In handover, Polish troops see chance to shine

[Rose Siding]

BABYLON, Iraq - Camped in the shadow of one of Saddam Hussein's grandiose palaces, adjoining the maze-like ruins of ancient Babylon, a vanguard unit of Polish soldiers is preparing the way for that country's biggest military deployment since World War II.

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A successful mission, Polish officers hope, also would help erase the world's memories of Poland as a third-rate power that crumbled under the German blitzkrieg in World War II, then was subsumed by Soviet expansion.

The Marines here nod and smile at their Polish counterparts as they pass each other in Camp Babylon. But the Poles, whose desert uniforms have an out-of-the-box stiffness and whose sunglasses often don't match, seem self-conscious and almost deferential in front of the US officers.

In the coming weeks, Marines say, they'll work to make their former Eastern Bloc adversaries more comfortable.

''We'll go through a whole checklist of things, from where's the bathroom to where's town hall,'' said Lieutenant Colonel Robert Zangas, 43, a Marine who is the liaison to the multinational division. ''We can show them the American way, and what worked for us and what didn't work for us.''

The Poles, however, will be dealing with 17 other variables the US troops did not have to consider: the differing training, cultures, and languages of soldiers from around the globe. It's a potentially troublesome arrangement in which the troops' rules of military engagement vary from country to country, particularly among those from outside Europe.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/222/nation/In_handover_Polish_troops_see_chance_to_shineP.shtml

[DagmarK]

1. Interesting concern for the Poles.......

"A successful mission, Polish officers hope, also would help erase the world's memories of Poland as a third-rate power that crumbled under the German blitzkrieg in World War II, then was subsumed by Soviet expansion."

Yep.....I guess the most important thing is that they redeem themselves and prove once and for all that they too can be OCCUPIERS rather than the "Occupied".......

How many of the Poles will look into the eyes of the Iraqis and see themselves?

[starroute]

2. Mongols? Fijians? Hondurans?

"The main Polish contingent will begin arriving this week, supplemented by troops from Hungary, Nicaragua, Bulgaria, Latvia, Fiji, Lithuania, the Philippines, Spain, Ukraine, Honduras, Mongolia, Thailand, Slovakia, the Dominican Republic, Kazakhstan, El Salvador, and Romania."

Please tell me this is some sort of lame ethnic humor!


On edit: The Mongols are probably the weirdest part. Don't they remember what happened the last time the Mongols took Baghdad?

"The Mongols massacred 800,000 of the city's inhabitants, including the Abbasid caliph al-Mutasim, and destroyed large sections of the city. The sack of Baghdad put an end to the Abbasid caliphate, a blow from which the Arab civilization never fully recovered."

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad

[realFedUp]

3. Now the Iraqis are going to have to learn some Polish...

.

[AnnabelLee]

4. How ironic

''We can show them the American way, and what worked for us and what didn't work for us.''

The "what worked for us" should be a short lesson.:eyes: