Sgt. 1st Class Chris Freymann didn't think he'd be involved in the fight against the Russians. As the war raged, he became a kind of ad hoc, over the phone tech support for Ukrainians trying to use Javelin missiles.
They asked questions and Freymann answered them. He received pictures and videos of the Russian tanks they destroyed.
The lead instructor in the U.S. military's program for training soldiers in how to use tank-killing missiles was a cavalry scout in the Washington state National Guard. During his time with the program, he trained about 200 troops.
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Russia invaded after the U.S. trainers left. The relationships were still there. As they encountered technical issues or forgot details, his former students once again reached out for help to operate the Javelins.
"When the war began, I had a lot of guys hitting me up on my phone," he said. The linguist's husband was one of the few who were left. There were a lot of students who died.
The linguist would be given information on how to operate the Javelin. Photos and videos of destroyed Russian tanks would be sent by her husband. The tanks were destroyed after some of the phone coaching.
The commanding officer of the Javelin course was a Washington state infantry officer.
Much of their doctrine came from Fort Benning. It takes two to three weeks to train the Ukrainians. Training manual had to be translated.
The language barrier was a challenge, said Bartkowski, who commanded the training.
Bartkowski said it has been a "surreal" experience training the Ukrainians and watching them fight against the Russian invasion despite international condemnation and a raft of sanctions from the U.S.
Six months later, they are at war with an enemy. He said they didn't think it would be so quickly. It's amazing to see the impact we had on the war.
The linguist who helped the National Guard get past the language barrier was one of the previous students. Even though some Ukrainians reached out to him directly, he had to use the internet to understand their questions.
The biggest problem for Ukrainians was the huge battery used to power the CLU. The system is used to observe enemy movements from a long way away.
He said that the CLUs were powered by motorcycle and car batteries.
The technical support and over-the-phone retraining is done by the man. He had a stroke at the end of his deployment in Ukranian and is currently at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.
The Javelin has become the signature weapon of the war in Ukraine, as it halted the movement of Russian armor and killed scores of soldiers, forcing Putin to abandon plans to take the capital, Kyiv.
Since 2015, the National Guard has trained Ukrainians with units from many states rotating through. Before Russia invaded, the Florida National Guard pulled out of Ukraine.
The payoff is that I'm still getting messages of "thanks" from these guys.
Steve Beynon can be reached at Military.com. You can follow him on the social networking site.
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