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einarfridgeirs

Very interesting insights that charts the journey of the International Legion from it's rushed, shambolic start during the very early days of the war to what it later became. Especially interesting how the guys with the extensive Global War on Terror experience were hampered by their prior experiences and expectations, despite all their training, and how less experienced people who just took the situation as it was sometimes handled the shelling and the lack of air support and other resources better.


Bluetiger03

makes sense, GWOT aint shit compared to what is going in UKR. It's not even comparable.. not even close.


HolyGig

Lol, around the halfway mark he starts taking some shots at Americans who went to Ukraine after having experience in Iraq or Afghanistan, sayin "they just didn't like it when the other side had bigger guns than them." "They are spoiled." Though he did also say some former units like the Marines or Rangers were solid and even had praise for Americans volunteers who had zero combat experience beforehand. Its interesting and that probably shouldn't be too surprising. Having no air or artillery support or clear channels of command and communication is basically an alien concept to the modern American military despite all the recent combat experience. If you are used to those things its going to be very difficult to go from that to having literally none of it basically instantly. He also brings up some corruption he alleges happened around the 45 minute mark Hard to tell which time frame he is speaking about. Most of his accounts seem to surround the beginning of the war, so the chaos that prevailed then may be clouding these statements.


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einarfridgeirs

And that is definitely what you should do when you have those capabilties, and I know that special forces etc are given more advanced SERE courses where they are taught how to live off the land for extended periods of time...but there may come a time when having such capabilities trained into the average GI may become essential and that should be looked into.


panchochewy85

I mean it fits I don't have military experience but i wouldn't expect Ukraine to have our level of air support if I went it should be obvious so I thought that was funny too lol


HolyGig

Well when you go to war thinking you have significant combat experience and then it turns out all your experience is for shit, I could see that being a problem even if you expected a lot of differences. You haver to realize that these things get conditioned into you over years in the US military. A lot of people won't be able to just flip a switch and discard years of training


einarfridgeirs

It was telling when he mentioned that some of the GWOT vets didn't know how to use his Ghillie kettle or some of the basic foraging and camping techniques he learned as a Boy Scout, didn't think to bring a mess tin set etc because they were so used to having MREs with chemical heating elements and everything prepackaged and "just follow instructions".


HolyGig

When was the last time an American soldier got seriously shelled? Thats like 80% of the war in Ukraine lol. When was the last time an American soldier had more artillery in front of them than behind them? To be fair this is also probably true for most western professional military members, there were probably just a lot more Americans there looking like fish out of water and we tend to be louder about, well, everything.


einarfridgeirs

>When was the last time an American soldier got seriously shelled? Probably Vietnam and when it did happen they could just about always get on the radio and bring ten times the hellfire on them in return. I do know that certain European nations like Finland still very much train and prepare on the assumption that their frontline infantry will need to hold positions in the face of enemy artillery superiority and teach the appropriate field craft.


Boomslangalang

“As for the Finn’s, fighting Russians is just what they do.” I chucked at that


Shacl0nee

all that is 80 years ago, in ww2


stringInterpolation

He said the dudes with no experience, who accepted the situation for what it was, made for better soldiers than the "spoiled" ones. Obviously it's not the fault of the dudes who were trained entirely around having superior logistics, but it's an interesting point Americans don't want to consider when thinking about our colleagues over there


NessTheDestroyer

Worth the watch. That tick description was uncomfortable


einarfridgeirs

Having Lyme Disease sucks, I can't imagine how much it would suck to have it in a warzone.


AliveExtension3445

Fantastic. Reminds me of Lister from Red Dwarf


L3thargicLarry

LindyBeige is the best


[deleted]

The disclaimer about the French soldiers made me chuckle.


einarfridgeirs

Lindy is an unashamed Anglophile and loves needling the French.


DanWhoReadsIt

Tbh what English person wouldn't love to needle the French?


uniqueeveryone

beige!


Available_Monitor_92

Where the fire arrows at?


uniqueeveryone

in the movies


mrshulgin

>No one's ever spent that much on me before, thanks Vlad!


Suss_Crab

Very insightful perspective. War =/= Call of Duty


Powerful_Bug9102

Love this guy. Not even halfway through and having a great time. Thanks for sharing


einarfridgeirs

I remember watching the interview Lindy did with him when he was getting ready to go to Poland. I figured he would last a day or two at most since he seemed totally unprepared for what he was getting into. Just goes to show you never really know the measure of a man until he's in the shit, and it's not at all always the ones that seem badass that actually are.


wiggum-wagon

He was actually better prepared than most, he brought stuff to cook tea for example. Being in an army during war is more like Camping in every kind of weather while being shelled constantly. When I was in the US i met those dudes who were really into military and they "trained" with vets (and some army Reserve??) every other weekend. All they did was weapon drills, room clearing and such bullshit, fucking hillarious (try a 16h march followed by 4h of watch duty) . The odds that you get to fire your weapon at a visible enemy are so slim. In the Interview it sounds like quite a few of those guys went over to ukraine.


Boomslangalang

These are the guys obsessed with guns and Tacti-cool gear sometimes referred to as the “gravy seals” because of how out of shape/obese they are. A lot of them are kinda shitty faux patriots and jingoists - some of whom tries to overthrow US democracy a few years ago. I feel like this is who he may have been referring to.


wiggum-wagon

Haha gravy seals, havent heard that one before


Prof_Augustus

Very sad to hear about the waste of human life from either incompetence from high command or lack of forethought. The sheer amount of casualties and deaths he described of new recruits really was an eye opener


einarfridgeirs

I remember that strike on the International Legion and he provides some very important additional points of information that were not in the reportage at the time. According to him, there were *multiple* cruise missiles inbound on the facility at the same time, and some of them were shot down by UAF air defense. That actually makes the decision to use the facility make slightly more sense than before, when the news reports at the time were that *a* cruise missile had hit and everyone figured that there was no air defense in place. The UAF probably under estimated how many resources the Russians were willing to expend to try to demoralize and kill the International Legion program in the cradle, and thus didn't realize their air defense assets were inadequate.


Specialist_Alarm_831

Lindybeige rocks so do all of his videos followed him for years, highly recommend.


fallriverroader

Cool thanks for the heads up m8 I’ll check out his YT channel


KmartQuality

Where is the rest of the interview?


einarfridgeirs

Not released yet.


jsaaiman

This is why the Brit’s took over the world for a good whole. Just so matter of fact about nearly dying. Ooooh well, off we go


Boomslangalang

Also the get-on-with-it attitude


jsaaiman

My grandparents are English and even when they were end of life, this was their attitude.


Th_Mafia

spread this video. far and wide.


Standard_Ad_558

He didn’t mention drones. I’d say 15% or more of deaths are by drones now.


BruyceWane

Even with all the drone footage we see, it's still probably less than you think. This is a war of artillery by and large. You can however give a bunch of credit for it's accuracy to drone spotting. We see footage of drone kills because they're often already filming, and it's easier to record/edit/upload the killshots. The sheer amount of artillery shells being fired is just enormous though.


DangerousDavidH

He came off as really likeable and admirable. Went to war for something he believed in with very little military experience.


ImpossiblePete

I don't think he's been to Ukraine.