The Warsaw Pact Boys - Borowski

Borowski. Skangalis. Sidko. Bakumenko. The Warsaw Pact Boys (The Warsaw Pact was the Soviet Union’s response to NATO and consisted of all the East European puppet states that were under their control during the Cold War). All of our coalition soldiers were great folks, but I especially like the Warsaw Pact Boys. The irony of serving with guys that we were trying to kill us only 12 years prior was just too juicy. I’ve mentioned all but Skangalis in previous stories, so I’ll expand on each of them in the next few posts.

Borowski. Polish Army Major. Spoke good English. Wanted to be an American. HATED communists and communism. I’m surprised that he hasn’t immigrated yet. He was a big talker (remember the Polish vodka incident) and he rubbed Bill the wrong way. We took Bill with us to the airport in to pick him up in case his English wasn’t that good. Bill addressed him in Polish. He scolded him and said NEVER to speak to him in Polish again and that he was trying to perfect his English and English was the lingua franca of the unit. From then on, they avoided each other. Borowski took us to the Polish Division base in Hillah one day. With him in charge, we had a great time. In all the former Soviet countries, officers are treated with much greater awe and respect than in western armies. So we could go just about anywhere on the base that we liked with him leading the way. The base was on the Euphrates River and was very well situated. In was next the ruins of Babylon and one of Saddam’s palaces was there on top of a hill made by slave labor (Saddam’s, not Babylonian). He was constantly hitting on our female interpreters and actually began dating one. He had no problem passing around pictures of his Polish girlfriend naked. And oh by the way, he was also married. I think he and Sami used to hang out together, although I can’t confirm it. He grew a beard and began to go jogging in the morning with an AK-47 strapped to his back. We told him to stop because he might get shot. The Warsaw Pact boys never got care packages and had to rely on us for all of their support. The American people being the generally patriotic, caring people that they are, would drown us in care packages from home. We would communally put the contents on a big shelving unit in the kitchen. The Boys didn’t live in the house initially, so we told them that could help themselves to anything in the kitchen. Borowski wasn’t bashful. He would sometimes come over with a bag and fill up! Poland was one the few countries that had an Embassy in Baghdad. In fact, before the war began, embassy staffers took a GPS and plotted targets for us! Try to get our foreign service officers to do that! Anyway, Borowski took us to their Embassy one day. The staff were very nice and I enjoyed a nice, cold Heineken after a long, hot ride (before SUV’s). Borowski still stays in touch and called from Poland recently.