Warsaw 2007 to Ukraine today

Russian tanks are poised and ready to roll. It's not the first time...

The study of warfare occupied much of my mind and time from the age of nineteen to the age of sixty-five. In the beginning it was simply learning how to march, rank insignia, chain of command and how to spit shine black leather boots. As the years went by and promotions went from stipes on sleeves to stars on shoulders the learning curve moved to moving armies then moving national policy.

We Americans are lucky, we’ve never been invaded. And in spite of some politicians claims, we are not being invaded from the south. Those migrants crossing the Rio Grande are carrying children and hope for a better life, not rifles and thirst for blood. Although our record in the last three wars is 0-2-1, we’ve not had enemy soldiers goosestep through our capital nor bombs level our cities. Afghanistan and Viet Nam were not so much losses as they were abandonments of conflicts, that we no longer believed worth fighting.

Our American memories, except perhaps for Southerners who are still smarting over the loss of the “War of Northern Aggression”, are, for better or worse, short. Few Americans, other than those who fought there, or who lost a loved one there, remember or care much about Viet Nam. Even fewer know anything about Korea or the draw we fought to there.

Not so in Europe. Or at least among the people I know in Europe. Now admittedly most of the Europeans I know are military men. A few are diplomats. A few are politicians, but most are military men. That’s because, wearing a uniform for thirty-five years exposes one to a lot of military men.

Military officers remember history. They remember wars. They study wars. It’s their job. Tactics may change. Weapons may change. People don’t change. National character doesn’t change. Geography doesn’t change.

Hot, muggy air surrounded the linen-covered tablecloths in the parade grounds at the Citadel in Warsaw, Poland, in August 2007. Candles graced the tables as dress uniformed officers from NATO militaries mingled. The Citadel now the soul of the Polish Army began life in 1832 at the order of Russian Czar Nicholas I, who had it built in response to the Polish peoples uprising against the Russian Empire. During WW II it served as a garrison for the occupying German Army. Today it is a symbol of Polish resistance to occupiers.

The war in Afghanistan had only been going on for five years. The war in Iraq winding down, with Poland to withdraw the last of its 2,500 troops from Iraq the following year. But the Polish buildup in Afghanistan would come. The Polish brigade in Iraq and later in Afghanistan had a core group of Illinois Army National Guard troops embedded in its command structure.

Since shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its military alliance the Illinois National Guard has been partnered with Poland in training and combat missions. All of which leads to why my wife and I were sitting at one of those china-laden tables with the three-star commander of the Polish Army.

As a small town, downstate Illinois lawyer in the St. Louis suburb of Belleville, Illinois, I’d been serving as a part-time soldier in the Illinois Army National Guard for twenty-five years. My wife as a circuit judge in felony court. Neither of us had ever been to Poland. Neither of us had any diplomatic experience. Neither of us spoke any Polish beyond dzen dobri- good day.

With a year under my belt as a one-star brigadier general, I’d been selected to become the next commanding general of the Illinois National Guard, more than thirteen-thousand soldiers and airmen, and with that promotion to Major General.

Each year in August Poland commemorates the battle of Jasna Gora, where seventy Polish monks and one-hundred eighty volunteers held off an invading force of four-thousand Swedish soldiers. Pilgrims, including Polish soldiers march one-hundred-forty miles from Warsaw to Chestohowa, the site of the besieged monastery.

The Polish military invite NATO allies to the ceremonies. A half-dozen Illinois Army National Guard soldiers, several of the Polish-speaking Chicagoans, took part in the march.

The event provides an opportunity for NATO senior military leaders to meet formally and informally to resolve issues and strengthen bonds. The US four-star general commanding EUCOM, the European Command commands all US military forces in fifty-one countries of Europe and has responsibility for Russia and Israel as well, the German three-star Army commander and a host of other generals and admirals were in attendance.

As my wife and the Polish three-star’s wife conversed, the Polish general, whose father had been imprisoned by the Communists, observed me swatting a mosquito on my neck. The Vistula River, Poland’s longest, provides a nearby breeding ground for them. The general said, “Ah, the mosquitoes, they’re just like the Russians. Annoying and bloodthirsty.” The generals comment provided a not-to-be-forgotten lesson in the length of Polish memory.

A few days later we generals took off our dress uniforms for combat uniforms and left the diplomatic missions of Warsaw to join the foot-weary soldiers for the last few kilometers of the march. We formed up at the head of the column to march down the crowd lined street. As we marched civilians threw flowers at our feet and occasionally an elderly woman, obviously a WW II survivor would reach out to had us a rose.

As a soldier with decades of service, I knew well the protocol for marching with other officers. Senior officer at the far right of the column, then next senior officer to his left, next senior officer to his left with the most junior officer to the far left.

As a lowly one-star, I was the junior officer at the head of the column. The proper order from right to left, American four star, German three-star (he had more time as a three-star than the Pole), Polish three-star, American one-star (me). Each of the other officers knew the protocol as well as I did.

Yet the Polish general kept grabbing my arm to insert me between him and the German three-star, in violation of all military protocol. After the third time he pulled me to his right I realized that he didn’t want to have the television cameras or news photographers picturing him next to the German three-star! Thereafter I stayed in place to protect the Polish general from the potential embarrassment of having his photo taken next to the German. Some memories die hard.

The Polish enmity for both Germans and Russians, who have invaded Poland so many times, was brought home later to me, when a Polish officer told me his favorite riddle: the Polish soldier has only one bullet left in his pistol. Who does he shoot, the Russian or the German? Answer: Is it for business or pleasure?

Exactly one year later, August 2008, I was back in Poland, now a two-star, at the same conference. Many of the generals and admirals were the same. As we met the Russians invaded Georgia. The same German general and the same Polish general huddled together as I overheard the German say: “We must hang together against the Russians or we will all hang separately.”

The previous year’s distrust of the Germans now overcome by the greater danger of the Russian bear.

With Russia gathering tens of thousands of troops on the Ukrainian border, its invasion of Crimea and its blatant aggression in eastern Ukraine the old jokes are no longer being told and the rifles are being loaded.

Reflections from the River

Warsaw 2007 to Ukraine today

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