Novelist Charlotte Hobson describes how a continent came together amid the chaos as she volunteered to help refugees at the Polish frontier town of Hrebenne
On the morning of Sunday 6 March, the writer Gavin Knight, who lives a few miles from us in Cornwall, texted to say he’d got a message from a friend on the Polish-Ukrainian border. Ten thousand refugees were coming over, his friend Wes said, and Russian speakers were urgently needed to translate between the Ukrainians, who mainly speak Ukrainian and Russian, and the Poles, who speak Polish and English. I’m going, he said. Do you want to come and share the driving?
The next morning we set off in a borrowed van, crammed with everything we’d been told to bring – sleeping bags, blankets, dog food, toys.
