If you want and have method capabilities, you can go to a higher level in partisan craftsmanship and deal with aerial reconnaissance with a drone. The drones have been mentioned, so I won't repeat myself. I'll just show you the results of my work. You had to fly a small bit and there was quite a few fear, but movies with specified frames (photo 5) deserve only 2 things: a bullet in the head if the enemy finds it on your telephone or a medal erstwhile the news of your merits comes to the right decision factors.
Three things, actually. The 3rd option is the satisfaction that you have done everything in your power with the means available. To be rather serious, with this filming and taking pictures – whether from a drone or from a window or from behind a barrier – you must be very careful. However, this is simply a powerful hazard if your activities are detected by the enemy and considered espionage. You gotta make a decision about this kind of sabotage action with the cognition that by engaging in it you are putting your own life, or possibly your loved ones' lives at risk. But if you manage to get and pass on where specified staff needs to be – I say this from a position of almost 3 years since their creation – then pride remains for the remainder of your life. And that sense can neither be bought nor lost. And no 1 can take it from you.
Photo 6. Personnel from a movie documenting the passage of 2 battalions of Russian troops by Bobrovica on 1 March 2022 [photo own].From reconnaissance, gathering and transmitting intelligence is only a tiny step to the partisan actions of the strico sense. Are you ready to participate? Not physically (because you're never ready adequate for that, so a knee shot and how can something break in your spine be ignored), but mentally? Weird question, isn't it? Then perceive to me very carefully for a moment.
I know I'm creating a guidebook for you in case of a W whose main intent is to aid you last the first 48 hours of war and prepare you for a fresh time. Are you inactive alive? Okay. Now it's time to think about what to do with this life? What is good and what is crucial in this life? utilizing large words, what makes sense?
You most likely don't remember the movie “Conan the Barbarian” starring Arnold Schwarzienneger, who opened the door to his large cinema career. I realize that the years fly relentlessly, and less and less people remember the image.
There is simply a scene in “Conan” in which the barbarian chief asks during the triumph battle: ‘What is the best in life?’. 1 of the sons of the warlord answers, 'The endless steppe, the full-blooded horse, the falcon on your right hand, and the wind in your hair.' The father blames him: `Źle!`. He repeats the question – what is best in life? – calling for Conan's answer. The 1 without hesitation and with a stone face responds: `Break up enemies, see them on their knees and hear the lamentation of their women'.
And that's where the curtain might actually fall. In my individual experience, this is the strongest scene of the film. It gives the most to think erstwhile you take a deeper look at its meaning.
`Conan the Barbarian' entered cinema screens in 1982 the era of president Reagan in the US, in the USSR of Brezhnev's end. Cold war in her hottest phase. russian intervention in Afghanistan led to the seizure of practically the full territory of the country. American support for the mujahideen was inactive the subject of cabinet plans. And here's the question in the amusement movie 'what's the best in life?' No – what is most crucial in life, but what is the best in life? And there are 2 very crucial answers. Answers that find the main attitudes of mankind besides today.
The first answer: 'The endless steppe, the full-blooded horse, the falcon on your right hand and the wind in your hair' is the quintessence of Western consumerism and hedonism. To put it simply, 'me and my Tesla are chasing the coast of the French Riviera and we don't give a crap about the remainder of the world.' This could be the best thing ever. Fur, skin and cell – as it was said in the 1990s.
The second answer, Conan's answer, which evokes a general applause gathered at a warrior's feast, are the words: 'Break up enemies, see them on their knees and hear the lamentation of their women'. How would that sound in Russian? `Победить врагов их на на и услышать плач их их женщин` женщин`. announcement that the russian Union and present Russia are inactive following Conan's way – to make specified a war for peace so that there is no stone left on the stone. And the fact is, I'm going to beat the crap out of everybody around me. Break up enemies (real and created by propaganda), see them on their knees and hear the lamentation of their women. This could be the best thing ever. And it inactive is for many, believe me.
And here it comes out that in a scene that lasts possibly 20 seconds and was embedded in an adventure movie from 1982 we have a closed quintessentialness of the collision of 2 civilizations – Western and Russian (Soviet, russian – as called, so called). We pursuit the wind in our hair, inactive wanting to have a better horse and faster falcons, and they want to physically finish us off. What? Let's dig deeper.
Why was the question 'What's the best in life?' not 'what's the most crucial in life?' The more you tighten up your 2 brain scrolls, the brighter the only possible answer: due to the fact that to ask what is most crucial in life, doctrine has been trying to answer for respective 1000 years. What? And there's no answer that's at least 3 minus. Or even on 3 rails... (I don't like a six-step scale of school grades). So if there's no hope of getting an answer to the question, what's the most crucial thing in life?
The longer I live, the more I realize that the best of life is the time we inactive gotta use. That the best thing we can do is not to waste that time, no substance how much it is – day, year or year a hundred. Faced with the war set before you, specified existential and – it might seem – a tiny question, grows to the rank of a Hamlet drama. What's the best thing about life for you? A regular life that has to end anyway? due to the fact that we're all gonna die. Is the best time to live is to give in to the pleasures of the large and small, after which the way besides dies in your memory?
Remember “The Song of Good Fame” Kochanowski? “He shall not lose who friezes for fame with life, that he may best give it in the shade free after.” Have you considered the meaning of these words, or have they been just another boring mandatory reading that “must be reworked”. Now is simply a good time to think about those words.
Frederick II the Great, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, architect of the Prussian power, was reportedly to have personally run in the back of his retreating troops during the conflict of Kolin, rammed soldiers with a stick and shouted to them, “dogs, do you want to live forever?” The same Frederick II the large at the end of his life stated in his writings that "man is simply a working being, created to act, and the highest ethical law is to fulfil his social obligations towards himself and his fellowmen."
The Roman emperor, Mark Aurelius, reigning from 161 to 180, called the philosopher on the throne, though he may have spent more time in military camps than in the throne or in the library, wrote in his “Rethinkings”: “Each moment, take care of yourself as a Roman and as a man, so that, what you have at your fingertips, you will do with full and not successful dignity and love and freedom, and you will preserve justice and you will be independent of all another thoughts. And thou shalt give it to thee, if thou doest all work as the last in life, so that it may be free from all indiscretion and gross discord with the commandments of reason, and with hypocrisy, and selfishness, and discontent with fate."
Is something emerging from these boring historical trips? Yes. As humans, we are mortal. The endurance of 1 conflict does not warrant immortality. But the memory of us, for our fame, can supply us with a kind of eternal life. And we never know whether the substance that we are busy at the minute will not be the last time in our lives and it would be good for it to give us a good witness. The poets and philosophers teach us that the best thing in life is to stand up to the challenge. Don't wait, don't look, don't ask “what did the country do for us?” but focus on what we can do for the country at any time. Or even for humanity?
large countries and large civilizations are the strength of the people who live in them. Strong civilizations make specified myths of their power that no 1 dares attack them. And the descending civilizations provoke kicks from barbarians who want to climb into the large salons of the past and see what they look like and at least live for a while with this rotten life flowing in abundance. What motivates Russians to support war? story of my own power. What motivates Russian soldiers dying thousands in this war? The possible of making immense money for Russia. What are your motivations? Go to the Maldives to get friends to take pictures of Insta? Why? And then what?
What do you want to leave behind the children? Losing country? Are we not able to learn anything from past and again any poet repeats behind Slovak that we are coming “from a country where always, on days of misery, there remains a sad half – knights – alive”?
If an enemy attacked our country, it means we've already failed as citizens. You, me, all of us. alternatively of creating a state that no 1 dares to grab, we, like the stupid of Peter Complaint's sermons, were dressing our own mufflers on a sinking ship, hoping it would be somehow.
Ukraine was not and is not a strong state with which powers specified as Russia would gotta reckon. Ukraine fucked its 20 years of independency on the inertial drif, which led it to the creation of a corrupt, oligarchical system, for which barely anyone should want to die. So far, I'm amazed she didn't fall like a home of cards in 2022. This means that behind the facade of rotten oligarchy there is real value in this country – people who are willing to die for it. To die present so that next day their children can live in a free country. What are we Poles ready to do for our country? What are we doing for him? Or isn't it worth doing anything? possibly this isn't our country, not our peace and not our war? Really?
Do you think it's best for you and my kids to live in any quisqueeze under a Russian PRL shoe? You know, I was born in PRL and survived my childhood there. erstwhile a household friend brought a commercial from a toy store from Germany. I watched that paper for hours, staring at these toys. Not dreaming of them due to the fact that they were unattainable anyway, just looking at them.
erstwhile I grew old adequate to be able to write, I wrote any postcards to German branches of Honda, Mercedes, BMW, and any another car brands. I can't remember how I got their addresses. But I remember writing a slanted, kid writing, with a Polish-English dictionary on my knees to send me any pictures of cars. And thank you very much in advance. And I did. With stamps. costly stamps. On a regular post office.
You will never imagine how amazed I was and how large my joy was erstwhile after a period or 2 I received 2 thick envelopes. 1 from Mercedes, the another from Honda. There were colorful catalogues printed on solid, chalk paper. The kind that lie in all authorized surviving area present erstwhile you go and replace the oil in your car. I've got these fucking catalogues that, as a seven- or eight-year-old kid, I pulled from behind an iron curtain in the '80s, I inactive have. With my eyes closed, I will show you the shelf on which they lie in my old Polish apartment. And I have this toy magazine. And believe it or not, I cry like a beaver erstwhile I compose these words. I cry over my unleavened childhood, in which the colorful paper had the power of fetish. Is that what you want for your children and grandchildren? You think it's best for them? Enjoying the hours of colorful paperwork? You don't? Well, get your guns and your motherfuckers!
Oh, I got carried away. But sometimes you gotta get your emotions out. It cleans up. I just want to open your eyes. Polish economical miracle, stability, safety is not something given erstwhile and for all. This should be protected. And if there's no request to wait for individual to come and save our country. As the poet wrote – “bagnet for weapons!”. And if you and I don't do it, why should others? Are they made of better clay? all revolutionary change, you gotta start by changing yourself.
I – last but not least (I love this idiom) – erstwhile you halt being afraid, fear takes on others. Dogs usually bite those who run from them.
All right, but how does the above patriotic exultation and call for arms come with the opinion expressed by me at the beginning of this chapter that since the war in modern war is simply a professional army, and the guerrilla does not make much sense?
The Partisan is not from conducting regular armed action. A guerrilla in the modern war has 2 goals to achieve: so that the enemy does not feel besides assured in the territory occupied by them and that civilians stay in the territory occupied by the enemy does not lose their spirit (and moral compass).
The Russians, who occupied the areas of Chernihowchina in 2022, feared, and rather seriously, the bander. surviving in Ukraine since 2012, I have not seen any “banderist”, but the invading Russian troops were absolutely convinced that each village has a large group of them, and each building higher than 2 floors has at least 1 flag sniper and respective RPG operators. Therefore, this kind of architectural constructions the Russians tried to avoid in their mechanized marches as far as possible – as they say in the east – from as bad as possible.
The Russian fears were the consequence of their authoritative propaganda. The Russian invaders were to denasify and free Ukraine from fascist flags. Hence their alternatively absurd actions related to the search for these “Nazis”, “fascists” and “badders”. Thus, for example, controlling people in occupied territories for tattoos that might indicate belonging to military and paramilitary organizations.
I do not know to this day what tattoos were expected to be, and who decided on their “subversive” content, but I know that while on the battlefield as a civilian, it is definitely better not to have tattoos. None. In no, most intimate place. You never know what artistic wrapper will be considered by a peculiar private to be “suspected” or even “Nazi”, for which a bullet in the head can immediately belong. Unfortunately, I'm not kidding. The Russians are celebrated for completely ignoring the law of war, and the scale of their crimes on civilians and prisoners of war is inactive not full known. Therefore, if you are afraid that as a associate or a opposition sympathizer you will exposure yourself to a bullet in the head without trial or even questioning, be comforted that this hazard always exists, even if you are only God's spirit guilty of a civilian who faints at the sight of weapons and uniform.
However, since the Russians were genuinely afraid that there was a strong opposition in the areas occupied by them, this was readily utilized by locals. respective bullets released from a hunting weapon in the forest where the occupiers could have been stationed (though they did not have to), effectively heated the atmosphere. individual always heard those shots. individual added a communicative to them. individual passed the communicative on, adding colour to it. And in this way, there were terrible stories about a solitary vigilante hunter, a Ukrainian veteran from the time of russian intervention in Afghanistan, who had already killed 20 Russian soldiers at night, cutting off dead men's ears as trophies.
The same pair of bullets fired “on crows” filled the hearts of the locals. After all, it was apparent that at night “our boys” are hunting kacaps. It's better not to leave the home alone, due to the fact that it's a curfew and a terrible hour, but they're there – you can hear that they don't let themselves to sleep peacefully.
Where was the line between fact and myth? I don't know. I know that sometimes any stray ammunition truck burned down or constantly circulating fields in search of passage to the back of the benzos. respective times I drove into “forest people” coming out of nowhere. Uff, I must admit that the sight of boys emerging from the forest in sweatpants and adidas with kalashes has always been very stressful. The deficiency of emblems and distinctions until the minute of direct verbal contact made it impossible to admit who started? – Ukrainian guerrillas or Russian marauders?
The presence of partisans (actual or legendary) besides guaranteed the decency of local behaviour in the absence of civilian authorities. The Ukrainian-Russian conflict has besides this specificity that part of Ukraine's population favours more or little clearly invaders. I will not tell you a secret by revealing that there will be a percent of rusophiles everywhere who will be happy that the Russians are bringing their order. Yet, there have been times erstwhile specified rusophiles died at the hands of Russians, who did not want to get into what political views were represented by the “cheek”.
It is not essential to be a prophet that the awareness of operating in the area of guerrillas importantly lowered the level of love of rusophiles for the business troops. For it was better not to flaunt the signs of joy due to the arrival of the Russian miru erstwhile at night they could come “banderers” and explain that specified behaviours were not desirable.
In the event of a possible war in Poland, the guerrilla will have precisely the same tasks: depriving of the peaceable sleep of occupiers and stopping the tendencies of collaboration. I'm not saying you gotta run around with a firearm and bite invaders after dark like any John Rambo. But if you approach a ellipse of shooting enthusiasts in your area in peacetime (or possibly even collect your own arsenal), then you can consider the option of partisans.
My experience shows that partisans do not request to be “full-time”. Where I was staying, the guerrilla group gathered “ad hoc” and, after the task was done, just went home. Without coercion, without commitment, without peculiar intimacy, even without formalized command – the little you know, the more peaceful you sleep. Of course, it was the very beginning of a full-scale invasion and nothing was yet solid. On the contrary – everything that was formed. 1 crucial thing – if you already have a gun, don't keep it at home. Well, unless the weapon (easy to hide) in case you gotta defend yourself at home or commit suicide. Yes, yes – “the balls are for the enemy, and the last for me”, as the partisan song of planet War II proclaims. Unfortunately, time W is time to make utmost decisions. But besides a time erstwhile you feel like you're truly alive and that life is precious.
As you can see, the fact that civilians are in the theatre of action gives emergence to wide implications. For the homeland, for the invader, for the native army, for the local administration and for the individual people who came to be in the shadow of the ongoing war. You gotta make your own decisions. I only paint a colorful palette of acceptable attitudes and consequences. I don't know where you're gonna feel best or where you are. This could be Chicago in the U.S., where you'll be organizing fund-raisers for a fighting country. Might as well be the White Forest, where you'll be hiding like a predator taking the nights of stray occupiers to bite their throats. It's your decision. I only have 1 request: erstwhile making a choice, do not follow your own business. Remember what Mickiewicz wrote about it?:
“[...]
Look at her water, dead body
There's any amphibian in the shell.
With his own rudder, a sailor, a ship;
Chasing the elements of a petty amphibian,
It's going up, it's going down:
There is no wave to him, nor a wave to him.
And then, like a bubble, it went over a stone rag!
No 1 knows his life, no 1 knows his demise:
They are selfish!”
I don't like Mickiewicz, but he was right here. Don't be selfish. Bring something from you into the community life.
