So this isn't really a story as much as just ruminating. It's been a little over a year since I arrived in Ukraine and I'm still processing a lot of what I experienced there. I'm a US Army veteran where I was in the Infantry. I deployed once to Iraq toward the end of OIF. I'm sure you're all pretty familiar with that conflict; not much needs to be said, or even can be said that hasn't been already.

I have always been conflicted about the morality of participating in OIF, and part of what drew me to Ukraine was a perceived moral purity: the Russians are clearly the bad guys, the Ukrainians are clearly victims, etc. There's also a pretty sharp contrast between the American public's bumper sticker "support" for the military and the Ukrainian people's all-in defense of their nation against an existential threat. (Turns out this swings both ways.) So between the pursuit of moral clarity, the desire for a country that truly understands and values soldiers, and the fact that my life was just unbearably dull, I decided to ship off and fight the Russians.

Unfortunately Zelensky did not warn his staff about the creation of the International Legion. (Formally the International Legion for the Territorial Defense of Ukraine, or something like that, but holy shit what a clusterfuck of a name. If it were an American thing you know it'd at least have a snappy acronym like SHIELD or FKPUTIN or something.) They also may have underestimated the number of applications they'd get. They DEFINITELY didn't have procedures in place to screen the applicants. I waited two weeks after applying before I went to the Ukrainian consulate in [US city] to find out what the hell was taking so long. They gave me the exact same paperwork I'd already filled out, but super-duper-pinky-promised that they'd expedite it through official channels.

When I was at the consulate I met a Marine MP named Jake. Dude was about 23 years old, Filipino, solid muscle, five feet tall and five feet wide. He was there for the same thing, and we agreed to ship out together. He got in touch with a corpsman from New York named Carl who wanted to join us. Carl had some friends in Poland who were going to provide us with a safe house and transportation to the border.

It was about this time that the barracks in Yavoriv got blown up. Over 100 people were killed, most of them Legionnaires. I've talked to more than one person who was present during that attack and they generally agree that the barracks housing Legion soldiers were one of the primary targets. The base at Yavoriv is large important, making it an obvious target, but you don't just drop cruise missiles on specific buildings without decent intel. The failure to screen Legionnaires, the failure to remove and secure personal cell phones, and the failure to monitor the actions of Legionnaires allowed at least one infiltrator to get information on the specific buildings housing Legionnaires and communicate its position to the Russians. These are some incredibly basic precautions, but apparently they were beyond the capability of the Ukrainian government.

So, ixnay on the Legion. Jake and Carl agreed. We all applied with the Georgian Legion and booked tickets to Warsaw, figuring if we show up in person someone will take us.

It turns out Carl was, to put it lightly, full of shit and a barely-functional alcoholic. Yes, he lived in Poland for eight years. Yes, he had friends there. But I got the impression (while politely pretending not to eavesdrop) that the conversation had gone something like this:

"Hey, me and some buddies are going to Ukraine to fight, do you think you could let us crash at your place in Warsaw?"
"Hmm, maybe... depends on when you'll be here. Do you have your itinerary?"
"Great, see you then!"

So we're in Warsaw without a place to stay and without transportation. Carl finds us a hostel. He promises us that Polish hostels are LOADED with drunk chicks who are thirsty for American cock. Neither of us had asked for, or even indicated we might be interested in, getting laid. Turns out the hostel Carl found is on church property which, by Polish law, means they cannot serve alcohol. The other guests are married with children and the hostel is staffed by nuns. Carl suggests we hit up a strip club. Neither Jake nor I had asked for, or even indicated we might be interested in, going to a strip club. Instead we ask a nun where we can get dinner.

We eat dinner. Carl drinks heavily. We decide to walk around and see the sights. If you don't already know this, learn from my mistake: when an attractive woman in a foreign city approaches you on the street, do not accompany her to the location of her choosing. It is a strip club and you will be drugged and robbed.

We went to a strip club and got drugged and robbed.

At this point I should probably tell you that Eastern Europeans are generally smaller than Americans. I don't know if it's genetics or some remnant of their grandparents almost starving, but they're basically all kinda short and skinny.

In the club, Carl immediately disappeared to God only knows where. I took a free shot, found the only attractive stripper in the place, and pretended to be interested in a lap dance while refusing to actually pay for anything. Jake took the free shot, ordered another, insulted my stripper, insulted the stripper on stage, ordered two more shots, tried to get on stage, argued with the bouncer who wouldn't let him on stage, stood defiantly in front of the bouncer while he punched Jake in the face, shouted "quit hitting like a bitch," got punched again, threw him into a table, and proceeded to generally sow chaos and destruction. It was fucking glorious. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it myself.

It turns out the shots had GHB in them so I'm lucky I only had one. I don't know how Jake was still conscious after four but weighing close to 300 pounds of solid muscle and being a Marine helped. He fought off three bouncers and was pepper sprayed by the fourth. Jake was an MP in the Marines -- getting pepper sprayed is part of their training, and MP pepper spray is stronger stuff than Polish bouncer pepper spray. He probably would have beaten the fourth to death if the police hadn't arrived at that point. Some dim corner of his Marine brain recognized the uniforms and he actually -- I shit you not -- snapped to attention. They didn't quite know what to do with that, but quickly recovered and told him in surprisingly good English that he's under arrest.

Jake, the Filipino-American Marine, while standing at attention in front of two Polish police officers, in the middle of a strip club that he'd just smashed to pieces, bleeding and giving off noxious fumes, started yelling in fucking Russian. Apparently he said, "I come to your country to help kill Russians, and this is how you treat me?" The cops are shocked. The cowering strippers are shocked. The broken and bleeding bouncers somehow manage to look shocked. The cops ask me if we're really there to fight in Ukraine. Carl reappears and talks to them. He seems to know the magic words because the handcuffs go away and they let us go. As we leave, Jake mocks the bouncers. His face is bloody and bruised, he reeks of pepper spray, but the bouncers are utterly defeated. I've never seen anyone so emasculated in my life.

Carl refuses to talk about where he'd gone, but he is drunk off of his ass. The smell of vodka, cheap perfume, and dying liver wafts off of him. Back in the room, he starts lecturing us about how disappointed he is in our behavior and how we should have known better than to go to a strip club. He actually tries to take care of Jake, telling him to take his clothes off and get in the shower and promising to fix us the best hangover remedy known to God or man.

In the morning we agree that staying in Warsaw is maybe not the best idea. I suggest buying a train ticket to Kyiv, but Carl has a friend in Krakow who definitely -- for real this time! -- is going to drive us there. Also an ex-girlfriend he'd really like to see again. Carl is married. His wife is kind, caring, beautiful, and apparently has the kind of pathology that makes you want to stick with an alcoholic veteran who cheats on you.

Krakow is shockingly beautiful. His friend comes through -- we've got an apartment to stay in and it's pretty nice! The friend says he can probably drive us tomorrow but it depends on his job. Jake and I take a walk to the old town, and it's just one beautiful building after another. We start placing bets on whether it's even possible to find an ugly place in Krakow. (If it is, we didn't find it.) We pass a row of night clubs and a pretty girl appears at my elbow. She tells us about a great club she knows and do we want to... she looks closer at Jake, then hurries away. Five minutes later another girl starts to walk up to us, sees Jake, and immediately changes direction. It occurs to me that this might not be a coincidence. Jake's destruction of a strip club in Warsaw may have been caught on video, his face captured and propagated throughout the Polish underground with an attached warning in large red letters. We find a jazz club, have some dinner, go back to the apartment. Carl is asleep. We go to bed.

In the morning Carl is gone. In the afternoon, he is still gone. We text him; no response. At about five pm he calls with an address and asks us to bring an Uber to pick him up. We find him in a pastry shop, dried blood crusting his face, his clothes covered in dirt and a little bit torn. His wife had called at about 3am our time, upset because their bank account was empty. Turns out Carl had been paying for lap dances in the champagne room while Jake was getting rowdy, and the club had run his card repeatedly until it stopped working. Luckily he had some cash in his wallet. Double lucky: Polish bars are open 24 hours. He got drunk, got mugged, and woke up in the gutter with no wallet and a dead cell phone. Oh, and they stole my jacket which he'd "borrowed."

Now, you might think that a guy who'd lived in Poland for eight years would have learned to speak Polish and that it might be coming back to him after a few days of hearing it. Carl never learned a single word of Polish. He wandered the city, bloody and dirty and unable to communicate, until someone let him in to charge his cell phone. Turns out his friend had to work after all, but maybe tomorrow he can take us to the border.

At this point I invented a reason for why I had to go back to Warsaw, promised that I would definitely meet up with them again in Ukraine, and left Jake and Carl behind.

That turned out way longer than I thought it would, and if you actually read it, thank you. I'm just now realizing that I completely left out everything about Mark, an American veteran we met at the airport in Warsaw, and everything that transpired between the three of us and Mark, which actually ends up being important later.

If you want more let me know. There's plenty more to write.