Mail Force heroes reveal their 1,000-mile journey to deliver food parcels from ...

Looming over a flat expanse of potato fields, the hulking outline of the vast Polish warehouse slowly comes into view.

It is just after dawn, and 63 gruelling hours since Mail Force’s 1,000-mile mercy mission set off carrying a precious humanitarian cargo.

Inside the 44-ton truck finally approaching its destination are parcels of food, stacked high on wooden pallets, ready to save thousands of Ukrainians from the appalling spectre of starvation.

After the long journey across continental Europe, we’re met by a welcoming committee of warehouse workers and government officials who jump on to forklift trucks and, in a blizzard of activity, swiftly unload more than 2,400 cardboard boxes to stockpile in the warehouse.

Later this week, those boxes will be whisked by truck and train into the heart of eastern Ukraine – just as Vladimir Putin’s forces plot their next onslaught.

The lorry, accompanied on last week’s three-day journey by myself, is in the vanguard of the most ambitious and complex humanitarian enterprise undertaken by a British newspaper.

Indeed, it is at the very tip of a mammoth logistical exercise that has seen some of Britain’s biggest food manufacturers, supermarkets, packagers and distributors join forces to respond to Ukraine’s desperate need to feed the estimated ten million who have fled their homes since the Russian invasion began in February.

Crucially, the project has been made possible thanks to the staggering generosity of Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail readers, who have donated £11 million to the Mail Force Ukraine Refugee Appeal. The fundraising campaign was kickstarted by a £500,000 donation from the papers’ parent company DMGT at the request of chairman Lord Rothermere and Lady Rothermere.

Today, we can proudly announce that Mail Force has spent £4 million to help buy 500,000 boxes of food and fund their immediate delivery to Ukraine. Half the costs of the endeavour are being met by Mail Force and the other half from Ukraine’s embassy in the UK, using money donated by the public.

Each box has 14 items – including pasta, porridge, tinned meat, fish and vegetables, tortilla wraps and biscuits – and contains enough calories to feed an adult for a week.

After the first successful delivery by Mail Force’s lorry last Thursday, another 199 trucks will follow, leaving Britain at a drumbeat of 12-a-day over the coming weeks.

‘We would like to thank the readers of the Mail for such great help, it is invaluable help for the inhabitants of Ukraine,’ said Jon Drbek, manager at the Polish warehouse as he helped unload the first food boxes. The location remains secret to guard against Russian sabotage.

The Mail on Sunday can today take you inside this astonishing aid operation and reveal how following weeks of meticulous planning a dedicated army of box packers, lorry drivers, food suppliers and logistics experts are ensuring that your donations are being spent in the best possible way.

The heart of the mission is more than 980 miles away from Mr Drbek’s facility in another giant warehouse off the M1 near Leicester.

A Ukrainian flag proudly flies outside Oakland International’s distribution centre, where staff in Mail Force T-shirts are busy carrying out vital work. Oakland is a major British food distributor and supply chain specialist whose inspirational chief executive and co-founder Dean Attwell has shifted his entire business to help pack the food boxes and transport them to eight hubs in Poland, Slovakia and Romania. The company is not making a penny from the initiative.

During the first week of Putin’s invasion, Dean was in the Lake District with two senior executives when the discussion turned to ways they could help refugees.

‘We talked about the plight of Ukrainians and how awful it was that devastating weapons were being used in a modern society,’ he tells me. ‘The bottom line was, could we do something to help? And we thought that we could.’

Last Monday morning, I watched spellbound as almost 80 Oakland staff packed the first Mail Force boxes along three separate 20-yard-long production lines.

It was a model of efficiency. At the head of one production line, Jigar, 23, the first worker, rapidly built the first of the boxes, which have been supplied by Smurfit Kappa, a leading packager. The firm has provided tens of thousands of boxes, stamped with the words Glory to Ukraine.

In the blink of an eye, the box was passed down the line to Sunita, 20, who stamped it with a date and placed two bags of nuts inside.

Moulika, 22, added canned tuna, while her colleague Abul, 50, dropped in canned hot dogs, beans and tomato soup. More items were added before finally Kaishorkumar, 50, completed the box with a 1 kg pack of pasta. The entire process had taken just eight seconds.

‘This is teamwork,’ Chetan Kumar, 41, said with a smile as he piled up packs of pasta on the line.

‘I watch the TV news and am just very sad to see what is happening. These are everyday people and they want to live peacefully. I am very happy to be helping Ukraine.’

The completed boxes were stacked 7ft-high on wooden pallets and loaded straight on to a waiting lorry. Dean and I carefully manoeuvered the first of the 26 pallets into the back of the truck.

‘It is emotional because there are so many people behind the scenes who have helped make this happen,’ Dean told me.

‘From the Mail Force campaign to the suppliers, retailers, transport teams and packers – everyone has come together to finally come up with these finished boxes we’re loading now, which will feed thousands of people for a week.’

The spark for Mail Force’s decision to fund food boxes came three weeks earlier during a meeting with Taras Krykun, the Minister-Counsellor for Economic Affairs at Ukraine’s embassy. Thanks to the generosity of readers, Mail Force has announced grants of more than £3.8 million to charities helping refugees such as Unicef, the Red Cross and the Refugee Council.