I waded through bodies in Ukraine’s No Man’s Land to Russian trenches – they found me & unleashed hell, says UK soldier

MACER Gifford's mission was simple: clear Ukraine's No Man's Land of mines and find out everything he could about the Russians without getting killed. The Brit fighter crawled into the enemy's trench in the dead of night and swiped the radio and crucial documents - his heart racing as he inched back towards the treeline, thinking he'd got away with it.

But his heart stopped as he heard the sickening sound of a Russian soldier screaming: "The Ukrainians are here!" following the crack of machine gunfire. Within seconds, a hail of bullets was raining down on Macer and his Ukrainian comrades as they lay stock still - praying they wouldn't be hit.

First came the grenades and then the machine gun fire - and Macer's only hope of survival was that the Russians couldn't know exactly where they were in the darkness. The former London banker told The Sun: "The machine gunfire came in sweeps because they weren't exactly sure I was there.

"They would light up a position, the tree line, and the bullets would smack into the trees that would hit the ground. "I was just lying there enduring it, just thinking to myself that there's no cover, I'm not under the ground here. "If I take one of these bullets, if it just slips under my armour and strikes me in the head, then I'm dead and my body will be here for months because we were a kilometre away from the nearest Ukrainian position.".

After a hellish few minutes, there was a break in the fire before the Russians began shooting 100 metres behind where they were laying in the darkness. Macer and his team knew this was their only chance to escape with their lives. The Brit said: "I got up and then started running forward. We just got out of that through the skin of our teeth.

"To be honest, it was just pure luck that we survived that one.". He'd been sent on what should have been a suicide mission by a Ukrainian general who could hear Russian voices in the darkness pushing towards their position - but having no idea where they were.

Macer, whose commander had the call sign 'Sneaky', was used to skirting No Man's Land, gathering intelligence, looking for minefields and preparing the way for Ukrainian assaults in Kherson. The machine gunfire came in sweeps because they weren't exactly sure I was there. They would light up a position, the tree line, and the bullets would smack into the trees that would hit the ground.

But this mission was different - they were tasked with going into the Russian trench and retrieving vital intelligence. Macer said: "I knew it was going to go down. I knew we were going to fight. "There's always a calm before the storm, it was surreal in that moment because I knew things were going to get bad.

"But I still had a moment to breathe and feel my chest against my body armour. "I could feel the weight of my bag on my back and the weight of my rifle, and I could think to myself - I'm alive now but in a few minutes I could be dead.". Luckily for Macer, he escaped.

The only way to survive was to dig into the ground and to hide. Months earlier, Macer had watched with horror the columns of Russian tanks massing on the Belarusian border and Vladimir Putin insisting he wasn't about to invade Ukraine. He knew he had to do something and - knowing that a full-scale invasion was on the cards - he travelled the 2,000 miles to Ukraine to provide humanitarian assistance.

Macer spent the first two months of the war teaching Ukrainian soldiers how to treat medical emergencies while distributing life-saving kits. But it was during his treks across Ukraine to share the knowledge he'd gained fighting ISIS terrorists in Syria that he learned of the horrors committed by Russian soldiers in Bucha and Irpin.

He was told by Ukrainians he was training about their friends who were massacred and shot in the street, tied and left unburied. Macer had been met with the same horrors in Syria - watching innocent civilians waving white flags shot dead by ISIS snipers and his comrades and children blown up in car bombs.

The Brit had quit his job as a banker in London to fight against ISIS after watching Jihadi John behead kneeling hostages and others being burned alive in cages. And now, he was being met with the same horrific crimes against humanity - but this time committed by Vladimir Putin's soldiers.

The Brit told The Sun: "I was confronted with the same dilemma as I was in Syria. "I could have stuck with my humanitarian work and helped that way, or I could directly confront the people who are destroying the country. "So I decided to pick up a gun, just as I had in Syria.".

The amount of times that we had patrolled the zero line - or No Man's Land - and found the body parts of soldiers who had been hit in their positions. He joined the 131st Separate Reconnaissance Battalion, where he fought in the fields between Mykolaiv and Kherson, the islands of Dnipro and the forests of Lyman.

It was during the Christmas of 2023 that Macer and his unit switched from collecting intelligence to fighting for the key city of Kherson. He quickly saw the difference between ISIS' fanatical battles with their suicide missions in Syria to the sheer scale of artillery at the feet of Russian soldiers in the fields of Ukraine near Kherson.