NewsNation National Correspondent Robert Sherman has found himself on the frontlines of some of the world’s biggest stories: from Ukraine to Israel and across the United States. He shares what he’s seeing on the ground. Subscribe to his newsletter: Frontlines with Robert Sherman here.
(NewsNation) —February of 2022 was the first time the meaning of the word home really hit me.
A thick layer of fog covered the forested landscape of Medyka, Poland. Through the haze, beneath the wailing of ambulances and the screams of terrified children, weary families emerged — stumbling across the border with whatever they could carry. These were among the first Ukrainians to flee Russia’s invasion.
Draped in metallic thermal blankets that flashed gold and silver, many had left their homes in the east that morning and driven as far as their cars could take them. When they ran out of gas, they abandoned their vehicles on the roadside and walked the remaining 20 or 30 miles — anything to find safety. For many, they haven’t seen their homes since.
Days later, I was at a train station in Lviv as thousands desperately waited hours in the frigid cold, hoping to catch a train out of the country. One man told me he escaped the Donbas by hiding under the floorboards of his house after Russian forces entered his town and bullets started flying. His town is still occupied. Going home isn’t an option.
That week, I also met a woman in Ivano-Frankivsk who had fled with her daughter. Every time she spoke of “home,” her little girl — maybe four years old — covered her ears, unwilling to hear a word that now hurt too much.
On October 8, 2023 — one day after the October 7 attack — I stood in the Istanbul airport amid a thousand people desperate to get home. Flights to Israel were canceled worldwide, rumors were flying, and nobody knew who was alive, missing, or taken. In the chaos, one plane became the lifeline: a few hundred seats handed out at random, determined entirely by which passport an overwhelmed attendant pulled from the frantic crowd first.
With toes on tips and arms outstretched, people begged for a chance at what felt like a heartbreaking lottery. Some pleaded. Some showed photos of missing loved ones. One woman in a wheelchair attempted to lurch out of her seat towards the airport attendant: Willing to endure pain or humiliation for even the slightest shot at getting home.
A few days later, I stood in what was left of Kibbutz Be’eri. Floors were covered in a thick layer of ash —some of it from wood and plaster, some from human remains. The only sign this nightmare had once been a home was the children’s toys melted on the front porch.
In Gaza last month, I met families displaced from the north, sheltering in Rafah. Best-case scenario, home was inaccessible because of the fighting. Worst-case, home no longer existed at all.
And a few weeks ago, I was at the DMZ in Korea, where to this day people come from far and wide to sob, hoping and praying before they leave this earth they will be able to see their hometowns in the north for the first time in decades.
Even now, countless Israelis cannot bear to return to their communities in the south. Thousands of Gazans have seen their towns reduced to rubble. And rail lines no longer run to Mariupol, Melitopol, and so many cities in Ukraine.
Before covering war, I thought of home as a place: Cleveland, Ohio. Now I know it’s a promise — of safety, belonging, and identity. Like all promises, it can be broken.
This year, when Americans gather at their Thanksgiving tables, most will assume their home will still be there tomorrow. So many people I’ve met around the world do not have that luxury.
Seeing war up close taught me the value of home, the fragility of it, and how many people on Earth would give anything to sit at one more family dinner. It’s shaped me in ways I’m still trying to understand, and it’s at the center of my upcoming book, “Lessons From the Front,” which releases December 11.
That’s what I’m grateful for this year. Not certainty — but the gift of having somewhere to return to, and people waiting when I get there.