- A UK transport company donated four buses to Ukraine to support its war effort.
- One Go-Ahead bus has been turned into a field hospital with beds and medical facilities.
Buses that once transported passengers from a railway station to an airport near London have been donated to Ukraine and turned into a field hospital and rest areas for troops.
Go-Ahead donated four buses and volunteers drove them to Calais, France, where drivers from Ukrainian agencies took over for the four-day journey across Europe.
Andrew Clark, Go-Ahead's corporate affairs director, told Insider: "These buses have done years of duty shuttling holidaymakers up and down a steep hill at Luton airport. They're now retired from airport duty and we're glad they can be put to good use, as a small contribution to Ukraine's war effort."
The buses are no longer needed as they've been replaced by a new rail connection between Luton Parkway station and Luton airport.
Seats were taken out of one bus to convert into a field hospital for Ukrainian soldiers. It now has three beds, heart monitors, oxygen cylinders and drips, a freshwater tank, a bathroom and a generator.
Soldiers are now using the other three buses as rest areas, and to transport Ukrainians to and from military training sites.
Last month another company, First, donated two buses to transport medical equipment across Europe to Ukraine. The buses left Plymouth, England after being loaded with medical aid and driven to Kiev and Lviv.
Craig George, an organizer of the initiative, said in a press release that the buses would be used by volunteer medics to provide help as well as to evacuate people from areas under attack.
"Imagine people on the ground having their lives turned upside down, living near the frontline, and wondering if they are the next target, or shells falling from the sky around them, to see one of these buses come round the corner to help take them to safety away from the area, is immeasurable," he said.