On Saturday, May 10, nearly 100 soldiers of the 10th Armored Cavalry Brigade (10BKPanc) returned to Poland. Several dozen “mission personnel” from other units also arrived with them. It was the first such large group to return from the 14th rotation of the Polish contingent. More arrivals will follow soon.
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When the U.S. Air Force’s large Boeing C-17 Globemaster landed on the airport apron, it was already clear that the soldiers aboard were safe. The arrival scheduled for 6:10 was not delayed by even a minute.
The soldiers were welcomed at the airport by Lieutenant Colonel Mariusz Kujawa, senior specialist in the Host Nation Transport and Support Branch of the Armed Forces Operational Command Support Division; Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Colonel Piotr Zieja; head of the civil-military cooperation section Major Wiktor Kotlarz; and brigade logistics section non-commissioned officer Warrant Officer Mirosław Ulbrych.
Tired but happy, the soldiers stepped off the plane and first took in the landscape, so different from the one that had surrounded them for the past six months. “I’d forgotten how green it is here. The grass, the trees—I couldn’t live anywhere else,” they said while already sitting on the buses.
After a brief airport-procedure briefing, the soldiers handed in their weapons, loaded their baggage, and within two hours were on their way to Świętoszów. Their families were waiting there for husbands, fathers, sons, and daughters. There was great joy, many smiles, and, if tears appeared, they were only tears of happiness. Fierce kisses from mothers, embraces from fathers, children’s cards, and the beaming looks of wives would have softened even the hardest hearts, but after six months apart, no one there hid their emotion.
“My little daughter knows nothing about my return,” Sergeant Dorota Bąk said with a laugh; only a friend had come to welcome her. “Today is her birthday, and we’re preparing a big surprise for her. There will be a gift she won’t forget for a long time.”
(information: Katarzyna Przepióra/ii)