Holding out for a hero

We've heard little about the British and others from around the world who bravely volunteer as humanitarian workers in Ukraine - 'Hell Jumper' is a revelation

- Sean O'Grady

Chris Parry was a lad from Cornwall who loved adventure and had a taste for danger. When war broke out in Ukraine in February 2022, he was gripped by a sort of obsessive compassion. It compelled him to go and help the people terrorised and made homeless by Putin’s army. In due course this cost him his life, at the age of 28, in the “grey zone” of eastern Ukraine, a desolate no-man’s land.

We’ve heard too little about the British and other foreign nationals who volunteer as humanitarian workers in Ukraine, and Hell Jumper on BBC Two and iPlayer, which tells the story of Chris’s all-too-brief life, explains something of their experiences, their motivations, their bravery and the service they gave their fellow human beings. No one made Chris or the other “hell jumpers” drive into this war – and it’s about time we honoured them.

By all accounts, the young Chris was a sociable, intelligent and sporty type with a restless zest for life – swimming, go-karting and tree-climbing almost from the womb. He would almost certainly have made a fine soldier, though he’d never been near a gun and he never carries one when we see him careering around Ukraine trying to rescue people who’d been left behind as the Russians advanced. Typically they are too old, frail or stubborn to leave their unlit, unheated basements in bombed-out apartment blocks. We learn how, in all, Chris personally gets about 400 individuals out, and we may be sure that few would have survived for long under occupation.