{"id":270889,"date":"2023-07-09T07:50:54","date_gmt":"2023-07-09T07:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=270889"},"modified":"2023-07-10T07:11:54","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T07:11:54","slug":"americans-who-fought-putin-share-horrifying-war-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=270889","title":{"rendered":"Americans Who Fought Putin Share \u2018Horrifying\u2019 War Surprises"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shannon Vavra \u2013 The Daily Beast July 1, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

In the days preceding Russia\u2019s invasion<\/a> of Ukraine, David Bramlette found himself in a classroom in Washington, D.C. discussing whether Russia might invade Ukraine<\/a>. He was in the middle of earning a master\u2019s degree from Johns Hopkins in international affairs. At the time, he admits, he found the prospect of a Russian invasion implausible.<\/p>\n

But when Russia eventually pulled the trigger and invaded Ukraine in February<\/a> last year, David, who had previously completed stints working for the U.S. military as a Green Beret on a counter-Russia mission and as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan, felt compelled to go fight the Russians<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good and evil in my mind,\u201d Bramlette told The Daily Beast in an interview from Kyiv this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sitting in class, and I\u2019m like, I could sit here and finish my degree and go work in some office job, and have a tiny iota of impact on the world working in some government office, right?\u201d Bramlette recounted. \u201cI have the knowledge and the skills and abilities to go help. So I basically took a leave of absence from my master\u2019s program and went over.\u201d<\/p>\n

By early March Bramlette, who goes by \u201cBam,\u201d was en route to Warsaw, Poland to get his bearings before joining the foreign legion in Ukraine. While boarding the plane to Poland, Bam said he sent his parents a quick email explaining why he was going to war for another country.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sent my parents an email that says like\u2026 This is the most righteous war that I think my generation will see in our lifetime. This is straight up good versus evil,\u201d Bramlette told The Daily Beast. \u201cThat\u2019s why I went. I was like, I can\u2019t put up with this shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Bramlette, former Marine Troy Offenbecker was compelled to join the fight against Russia\u2019s invasion early on in the war. He told The Daily Beast that Russian atrocities against Ukrainians reported in the news were part of the final straw that got him geared up to go to war.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of really dumb-ass volunteers over here who have no business being in a war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLast March I\u2019d seen everything that was happening, and when I heard about the international legion, I knew I was going to come,\u201d Offenbecker told The Daily Beast in an interview from Kyiv. \u201cBut at the time I had some obligations that were holding me there. It took me two months\u2026 I had to sell my house, I sold my vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Offenbecker spent time preparing, conditioning, and getting in better physical shape to fight.<\/p>\n

When he saw images of mass graves and Ukrainian civilians murdered execution-style in Bucha<\/a>, Offenbecker was livid.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really made me furious that you could do that to someone so innocent,\u201d he said. \u201cIt really pissed me off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a skillset that I learned, I had six years in the Marine Corps, I was instructing other Marines, I instructed other countries on how to fight. I just thought it wouldn\u2019t be right if I sat at home,\u201d Offenbecker said.<\/p>\n

The urge to go for Bramlette was also personal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my third war I\u2019ve fought in, and this is by far the worst one.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2014, just two months before Russia illegally annexed Crimea<\/a> from Ukraine, he arrived to work for the 1st battalion 10th Special Forces Group in Stuttgart, Germany. When Russia moved in, it was go time for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Crimea<\/a> happened, all of our emphasis went to defending Eastern Europe, essentially. So my three years in Special Forces was basically doing\u2026 partner training all over Central and Eastern Europe and western Europe too,\u201d Bam said. \u201cBut I never really felt like we were accomplishing very much.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while Bramlette has previously been on combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, there are a whole slew of service members or veterans throughout the world who prepared to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who, for whatever reason, didn\u2019t get to. From the vets he has seen gearing up in Ukraine, many have felt the pull to fill that gap, Bam said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing more frustrating than training and training, training for something your whole life, or for years on end, and then never actually getting to sort of test your mettle,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of those guys, that was kind of the vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Offenbecker shared similar sentiments. \u201cI\u2019ve encountered some guys where maybe they were here for some sense of purpose, they\u2019ve seen their buddies go through war and they never did,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Once in Ukraine, the wartime preparations in Lviv and Kyiv involved a little bit of luck and a little bit of chaos, Bramlette said.<\/p>\n

First, Bramlette was caught off guard by how many people picked up and went to Ukraine to help fight without having any military experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of really dumb-ass volunteers over here who have no business being in a war,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After arriving in Poland in early March of 2022, he took a train to Lviv to meet up with other volunteer fighters. But on the way, he found several other foreigners he didn\u2019t want to fight side-by-side with, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met three other foreigners on a train. One was a German, and he had no military experience. He was a carpenter or something like that,\u201d Bramlette said. \u201cHe had shot a gun\u2014like a little bit. And it was a hunting rifle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once in Ukraine, Bramlette sized up some different groups of foreign volunteers, but found their military background similarly lacking. He was \u201cequally unhappy with the quality of foreigners there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A few days later, he hooked up with two other Green Berets to form a multi-national squad of about 12 people to form a small unit tactics team, or a special operations team.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then essentially, they give us orders for Kharkiv and said, \u2018Go kill as many Russians as you can,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After some training and preparation, with guns and ammunition from Ukraine\u2019s supplies, the squad was off.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did all our own recruiting from foreigners who were already in Kyiv. And we did all our own resourcing, funding, like buying our own cars, funding our own safe houses,\u201d Bam said.<\/p>\n

In Kharkiv, their missions were largely self-driven. The Ukrainian government didn\u2019t link them up with Ukrainian or other foreign volunteer units to coordinate, so they took it on themselves, introducing themselves to territorial defense forces, regular army units, airborne units, and Ukrainian Special Operations units.<\/p>\n

After making connections near the front, Bam\u2019s squad would get a brief on the latest on the Russians, and determine what kind of a mission they should run for the Ukrainians, from running reconnaissance on enemy positions to mining.<\/p>\n

Offenbecker, the former Marine, also had to organize his fighting team on the fly. He had applied to the international legion but hadn\u2019t heard anything back in about a week. Instead of waiting around for final plans, he told a few family members and close friends, packed up, and got himself to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t hear anything so I just flew\u2026 anyways. I figured I would volunteer and help some other way,\u201d Offenbecker said.<\/p>\n

Once in Ukraine, he connected with the right people to join the international legion and was soon fighting with them in the Donbas in Eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Even in those early days, he started seeing some foreign volunteers that didn\u2019t have any clue what they were in for.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my third war I\u2019ve fought in, and this is by far the worst one,\u201d Offenbecker told The Daily Beast. \u201cYou\u2019re getting fucking smashed with artillery, tanks. Last week I had a plane drop a bomb next to us, like 300 meters away. It\u2019s horrifying shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once he was there, some of his buddies from the military started messaging him asking for information on how to join up, too. But he ignored messages for months.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest it was pretty bad so I didn\u2019t want to bring anyone else into it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The missions were grueling, Bramlette said. In Iraq or Afghanistan, Bramlette had air support, or supporting ISR, or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. \u201cThe worst day in Afghanistan and Iraq is a great day in Ukraine,\u201d he said. \u201cEven when we thought it wasn\u2019t, we were always in control of the situation\u2026 versus as a commander of a team in Ukraine,\u201d where there are more unknowns.<\/p>\n

On reconnaissance missions in Ukraine, you just have to wait until the team members come back, since comms aren\u2019t reliable. \u201cI would always send a reconnaissance element out first\u2026 as soon as those guys leave my side, I\u2019m not gonna really hear from them until they\u2019re back within eyesight. And that may be 24 hours later, maybe 48 hours later,\u201d he explained. \u201cIf two of them get injured\u2026 there\u2019s no helicopter coming to get you\u2026 shit can go south really, really frickin\u2019 quickly. And that\u2019s the kind of stuff that is pretty hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the wintertime set in, Bramlette made the call to send members of his small unit home to take a break. Their thermal signatures were popping more than in the summertime, giving away their positions. Staying out of Russian troops\u2019 sights was growing harder each day, as leafy coverage disappeared. In addition to those issues, the squad\u2019s vehicles kept breaking down, and they were running out of money.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince we\u2019re a small unit tactics team\u2026 you\u2019re running around\u2026 in front of the Ukrainian line and in front of the Russian line. You don\u2019t have leaves on the trees, the bushes are bare, the trees are bare, and it\u2019s colder\u2026 It\u2019s really bad news bears,\u201d Bramlette said. \u201cYou can\u2019t hide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without drastically changing their approach, they were setting themselves up for failure. \u201cI was just afraid we would go out and do what we normally do and we\u2019d all basically die,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

And while the plan was to plug back in come January, Bam couldn\u2019t bring himself to do it once he got to remove himself from the fog of war.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came back in December it sort of gave me the distance, the space to sort of reevaluate everything that had happened because if I\u2019m in charge of a whole team you don\u2019t have time to really think about everything,\u201d he said. \u201cI kind of shut down a little bit, but it gave me the decompression space to reassess. And so I came to the conclusion that I\u2019m not going to go back and fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bam is still working on helping the war effort from Kyiv through his work for The Weatherman Foundation, which has recently been working on locating and transferring the remains of Americans killed fighting in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Offenbecker is currently working on switching to a new team in Ukraine\u2019s foreign legion, and has plans to continue fighting in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look at these children, and I have my own child and niece and nephews. If that were a circumstance for them, I would hope people from all over the world would come and try to help keep them safe and protected as well,\u201d Offenbecker said. \u201cThat\u2019s what keeps me here.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if the global community isn\u2019t willing to properly address Russia\u2019s aggression in Ukraine, Moscow will only continue its territorial expansion tear, Bramlette warned.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t get serious about how we think about Russia, and we don\u2019t stop Russia here, the next step is\u2026 Belarus<\/a> gets folded into Russia. Or Moldova<\/a> gets folded into Russia. Ukraine gets folded into Russia,\u201d Bramlette said. \u201cRussia is a rabid dog. The Kremlin needs to get put down.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two U.S. mercenaries learn the hard way that the war in Ukraine is not as portrayed by the Western media. According to one, who had completed stints working for the U.S. military as a Green Beret and as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan: \u201cThis is my third war I\u2019ve fought in, and this is by far the worst one\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":270890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270891,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270889\/revisions\/270891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/270890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}