Exclusive footage shows hero Australian combat medic who was killed trying to save fellow fighter in Ukraine

Never-before-seen battlefield footage has emerged of an Australian combat medic whose death while fighting for Ukraine last year has not previously been reported.

Known by his call sign “Jerry”, the Australian was killed in October last year during a heroic battle in which he was trying to save another foreign fighter who had been wounded.

The recording of Jerry shooting at a Russian drone on the frontline in Ukraine’s east was captured on the body camera of one of his best friends on the battlefield — a Brazilian-Ukrainian man known by the call sign “Monkey Gunner”.

WATCH THE FOOTAGE IN THE VIDEO PLAYER ABOVE

The footage, obtained exclusively by The Nightly, shows an earlier battle that took place in November 2024 in Mali Shcherbaky, an area in the Zaporizhzhya region where fierce fighting between the Russian invaders and the Ukrainian defenders has taken place throughout the war.

They were under direct attack from Russian forces using fibre-optic first-person-view (FPV) drones, which are remotely piloted and transmit signals through a cable rather than radio waves, making them resistant to electronic jamming.

Jerry, Monkey Gunner and the rest of the team had to stay out in the open because they were carrying huge amounts of explosives and if they went underground to hide in a bunker but were hit, they would be trapped and buried under the rubble.

Monkey Gunner paid tribute to Jerry and Australian Corporal Shane Bagley, whose death was announced on social media channels last month, and who he also knew. He said both were incredibly brave, great guys and should be recognised for their sacrifices and honoured as Heroes of Ukraine.

The 32-year-old first met Cpl Bagley or “Mozzie” last year.

“But Mozzie’s not the first Aussie that I fought with here. One of my best friends was Jerry; he was ambushed. It was a horrible day,” he said.

“He was an amazing combat medic too, and he died trying to treat a Czech fighter ‘Techno’. He was literally just trying to patch him up when he got killed.”

Jerry’s social media account, which bears an Australian flag, described him as a mechanic and combat medic in Ukraine. His last post was in October, and according to Monkey Gunner, he died in the same month.

Jerry posted videos of himself being targeted at such close range that bricks struck in front of him shower dust across the tattoos on his wrist.

In one clip filmed on Jerry’s body camera, he rushes to the scene of gunfire to help a fellow fighter, “Yoshi”, who has been hit in the leg. He wraps his tourniquet around Yoshi’s leg, which has an open wound and is losing blood.

As Yoshi starts to panic, other soldiers tell him to calm down as he tells them how bad his wound is. “Yes, it is. Shut up,” Jerry can be heard telling Yoshi as a way of trying to stop him from going into shock.

Monkey Gunner said both Jerry and Mozzie were highly regarded by their colleagues for the quality of their military training and skills as medics and fighters but that they were also seen as just “genuinely great guys”.

Monkey Gunner enlisted in 2023 and first met Cpl Bagley, whom he only ever knew by his call sign “Mozzie,” in 2025 when he hurt himself running between locations during an operation in Zaporizhzhia and twisting his ankle.

Various teams were fighting in Stepnohirsk, a small but strategically vital village that acts as a gateway to Zaporizhzhia and which Ukraine’s military intelligence says it took back control of in May.

After three and a half years of gruelling urban combat, Monkey Gunner has now retired from the foreign legion and now lives in the frontline city of Kharkiv, around 25 kilometres from the Russian border, where he is deciding how to contribute next to Ukraine’s fight for freedom from the Russian invasion.

He agreed to meet with The Nightly in Kyiv this week to share more details of Mozzie and Jerry’s heroism in Ukraine.

The Nightly has verified Monkey Gunner’s identity but agreed to refrain from publishing his real name because he fears Russian President Vladimir Putin will order retribution against his family.

Additionally, he has requested that details of the attack in which Mozzie and two other foreign fighters were killed be withheld as their bodies are yet to be recovered.

According to shadow defence industry minister Phillip Thompson, a former Army colleague of Cpl Bagley, Mozzie served with the Townsville-based 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. He was deployed to Butterworth, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea and after leaving the Army, joined Med Team Alpha on Ukraine’s 1st International Legion Squadron, a unit of foreign fighters.

Adopting an Australian accent, Monkey Gunner recalled Cpl Bagley’s first words to him were “mate” and a joke that he should “f*** off”.

“He took good care of me; he was a damn good combat medic and applied some injections and stuff,” Monkey Gunner said.

They were given high-target operations and high-value Russian targets to eliminate, including an FSB headquarters in Russian territory.

“It was hard, it was horrible, we had to cross a swamp to get there and cross it back, and we lost a few people there,” he said.

“We had a few tasks: search and destroy, reconnaissance, all this kind of stuff.”

Of his battlefield prowess, Monkey Gunner said Mozzie survived so many near misses that he had come to regard the Australian as invincible.

“He had so many brushes with death, but always survived — I thought he was unkillable. He was a helluva soldier, doing God’s work,” he said.

“He wanted to do the job; he was awesome. He was incredibly brave, and I miss him a lot.”

Asked if he considered them heroes, he said: “100 per cent, 100 per cent!”

He said that planting a flag on Maidan Square in central Kyiv, which has been turned into a shrine where mourners leave pictures of fallen soldiers, Ukrainian flags, flowers, candles and other sentimental items, as well as the flags of the countries of foreign fighters, was not enough.

“I think they should be remembered as heroes of Ukraine as well. They did their part; I witnessed that; I was there.”

He said that despite their battlefield camaraderie, they never discussed together what had motivated them to fight for another country or shared their personal details and family histories.

“No, we never talk about this. We prefer to shut down emotions – during the mission, the mission is the priority. You can worry about all the other stuff when you go home,” he said.

“Usually on the frontline we just try to relax as much as possible, just joke around, and of course, focus on the tasks after.

“We don’t know each other by names. We all keep calling each other by our call signs, it just makes it easier.” He said there was also a superstition amongst fighters that if you shared too many personal details with each other you would soon be killed.”

While he said he did not discuss with Mozzie and Jerry why they were willing to die for Ukraine, he said that for his own part, it was about standing up to evil.

The Australian government takes a dim view of Australians fighting overseas. The exact number of Australians who have fought in Ukraine is unknown but could be as many as several hundred. The Australian Federal Police has charged one reservist under the Defence Act, which forbids active members of the military from serving for foreign armies, with a jail term of up to 20 years, but others are considered eligible to enlist to fight for Ukraine.

Monkey Gunner said Australia’s position on its citizens fighting for Ukraine was one topic Jerry had mentioned.

“But I don’t think he gave a s***, because at some point back in ‘24, he decided to spend a few months at home, and then he went back to Australia, and there were no repercussions or anything. He was married, too.”

He believed the Australian government’s stance was wrong as the war in Ukraine was not just about the country’s post-Soviet destiny but a larger struggle against evil.

“Fighting for Ukraine is just not because we want war. It’s a classic battle against evil if you don’t stop the Russians. We’re going to be next, the whole of Europe, and then you’re going start a World War III here.

“Ukraine is literally the last barrier to just make peace. I love Ukraine personally, but it’s not only because of that, it’s because we’re avoiding something even bigger.

“I’ve been through a lot. I don’t like war, but let’s face the truth — if we don’t keep up, we will be eaten by a huge monster. The only thing we can do is just keep fighting.”

He said Mozzie and Jerry were among the 29 close friends he had lost in Ukraine, but said more than a hundred people he knew well had died.

The Department of Foreign Affairs declined to comment. It is extremely difficult for foreign governments to confirm the whereabouts of their citizens, especially those reported to have died on the frontline, as it relies on the Ukrainian government to confirm details. DFAT has a Do Not Travel advisory in place for Ukraine because of the war.