Why we train with allies – even when it’s dangerous

In each armor training, I ordered – and there were many – there were some soldiers who never made the headlines, never looked for the spotlight and who have never complained of the cold, rain, fat, fat or long nights spent working on draft steel beasts. They were the “keys”.

This is what oil tankers call mechanics, a term of affection, such as calling a “doc” doctor or a “spoon” cook. In the cavalry, where our mounts are abrams tanks and Bradley combat vehicles weighing up to 70 tonnes, the “key” is the soldier who draws your vehicle stuck from the peat bog and fixes things when they break. Without them, the tanks do not drive, the slopes remain broken and the training stalls.

Last week in Lithuania, we lost four of these quiet professionals. Soldiers from the 1st armored brigade combat team, 3rd infantry division, carried out a mission to repair and towed a immobilized tactical vehicle when their armored vehicle Hercules M88A2 led to a peat bog near Pabradė and has become submerged. After a complex recovery operation involving forces of us, Lithuanians, Estonians and Polish, Their bodies were recovered.

The Hercules is a beast in its own right: almost 70 tonnes, with a powerful winch system, a boom of 35 tonnes and a thick sufficiently armor to survive near the front lines (not at all one “toy»). When a tank descends into the mud or throws a track under fire, the keys in their Hercules come out to bring it back. Like doctors who run to injured soldiers, ignoring their own safety, it is the keys that appear in broken vehicles to catch it and its safety and combat crew.

It is easy to concentrate on the acute end of the lance – the infantrymen or the oil trees that shoot and maneuver. But each operation, each hour of combat power is based on a foundation built by the maintainers. They do not pull the main pistol, but they make sure that it pulls. They do not maneuver on the lens, but they make sure that the vehicle will get there. In armor units, we know this truth intimately. We depend on our keys as we depend on the doctors, the spoons and the logisticians who deliver fuel and ammunition.

Doing maintenance training in the field is a necessity. We practice the way we fight – and we do not plan to fight in a dry and isolated garage. The keys practice in each environment: snow, greens, heat, rain; Often in the dark, with limited tools, and always against the clock. I have seen cannibalizing parts of broken vehicles so that another can start again and the crews could continue to train. I saw keys burn at night in the most difficult conditions – linked just to the offer of a cup of lukewarm coffee – so that the company they support can roll as expected before dawn. And their work is never finished: there is always another broken vehicle, and they are impatiently approaching it, with rolled sleeves and covered from the head to end with fat. Because when a vehicle breaks down during training, it is a drawback. But if he breaks down during the fight, it can mean death.

Some may wonder why these American soldiers were training in Lithuania in the first place. This is because Lithuanians are our allies and we train with each other. I went to the training area where these four soldiers practiced. In fact, I visited the three Baltic States in 2012 – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – as part of a Defense Commitment Program. Each country was serious, professional and proud to be part of NATO. In Estonia, I visited the grave of a young soldier, the SGT. Andres Nulamae, who had been assigned to our command in Baghdad. Baltic soldiers were among our best, and they sacrificed by our side. Because that’s what the allies do.

But something about Lithuania struck me during my visit over ten years ago. Like the other European nations, I have often been entitled to a cultural program after the end of an official visit. Lithuania was no exception. In Vilnius, a young woman perhaps at the beginning of the twenties paid me a guided tour of their capital. During a discussion, she told me how, as a little girl, she saw her father standing with thousands of others on the city’s square in 1991 when Lithuanian civilians looked at the Soviet army in their quest for freedom and independence. His father had the chance not to have been one of the 14 civilians killed – instead, a Soviet tank crushed his foot and the friends brought him home. His wife begged him not to take up the demonstrations, reminding him of their two young children. But he replied, “I have to go there because I have two children who must be free from the Russians. This story left me a brand.

The memory of 14 unarmed Lithuanians giving their lives to face Russian armor in the cold time of January 1991 do not only live in their history books but in their bones. This is why Lithuania practically beaten the NATO door before being authorized to join in 2004. And that is why they contributed forces to American operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, supported allied deployments in their own country and welcomed our training rotations with professionalism and heat. This is a large part of the reason they are among Ukraine’s most generous supportersEven though the United States vacillates.

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Today, Lithuania is also found in a position of immense strategic importance and danger. With Poland, he afflicts the Sowałki gap, a narrow corridor that flows between Poland and Lithuania that separates Belarus from the highly militarized exclave from Russia to Kaliningrad. In military terms, this is a strangulation point. In political terms, it may be the next target. If Putin never decides to test the determination of NATO more, Lithuania is a probable victim, not because it is weak, but because it is essential. Giving the gap of Suwałki could cut the Baltic States of land strengthening, isolate them and present to the world a fait accompli. This is the kind of bet that a corner autocrat like Putin could take.

This is why our soldiers – infantry, armor, artillery and yes, keys – relax with other nations in Lithuania. Deterrence is not only a strategy; It is a presence that strengthens confidence. It is the noise of tanks that are triggered early in the morning, the view of NATO armor crossing a range of frozen training, and knowledge that if a bolts shear or a launched track, there is someone who knows exactly what to do.

The recovery operation that followed this recent tragedy speaks volumes about the strength of our alliances. During six difficult days, American, Lithuanian and Polish forces worked side by side to recover the Hercules de la Bouche. It was an exhausting multinational effort involving logisticians, mechanisms and engineers. The terrain was full of water, deep and ruthless – but they kept there. This is what the allies do. They present themselves when it is difficult.

There is a silent cost for preparation, and these soldiers – those who sacrificed their lives during training and those who stayed with her during recovery operations – brought her in full. Because alliances are not only pieces of paper. These are people who wrap their sleeves and go out to do hard work. The allies are built on shared values, a common objective and the kind of moral clarity which leads a Lithuanian father to return to a square of Russian tanks, not despite his children, but because of them.

We remember the dead not only to cry them, but to remind us of the kind of ally that we aspire to be. The genre that stands, holds quickly and never lets the mission fail.

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