The Unknown Polish Sappers

by Brian Castner on March 12, 2014

Unknown in this country, anyway. Well remembered in Poland; how little most Americans understand of the horrors of the Eastern Front of World War II.
On the 1st of August, 1944, with the Americans and British crossing France and the Soviets routing German divisions across the northern European plain, Polish partisans staged the largest insurgent operation of the war. It was called the Warsaw Uprising, and it was a grisly two months. Tens of thousands of Germany and Polish soldiers were killed in combat, and hundreds of thousands of Polish civilians died in mass executions. The Soviets stayed outside of the city and watched and let the Polish bleed. The Americans and British airdropped supplies, but a pittance of what was needed.
In Warsaw today there are several memorials to the uprising, 1970′s chunks of brutalist bronze. One is to the Warsaw Sappers, primitive EOD technicians who cleared booby-traps and mines from the city, during the uprising and in the rebuilding that followed.
I’ve been thinking a lot about memorials lately. Maybe it’s because of my book research. Maybe because of this new Atlantic article, about the jihad museum in Herat and the wall of names of mujahideen dead. Maybe it’s because our annual EOD Memorial, our opportunity to add to our own wall of names, is only two months away and I’m making travel plans now.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been rough on the US military’s EOD forces. We have lost 129 men and women, our bloodiest conflict by far, over twice what we lost in World War II. The Marines have been particularly hit, their 49 dead represents 10% of their total active duty force. But all four services have sacrificed, everyone has lost close friends, and even as the wars draw down we have still lost six more in 2013.
But the Polish Sappers show how much worse it could have been, if we didn’t have the armored trucks and robots and bomb suits and jammers and a suite of explosives. We lost 129 EOD techs in thirteen years of war in two countries. The Polish lost 600 sappers in one city. If you Google the Polish Sapper Memorial you’ll notice that in most of the pictures the monument is covered in flowers left by the people of Warsaw. For good reason.
kaynak:http://briancastner.com/2014/03/12/the-unknown-polish-sappers/