They fight in hand-to-hand combat, shoot without a box, parachute and dive. GROM soldiers are ready for any eventuality. It is no coincidence that they are included among the best military special formations in the world. What does it take to become one of them?
Selection
Getting to GROM, the Military Unit 2305, is quite a feat. Physical fitness tests and psychological tests are just an introduction to proper recruitment. Volunteers must go through a murderous, several dozen kilometers long march in the Bieszczady Mountains. Even the toughest ones fall out here. The British from the SAS unit, due to the specificity of our mountains, even called them "Polish fucking jungle".
The condition for passing is not only to complete the route, but also to reach individual checkpoints within the strict time limit. Volunteers spend the night in difficult mountain conditions. They are not allowed to have their own food supplies. The food rations are distributed by the instructors. They usually consist mainly of water and military canned food, the so-called doggie, rarely supplemented with chocolate and waffles.
The future commando, in addition to physical strength, should be characterized by appropriate mental toughness. Enormous pressure was exerted on them at almost every step. Naval, then a candidate for the GROM unit, in his memoirs entitled "Dogs bite the last ones", writes:
I nstructor of casually, yawning, points us in today's direction. He encourages people to give up the selection, it will only get worse, and why bother, he explains.
GROM soldiers start their way in the Bieszczady Mountains, and if they manage to survive the selection, they may go to train in the jungle. For the British from SAS, the Bieszczady turned out to be worse than any jungle. (photo comes from the press materials of the Bellona publishing house)
The ability to orientate in the field is also desirable. In extreme cases, you may end up abroad . If you go into Ukraine without papers, you will be interrogated there for a week and probably painfully - instructors warned. The Naval qualified for the unit but was so exhausted that when he returned home he did not have the strength to climb the stairs.
Combat training
Going through inhuman recruitment and getting into GROM does not make a true commando out of a soldier yet. To be able to put on the coveted gray beret and go to the combat squad, you need to complete a special course.
It ends with an exam in the form of a properly planned tactical exercise. He received his beret only after two years in the unit. During the exercise, he and his colleagues "rescued" from the hands of terrorists "hostages" from the Warsaw metro train.
GROM is different from the regular units of the Polish Army. There is no salute, you can wear civilian clothes. When communicating with each other, soldiers use nicknames, not ranks, even in relation to higher ranks. Equipment is selected by everyone at its own discretion and modified accordingly.
When asked if such a practice was allowed, one of the GROM stormtroopers, quoted in the book "Dogs bite the last ones", once replied very matter-of-factly: I don't give a shit. I am fighting in it, not a logistics specialist . Soldiers are also taught that the team is the most important in battle.
Strength training, hand-to-hand combat and shooting are more intense than in other military formations. Another soldier of the unit put it neatly:
First we shoot the puke, then we train the melee to the puke, and when you get tired we practice something else .
In addition to the standard equipment provided by the army, commandos often have additional private equipment during missions. When they break through swamps, for example, they care about good shoes and socks, not the military budget and logistics efficiency. (The photo comes from the press materials of the Bellona publishing house).
During the classes at the shooting range, one soldier can fire ... even several thousand rounds of ammunition. It once stunned a warehouse worker in GROM, who came there from another unit, where, as he claimed, the company had not fired for a year. Anyway, it meant much more work for him:according to the regulations of the Ministry of National Defense, it is the warehouseman's duty to count the shells delivered so that their quantity corresponds to the condition of the shells collected!
Training makes perfect
The task of commandos is to conduct special and anti-terrorist operations. In order to cope with even the most difficult conditions, soldiers undergo appropriate training in parachuting, diving, and operations with the use of helicopters. It was GROM people who were the first in Poland to jump on parachutes from a height of 10,000 meters.
Improving themselves in the field of blue tactics, i.e. activities in the aquatic environment, the stormtroopers even found their way to the Polish oil rig in the Baltic Sea. They trained anti-terrorist activities in sea conditions there. During a one-day training, commando can burn ... even 12 thousand. calories.
Blue tactic, i.e. training in the water. (The photo comes from the press materials of the Bellona publishing house).
This is the amount the miner loses in three shifts of underground work! In exercises under water, soldiers of a special unit train, among others, in using one oxygen cylinder together with a colleague, without a mouthpiece, directly from a valve. Another type of exercise involves giving oxygen to your partner by mouth-to-mouth. You also need to learn how to prepare your equipment for action underwater.
Operators work in combat teams. Each such team - and each of its members! - must be versatile. As a rule, a diver, paratrooper or sniper acquires at least one additional specialty in order to be able to take the place of a colleague in the group in the event of an unforeseen accident. Soldiers are also trained in intelligence or counterintelligence activities. This often requires them to behave and look out of the ordinary, which is not always to the liking of "regular" military personnel.
One of the GROM officers met with the reluctance of the commander of the Polish contingent during the mission in Iraq in 2003, because he was… unshaven. He was pointed out that such an image is not befitting a Polish officer! The scruffy commando then replied to the general that he needed stubble, because only in this way could he blend in with the Arab crowd.
Besides, the highest military rulers, brought up on Soviet standards, do not really appreciate this type of troops. One of the chiefs of the General Staff of the Polish Army once said contemptuously about GROM that it was such a small unit that could at most get one cottage .
"Terrorists" in Okęcie
However, strength training and the rules of blue tactics are not everything. Paramedics are also needed in combat teams. The commandos learn the basics of the red tactic, i.e. they undergo a rescue course. In order to get used to blood and wounds and learn how to put together broken limbs, the chosen GROM men reportedly accompanied… ambulance doctors on their way. Everyone must undergo basic first aid training. One of the operators, who fell from a height of 30 meters during the exercises, had the opportunity to find out about their value. This soldier had numerous fractures and internal injuries, but thanks to the prompt and professional intervention of his colleagues, he survived and returned to service afterwards.
The commandos operate from water, land and air. (The photo comes from the press materials of the Bellona publishing house).
The black tactic, on the other hand, covers activities in an urban environment:in buildings, vehicles, trains and airplanes. Here stormtroopers learn, for example, zip-lining from the deck of a helicopter onto the roof of an attacked object . GROM-men also undergo a course in anti-terrorist operations with the use of airplanes. During one of such exercises, which took place in the mid-90s at Warsaw's Okęcie, fifty soldiers spent 12 hours detaching hostages from the Boeing 767 from the hands of the "hijackers".
In order to show off their perfect preparation for the fight, the GROM players once organized a show for foreign officials in the field of capturing hostages indoors. The stormtroopers first blew up the door of the basement where the hostage was held with explosives. Then they burst into a dark room, firing sharp bullets from weapons with flashlights attached to them. Colonel Sławomir Petelicki, the founder and first commander of the unit, sat as a "hostage" among mannequins imitating terrorists. On his part, it was an expression of the utmost confidence in the professionalism and skill of his boys.
Rambo from the forests near Warsaw
The commandos also go out into the field, outside the built-up area, carrying out training in the field of green tactics. In the book "Dogs Bite The Last," Naval mentions a rather humorous adventure that met his unit one spring night. The GROM men were walking from the vicinity of Karczew towards Sulejówek.
Commandos are like a movie Rambo. If you have to enter the building together with the wall, they have no problem with it. (The photo comes from the press materials of the Bellona publishing house).
A little relaxed, they reached the railroad tracks, where they heard the sound of reloading weapons and a shout of Hands up !. They were arrested by ... two gung-ho railroad guards! The boys fell to the ground, released their weapons and illuminated their "opponents" with flashlights.
The others, not seeing who they were dealing with in the dark, did not want to believe that they had come across soldiers of the Polish Army. The situation cleared up only when the guard illuminated one of the commandos. Seeing the barrel of the rifle pointed at him, he groaned then with the impression: Fuck, Rambo. (…) You really are the soldiers . In the end, the whole thing ended amicably and everyone went their own way.
Training camps abroad are a test and supplement to extensive training for soldiers of the GROM unit. Intended for commandos "trips" to the Sahara and the Venezuelan jungle were organized, among others, by a well-known Polish traveler and expert in survival techniques, Jacek Pałkiewicz . Naval also took part in a similar escapade. He finds himself in the subtropical jungle of Belize.
Military elite
According to the old military adage, the more toil and sweat on the training ground, the less blood in the battle. GROM commandos proved the truth of this maxim in operations in Haiti, former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. The unique capabilities of the best Polish special unit are illustrated by a simple comparison. When, after September 11, 2001, the Americans asked us to participate in the mission in Afghanistan, the then Polish Ministry of Defense could send about a hundred first soldiers only after three months of training. Meanwhile, the GROM operators achieved combat readiness in an hour and a half!
When it was necessary to send soldiers on a mission after September 11, GROM achieved combat readiness in one and a half hours. Years of murderous training and excellent organization make the unit act like a well-oiled lethal war machine. (The photo comes from the press materials of the Bellona publishing house).
The commandos owe their excellent results mainly to their daily, hard, professional training. After all, any, even the most sophisticated weapon, is only worth as much as the soldier that operates it. Even the owner of the most powerful rifle, a mask on the face, a Kevlar helmet with night vision on the head, but after ad hoc training, does not automatically become a commando. And in battle, it will certainly not be able to cope with the special units of a potential enemy. It can at most be "almost like GROM" ... only in this case it "almost" will make a colossal difference.