Thread by @MarkHertling

A thread on an experience I had in 2004 with a Russian General. 1/12

In returning from Iraq in 2004 as a one-star general, I was assigned as the commander of the US Army Training Center in Grafenwoehr, Germany. Beautiful place, and one of my favorite jobs during my career. 2/

This is a place where we conducted training and exercises with US forces, but my boss had given me the task to turn it into a multinational training center for our NATO allies and other partners. 3/

We had an exercise that year with Canadian, Brit, French, Ukrainian and Russian troops called “Torgau” - named after the town where Soviet and US Troops linked up during WWII to complete the encirclement of Nazi forces. 4/

As I said, I was a 1-star, and I was hosting a bunch of generals from all the countries for the final day of the exercises. We invited the Russian Ground Force commander - not thinking he would come - but he responded he would send a 3-star, colonel-general. 5/

Coincidentally, a few weeks before the exercise a local Boy Scout leader approached me in church & told me of an Eagle Scout project his boys had been working on…cleaning up a Russian POW gravesite behind the post gym. 6/

You see, during the war the Germans had a stalag at this post that housed mostly Russian and Polish soldiers they had captured. What I didn’t know was about 150 had died in captivity, and they were all buried there behind our gym 7/

Since the project was about complete, I thought it might be great to show the Russian delegation what the Scouts had done. We arranged for the young boys to be there for the RU general’s visit so he could shake their hand. 8/

The day came, I escorted the Russians to the site, told them the story, introduced him to the young scouts…and they said nothing. He looked around w/ a scowl, turned to me & said “if these had been real Russian soldiers, they would not have surrendered to the Germans” 9/

Then he said “they were probably from one of the inferior countries that want to call themselves real Russians.”10/

He said nothing to the boys, turned around and headed to the car. Now, I know I was a 1-star, and he was a 3-star, but that day at the close of the exercises I saluted all the other country’s official visitors, but I did not give him a proper military honor of a hand salute. 11/

I returned to Graf in 2014 after I retired for a conference, and I did my morning run past that graveyard just to see it. It was still being maintained by the scouts, and those Russian dead were still being honored, though not by fellow Russians. 12/12