My journey to a WAR ZONE

For all of us, the terrible images coming out of Ukraine in recent weeks have been utterly heartbreaking – almost too much to bear.

I honestly thought I was somehow managing not to let the horror of this unfurling humanitarian crisis totally overwhelm me. Of course, I have wept at scenes of desperately displaced families fleeing for their lives. Haven’t we all?

But as these mothers and children scrambled urgently on to crowded trains hundreds of miles away across Europe, I emptied my dishwasher in West Sussex and fed the dogs. Rockets rained down on Kyiv, and I shopped for food. I even watched the little girl in a bomb shelter singing Let it Go from Frozen with such gut-wrenching purity – then switched off to deal with a pile of admin.

‘The simple maternal gesture finally undid me’

Three days ago, in the midst of an 18km human line shuffling to get across the border into Poland, a mother, weighed down by baby, luggage and a cat in a crate, leant forward to tenderly plait her crying daughter’s hair. It was just a three-second clip on a news channel and certainly nothing iconic or sensational.

In fact, it was quite the opposite. The normality of this simple maternal gesture against the