Nick Maimer wanted to help and knew he could.
What began as an effort to bring people out of harm’s way for the former Pocatellan and U.S. Army Special Forces veteran ended in a soldier’s death, leading a Ukrainian army unit into a firefight in the eastern city of Bakhmut in April 2023.
And those of us who knew and loved him received a measure of comfort recently when Maimer was awarded two of his adopted country’s highest honors, including the Combatant Cross and the Order for Courage medals, during a ceremony in Washington attended by Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova and other dignitaries.
Several families of other Americans who have died under Russian fire attended as well, including Driggs residents Jeanine and Larry Kaleff, whose son Gordon was killed Nov. 27, 2022, trying to help a man in his unit who stepped on a landmine. Clayton Hightower of Kamiah, who was killed by Russian fire on Dec. 4, 2022, was also honored.
Accepting the medals for Maimer’s extended family were his uncle, former Pocatello resident Richard Feuerborn, and Richard’s wife Valez Bird.
“It was very moving and still there’s a lot of emotion for me,” said Feuerborn from his Boise home. “I think knowing that he’ll be remembered is important.”
Feuerborn and other family members sent a box of Maimer’s personal effects to be placed in a military museum in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, through the efforts of the U.S.-based R.T. Weatherman Foundation, which began aid and relief efforts in Ukraine in March 2022 immediately after the Russian invasion.
Since then, the group has repatriated multiple Americans killed or wounded, delivered thousands of pallets of material to over 70 relief organizations, and coordinated travel to Ukraine for several journalists and government advisers.
Maimer spent his early childhood in Pocatello, attending Greenacres Elementary with several family members before moving to the Boise area, where he graduated from Borah High School in 1996, joined the Army and followed with a stint in the Idaho National Guard, earning a Special Forces Tab, Army Commendation Medal and several achievement medals before retiring in 2018.
It was his military training which led him to enter Ukraine in 2022, join that nation’s Territorial Defense Forces as a trainer, advance to membership in the Ukraine Army and eventual deployment as commander of a tactical unit which engaged Russian Wagner Group forces in Bakhmut, where he died in April 2023.
“I think in recent history this was one of the most clear-cut violations of human rights and national sovereignty that we have seen,” Maimer told an NBC news reporter prior to deploying to battle Russian forces. “So, I personally, with my background, I knew I was compelled to come help.”
Maimer also met with and advised Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, who visited Kyiv on a fact-finding mission in the war’s early months.
“I am deeply saddened to learn of reports that Idahoan Nick Maimer was killed in Ukraine,” Risch later said. “In meeting him, it was clear Nick was exceptionally well trained for, and sober about, the realities of the war in Ukraine.”
When Maimer first arrived in Kyiv and for many months afterward, he maintained contact with his friends and family back in America via encrypted text messages.
“These Ukrainians will never surrender,” he told me after relating a story of locals helping to repair an apartment building hit by a Russian missile, then dancing to music and libations.
He stayed abreast of America’s support for the war and also the growing criticism of its costs.
“I think it’s short-sighted,” he said about such criticism. “Because of the spirit of the Ukrainian people, what they’re asking for is materials and not asking for is our people. The kind of existential threat that Russia poses to the world, I think this is the right place to make a stand.”
Maimer trained and fought with Ukraine’s 135th Battalion and after his death the unit credited the training received from him for several front line battle victories over Russian forces.
At the medal ceremony held at Washington’s Ukraine House, several Ukrainian veterans and diplomats spoke with Feuerborn.
“We do value the life of every Ukrainian as well as every foreigner who is fighting for our common cause,” said Ukraine Deputy Ambassador Denys Sienik. “I feel sorry that many families have to go through this, but we didn’t start this war, and we have to finish it because we know if we don’t there will be more victims and Russia will never stop.”
One of the attendees of the medal ceremony, former financial manager turned Air Reconnaissance Commander Andrii Smolensky, who lost both his arms and his eyesight in a Russian attack, put it this way:
“Those people like Nicholas did a great job because when there are a million people fighting on the front lines it’s really important to get education from professional military personnel. Our military before the war was 300,000 people and then expanded by 700,000 civilian volunteers. When I see people from other countries come to help just like Nicholas did, it makes me really believe in humanity.”
Some medals and a soon-to-be-erected headstone at the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery in Boise above his ashes will remain the physical reminders of Nick Maimer. The skinny redheaded kid who used to drive his third-grade teacher mad (along with my son and his other cousin) grew to become a respected military expert and leader.
Along the way he taught herpetology to middle schoolers, helped install hospital computers, and was a D.J. and music producer of some renown in the Treasure Valley.
And to his friends and family here in the U.S. and in his adopted country of Ukraine, he’ll always be a humanitarian and war hero.