Volunteering
‘Invisible Heroes’ of the Patriotic War
Everyone from seven to seventy, regardless of their craft or profession, fought on their own fronts from day one of the Patriotic War, 27 September. We would not be wrong to say that doctors have a special place among these. Our doctors fought alongside our soldiers, helping the sick and the wounded. Some of them died a martyr’s death for their Motherland.
One of our selfless doctors, who went to the front to help our soldiers and servicemen during and after the war, was the chairman of the Azerbaijan Volunteer Doctors Association, Ogtay Mehdiyev. We spoke to Dr Mehdiyev about the problems he faced, as he worked under poor conditions in Shusha. Mehdiyev refused to consider his act a special feat. We had to ask him numerous times before he agreed to tell us about what they did on the frontline. He had been working there since the beginning of the war along with many of his colleagues.
‘At first, we were joined by dentists, and then others came along. We started in Ganja, and then continued in Naftalan and Fuzuli, where we worked in diagnostics. We went there voluntarily. We weren’t sent by anyone.’
Like every Azerbaijani, they too had been dreaming of this day for 29 years and waiting to pay their debt to the motherland. They did everything in their power to heal the wounds of our soldiers: ‘We kept our word. This is our duty of honour. I believe that every citizen of Azerbaijan did more than they could throughout the war, which is why we came out victorious. Our fighters went to war, trusting our doctors. They were confident that if they got injured, our doctors would save them from death.’
Two of the students at Azerbaijan Medical University, who participated in the Patriotic War and were heroically martyred as they performed their duties, were Mehdiyev’s students. The photographs of those two are now hanging on the wall above the doctors at the station in Shusha: ‘Two of my students fell. They were the lieutenants in Medical Services Doctor Mirlatif Aghayev and Doctor Tariyel Salmanov. They worked on the front line. They died by our side. We handed over their bodies to the families from the hospital we worked at.’
As the Armenian armed forces shelled the densely populated areas of Ganja in October 2020, Mehdiyev and his colleagues were also there: ‘One of them fell in 150 metres from us – one fell to our right, the other to our left. In fact, I do not want to talk about it. What we did is nothing compared to what our Army and Special Forces went through. We were just in an area close to the battlefront. But they were at the very front.’
Our hero says it is extremely important to boost morale during a war and support the army. We must forget the phrase ‘the war is over’: ‘War is always out there. People are still in that mood, albeit not as much as they were during the actual war. We simply must unite like a fist and hit at one point. Just like we stayed by our soldiers throughout the war, we must maintain the same determination. Everyone wants to help; they just do not know how to.’
The doctors are not only stationed at Shusha but also in Gubadli and Hadrut. Mehdiyev says every doctor serves in those war zones once a week: ‘We have a duty system. No one objects. Everyone does it willingly. Azerbaijan Volunteer Doctors Association provides financially. We have organized the budget ourselves. We buy all the necessary medical equipment at our own expense. Our organization has many members. The problems dwindle as every doctor tackles one. Having problems and shortages is normal in war-worn areas. Building necessary infrastructure requires time. We must all unite for this to happen.’
