could say no to that,” recalled his fiancée, Adrian Perry.
They left Warsaw at 4 a.m., crossed into Ukraine and drove east toward the front, into a surreal landscape of bombed-out buildings, decimated towns and military roadblocks. They arrived at 10:30 p.m., but it was too late.
“When we got there, we were told he had actually passed five hours before,” Perry said. His heart had given out.