A Scots punk musician who rescued several families from Ukraine was given a Peppa Pig toy as a thank you from one of the little girls he helped.
Dominic Harris and fellow musician Brian Tipa, Polish translator Ania Grajek and priest Markus Dunzkofer transported 25 Ukrainians to Berlin.
Dad-of-two Dominic and his team last week flew from his home city of Edinburgh to Berlin, where they hired minibuses and drove to the war-torn country to help families seeking refuge.
The group then drove for two days to Ukraine and back to Germany’s capital where they set the families up with places to stay after problems getting visas to take them to the UK.
A Ukrainian girl, who is about five, handed Dominic her George figure from Peppa Pig and said “thank you”.
Dominic, who works as a tour guide, said: “Her grandpa, Sergei, was carrying her in his arms, she was exhausted.
“We had to walk half a mile with Sergei, who has a bad leg.
“A kid gave me her little Peppa Pig. It was really moving. I was nearly reduced to a blubbering wreck.
“She lay on the two seats and said ‘thank you’ in Russian.”
Dominic, 55, admitted that there were moments when he wondered: “What am I doing?”
He added: “People coming over the border didn’t realise there were people like us waiting to help them, they were so moved.
“They didn’t eat anything, they were so traumatised. They said yes to coffee at a service station, they bought Markus a burger to say thanks.”
Dominic plans to raise money so he can buy items for civilians who have chosen to stay and help with the humanitarian effort in Ukraine.
He said: “I thought about auctioning it (George Pig). We have a contact, an ex-general in the Ukrainian army. We could turn this 20 cent toy into bulletproof vests to save some lives.”
Priest Markus said: “I had two families in my car, who all had someone waiting for them in Berlin.
“One of the abiding memories of my trip will be that of a woman, who crossed a small border crossing outside the Polish town of Kroscienko looking exhausted, gaunt, and lost.
“There was no sign of relief on her face. It was blank. She is special and precious. I cried in the bus as we left.”
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