Another Man's Freedom Fighter Page 5
Before going to bed that night Mark plugged in his iPhone. He always kept his phone on, fully charged and on maximum ringtone volume. Day and night, especially at night. When that phone call would come at night, he could not miss it, and there could be no delay to the ensuing actions. Death would be the penalty for negligence.
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“This decision is not an easy one,” Sebastian Berka tried to sound as presidential as possible even in this small group of trusted advisors. “We saw a system rise in Russia that has no historical precedent. A kleptocracy run by former spies, a state that shamelessly and under the open eyes of the world funnels profits from its natural resources into the hands of a few thousand. They don’t even hide their wealth. Their children lead frivolous lifestyles, they use the stolen money to buy assets in Western countries from condominiums in Berlin to football clubs in England. They make this heist of the millennium appear legal. Their United Party rules with an absolute majority, and they basically change laws and appoint judges as they see fit. Their duma and presidential elections are undemocratic. Any opposition is suppressed with threats of imprisonment, physical violence, even death. The Kremlin is undisputedly behind murders inside and outside Russia using Polonium, chemical agents, or simply shooting people in the back in public places. This sistema is like a Soviet Union run by vulture capitalists.”
Berka made a short pause before continuing. “On the other side, there is us. We are a democratic nation, a country with Western culture and tradition at the European Union’s and NATO’s eastern border. Our own history in the twentieth century is proof that if we don’t stand up for ourselves in time and with might against a tyrant, then Poland only exists at the mercy of foreign powers.”
The forty-nine-year-old president, still making an effort to sound presidential, announced his decision. “We will do as you said, we’ll submit a joint resolution with the Ukrainians. And while we wait for the Russian veto in the Security Council, we will mobilize our armed forces.”
Six
The prime minister of Poland silently stood next to the president with his mouth open. The generals nearly simultaneously cleared their throats.
Before anyone could say anything, President Berka gave them the objective and rules of engagement. “We will cooperate with the Ukrainian forces to re-establish the status quo before the so-called People’s Republics separated from the country. Crimea, however, is excluded from our effort as the Russian Federation considers it Russian territory now. Any attack on Russian Federation territory or troops marked with Russian insignia in- our outside Ukraine is to be avoided. You are free to use any means necessary to subdue the rebel troops and achieve the objective.”
“Understood,” was the hesitating, disbelieving reply of General Pułaski. He and General Bilinski left the room with quiet nods to the other attendants.
“I will schedule a call with the Ukrainian president and prime minister, Ministers Kempski and Miller will produce drafts of the necessary agreements and notes,” a suddenly re-animated Premier Lipka said. “We should then inform our allies and prepare press briefings as soon as we have all points covered with the Ukrainians.”
“Very well, make it so,” Berka ordered.
The ministers left the room after a brief all around shake of hands. Lipka remained and asked his president the question his generals and ministers did not dare to ask. “What if the Russians involve themselves and what if they use their nuclear arsenal in the conflict?”
Berka sat down, folded his hands and looked at the PM. “We are fighting a just cause, and our NATO-partners will join us, sooner or later. I am absolutely sure of that. I am equally sure, the Russians will do nothing to keep these puppet regimes alive once they realize how determined we are. Their only aim is to keep up their own rule in Russia and exploit her further. A shooting war with a NATO-member is not in their interest at all.”
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Ofelia joined Mark in the bathroom adjacent to the master bedroom. Side by side they stood at the twin sinks in front of the six-foot-wide mirror. Mark, wearing a washed-out blue Superman T-shirt and gray shorts, reached out and picked up his toothbrush and the toothpaste. While he brushed his teeth, Ofelia inhaled and then pressed out air through her nose. A second later, she did it again.
“What is it, honey?” A few drops of foamy, pinkish saliva splashed on the large mirror. Ofelia pulled a Kleenex from a box and wiped them off.
“It’s just, I don’t know, I’m worried about this Polish-Russian business.”
“Uh-huh,” Mark replied and continued to brush his teeth.
“What if there’s a war? The Russians have a much more powerful army than the Poles and who knows what else they might come up with. The last time someone claimed having caught Polish soldiers near a military installation that someone started World War II a few days later. What will we do if there’s a war?”
Mark bent over his part of the sink, spat out, took a swig of water from the tap, gargled, rinsed, spat again and used his towel to wipe off a thin, pinkish mustache. “Baby, it’s not like this doesn’t worry me at all. You’re right, suppressed opposition, propaganda, Olympics, the annexation of a whole region because the people speak the same language as in the fatherland, that’s all right out of Adolf’s playbook. I’ve been saying that for years.”
“Exactly,” Ofelia said while applying some cream to her face. “They had their Olympics plus a Soccer World Cup and their version of a Sudeten crisis, what if this affair becomes their Gleiwitz incident.”
“The parallels are striking,” Mark concurred. He looked at his wife’s cream-white face in the mirror. “One thing’s different, though. The Nazis sought power for power’s sake. They wanted to dominate the world out of some weird sense of superiority. They actually believed that shit. The new tsar and his cronies are different. They’re in it for the money. There is no belief system other than that of the mighty dollar. All that Russian nationalism and the historicizing about some Great-Russia from the Baltic to the Pacific are just for show. Ivan on the street needs to be happy and feeling good about himself. They need to serve him a patriotic fix now and then to keep him hooked, but they never overdose.”
“OK, what if, with time, Ivan needs a bigger fix to get that good feeling?” Ofelia looked directly at him now.
“I think, Ivan is far from needing that big a dose. These guys are biznesmeny. War is not really good for business, especially not if you have all your money in the banks of the people you will face in the conflict.”
Mark sensed that his wife was still not satisfied and that the real question was more one of their personal safety. “I think, no, I know for a fact that nothing is serving these guy’s interests worse than a shooting war with NATO.” He embraced his wife and looked in her eyes. “As far as you and I and Alexander are concerned, we have our insurance policy. It’s checked and updated regularly. We’ll know when to get away and where to go. Look, every time we exercised our exfiltration, it went exactly as planned, less than thirty minutes out of the city plus less than two hours to Hamburg. From there we can choose routes by land, air, and sea to wherever we want to go. Plus, we have secondary and tertiary exit routes mapped out. When they trip our wire, we’ll have time to run.” Mark pulled his wife closer and stroked her hair. He kissed her on the head while she buried her face in his chest.
“I know, the plans are good and the exercises were expensive enough,” she smirked into the Superman logo thinking about the ticket they once got for going nearly one hundred thirty miles per hour on the Autobahn.
She looked up to him now. “I fully trust you to protect us. I know what you’re capable of. Tomorrow, I’ll pack some diapers and other baby stuff in your old backpack. Xandi needs a go-bag of his own now.”
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At 2100 hours, Chief of the General Staff Generał Bonifacy Pułaski assembled the commanders of the five branches. The Wojsko Polskie is subdivided into Land Forces, Air Force, Navy, Special Forces, an
d the Territorial Defense Force.
The commanders and chiefs of staff, all in all, ten generals, admirals, and colonels met with Pułaski and Bilinski in the Headquarters of the General Staff. From the air, the building in Warsaw’s Mokotów district looks like a sand-colored letter A. Its long, flat-roofed east and west wings are separated by a parking lot slash parade ground. They are connected by a north wing and a central wing which sits on concrete posts to allow vehicles to pass through. It is a boxy, ugly affair that serves its purpose since the 1960s.
The center of gravity of the polish military is situated right across the Mokotów prison, left of the Geological Museum and in close proximity of the Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego, Poland’s internal security agency. Ulica Rakowiecka is not a posh street but merely five minutes away from the Ministry of National Defense and the seat of the president at Belweder Palace.
“Panowie,” the senior general addressed the room, “we have been tasked by our Supreme Commander with a mission that will be an unprecedented challenge for our force.”
The fifty-eight-year-old soldier had everyone’s curious attention. He made it clear that each and every word of this meeting would be classified top secret, and that he counted on a silent, quick, and flawless execution by his officers. He relayed the objective given to him and the already agreed upon interfaces with their Ukrainian allies. He also made clear that this mission would have to be carried out without NATO support and up until this moment without NATO approval. After finishing with the rules of engagement, he motioned Generał Brygady Bilinski to bring the room up to speed on enemy forces and the lay of the land.
After Bilinski’s overview, Pułaski gave the first orders to prepare for battle. “We need to mobilize silently, very silently ideed. Admirals, the role of the Marynarka Wojenna will be a passive but important one. I want all operational ships at sea patrolling our coast within seven days. Your focus should be the Gdańsk Bay and the shipping routes in and out of Gdańsk and Gdynia. Have our submarines patrol the area. Put a small convoy led by the frigate Kościuszko just outside our territorial waters west of the bay. As it happens, there is a vessel with archeologists from Warsaw and Hamburg researching a German shipwreck in the area. The University of Warsaw has been pestering me for assistance for months. They will get more help than they can make use of, but it’s good cover for our purposes. Other than that you are free to use all operational forces as you see fit to protect our coastline and waters.”
The admirals jotted down some notes, exchanged a few words to agree next steps, and then refocused their attention to the Chief.
“Land and Air Force, you will coordinate right away with your designated Ukrainian interfaces. You are to offer all materiel and personnel they lack to reach the objective. Your first priority will be to cut off any resupply coming out of Russia.”
The generals did like their navy counterparts.
Pułaski addressed the two brigadiers from Special Forces next. “I know you feel like you have a score to settle. I feel the same way. But given the fact that a large part of your force is bound in Afghanistan and Syria I need you to hold back and liaise with the Wojska Lądowe. You will support the land forces with special reconnaissance and targeted assault missions. Also, I want the A Squadron of GROM to stay in Warsaw and carry out protection duty of vital sites starting the minute of the first shot.”
The two generals accepted their orders stone-faced and silently.
The two youngest in the room were the commander and chief of staff of the Wojska Obrony Teritorialnej. They both sat ramrod-straight and awaited their orders.
The Chief of General Staff walked across the room and addressed the two. “How would you describe the current status of our Territorial Defense Force?”
“We reached our full strength two months ago, and for the last year, we have kept a strict training regimen. Our men and women are ready and committed,” the Brigadier said without hesitation. The colonel next to him nodded to reinforce his superior’s statement.
“Good,” Pułaski replied. “Just like our fleet, your troops will have a passive but no less important role during this conflict. Call your reserves to active duty within the week. Strict orders to discontinue the use of any social media. By the way, this applies to all active personnel.” Pułaski looked around the room and got confirmatory nods from all men present. “You are not to comment on the activation orders. I will work with our press liaison to keep this inconspicuous. Hopefully, it takes the damn bloggers a while to get what’s happening. The cover will be a flash exercise to inspect the readiness of this still new branch.”
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The Territorial Defense Force is the youngest branch of service in Poland. In 2014, the Polish government watched with horror how Ukraine struggled to control the conflict in the Donbas region. The nominally much stronger military of their neighbor was at an impasse with a supposedly rag-tag bunch of pro-Russian volunteers.
Realizing the potential of the, at the time very popular, military sports clubs and paintball clubs, the Minister of National Defense decided to create a reserve force roughly comparable to the American National Guard. Sworn-in volunteers with at least thirty days of military training per year who operate in their home area when called upon. Most would be infantry and get trained in anti-aircraft and anti-tank warfare, some would also train with regular units to familiarize themselves with heavy arms and prepare for support roles with incoming allied units.
Having locals with military training loyal to the Polish nation was also thought to be an excellent way to counter hybrid warfare tactics as observed in East Ukraine. The concept was well received with over 11,000 signing up within the first three months of the announcement. Within only three years the TDF grew almost 30,000 strong.
The international press called them ‘weekend warriors’, the Polish journalists were more kind in their commentaries. They respected the legacy of the Polish Home Army, the Armia Krajowa, which the TDF were tasked to cultivate and perpetuate into the new millennium.
The memory of the AK is a national treasure to the Poles. Every August, the streets of Warsaw turn into a sea of red-and-white flags and flowers. Almost every street in Śródmieśce, the central district, has multiple commemorative plaques honoring the fallen resistance fighters that died in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
The uprising was the single largest offensive ever carried out by a European resistance movement. It was supposed to regain control of the capital before the Red Army arrived and lasted sixty-three days. The AK severely weakened the Nazi forces, killing at least 8,000 occupation troops, but ultimately failed to achieve their objective. Lack of supplies and reinforcements impeded the operation and led to a stalemate with Wehrmacht and SS by late August. British and American airdrops into the city proved to be too little too late to push the Germans out of the city.
Stalin had shown no interest in helping the Poles, he had wanted to absorb as much of Poland as he could, if not all of it. The Red Army stood on the eastern bank of the Vistula river for weeks without sending much support to their supposed allies. Ultimately, the uprising was quashed, over 150,000 insurgents and non-combatants were killed.
Much of the appeal of the TDF rests upon the legacy of the Armia Krajowa and the knowledge to serve the nation. To the profoundly patriotic Poles who joined the Territorials, getting to shoot automatic weapons and spending time in the outdoors is more of an added benefit.
So, one weekend per month, women and men would proudly put on their camouflage battle dress. On the left arm below the Polish flag, their uniform shows a letter P on top of a rounded W forming the image of an anchor, the Kotwica. This symbol was a popular graffito during the occupation symbolizing the phrase Polska Walcząca, Fighting Poland. Scouts would paint it on walls to strengthen morale among the civilians and spread terror among the occupiers. Soon, the AK and also the Polish government-in-exile adopted it as their official emblem.
The Kotwica is a symbol of national
pride and fighting spirit that unites the TDF volunteers, the base of Polish defense with its spearhead, the elite special forces unit GROM. GROM itself was founded with the image of an elite AK unit, the Silent Unseen, in mind.
Seven
Come Friday, Mark put Alexander in good care with the downstairs neighbor. He stepped out into the courtyard of his building thinking about his mobility options. He could use one of the car sharing services where one could rent one of thousands of vehicles dispersed throughout the city on a per minute basis. An app opens the car, and one is free to go almost anyplace inside a twenty-mile radius. He could also get an Uber or take his bike.
The weather was great, blue sky with a few fluffy white clouds and a gentle breeze. Mark decided to take the bike to his and Svetlana’s usual meeting place. The way took him across Prenzlauer Allee and through the narrow cobblestone streets to Greifswalder Straße then past Volkspark Friedrichshain. At Straußberger Platz, the wind carried water from the fountain in the roundabout’s center across the street. The fine mist felt good on Mark’s face. Finally, he crossed the river Spree, circled around the former heating plant that is now home to the Tresor club, and turned into Rungestraße, a little dead-end street. He took the scenic route trying to avoid the always busy Alexanderplatz.