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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat Foreign Fighters Are Seeing in Ukraine
Link to tweet
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/american-volunteer-foreign-fighters-ukraine-russia-war/627604/
No paywall
https://archive.ph/V6x1s
A few nights ago in Lviv, after an early dinner (restaurants shut at 8 p.m. because of curfew), I stepped into the elevator of my hotel. I was chatting with a colleague when a man in early middle age, dressed and equipped like a backpacker, thrust his hand into the closing door. You guys American? he asked. I told him we were, and as he reached for the elevator button, I couldnt help but notice his dirty hands and the half-moons of filth beneath each fingernail. I also noticed his fleece. It had an eagle, a globe, and an anchor embossed on its left breast. You a Marine? I asked. He said he was (or had beenonce a Marine, always a Marine), and I told him that Id served in the Marines too.
He introduced himself (hes asked that I not use his name, so lets just call him Jed), and we did a quick swap of bona fides, exchanging the names of the units in which wed both served as infantrymen a decade ago. Jed asked if I knew where he could get a cup of coffee, or at least a cup of tea. He had, after a 10-hour journey, only just arrived from Kyiv. He was tired and cold, and everything was closed.
A little cajoling persuaded the hotel restaurant to boil Jed a pot of water and hand him a few tea bags. When I wished him a good night, he asked if I wanted some tea too. The way he askedlike a kid pleading for a last story before bedpersuaded me to stay a little while longer. He wanted someone to talk with.
As Jed sat across from me in the empty restaurant, with his shoulders hunched forward over the table and his palms cupped around the tea, he explained that since arriving in Ukraine at the end of February, he had been fighting as a volunteer along with a dozen other foreigners outside Kyiv. The past three weeks had marked him. When I asked how he was holding up, he said the combat had been more intense than anything hed witnessed in Afghanistan. He seemed conflicted, as if he wanted to talk about this experience, but not in terms that could turn emotional. Perhaps to guard against this, he began to discuss the technical aspects of what hed seen, explaining in granular detail how the outmanned, outgunned Ukrainian military had fought the Russians to a standstill.
*snip*
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What Foreign Fighters Are Seeing in Ukraine (Original Post)
Nevilledog
Mar 2022
OP
underpants
(182,626 posts)1. Excellent read.
Thanks.
Duppers
(28,117 posts)2. K & R
Wow! Thank you! Still reading.