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Category: War
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Hitler’s Weapons – Vietnam War
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M14 In Ukraine
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Statement of Gen. Girón before his Execution by Hanneken & Escamilla, with transcript of bush trial On February 3, 1929, sixty-one year old Guatemala-born Sandinista General Manuel María Girón Ruano, riding alone on a mule near San Albino Mine, was captured by a Marine patrol led by Captain Herbert H. Hanneken and Mexico-born Volunteer General Juan Escamilla. One month later, on March 2, he was tried in the bush and executed. This 12-page statement represents all the useful information that Hanneken and Escamilla were able to squeeze from Girón in the intervening month. It is a fascinating document, brimming with accurate and valuable information on many different aspects of the rebellion and the people who waged it. Girón knew his goose was cooked. He basically told them whatever they wanted to know. (Photograph of General Girón in chains, Ocotal, February 1929, MCRC) Why was Girón caught alone and unawares? Neill Macaulay writes that he “was tired and sick and on his way out of the country for rest and recuperation.” (The Sandino Affair, p. 138) The evidence presented in these pages, in contrast, strongly suggests that he and Sandino had had a falling out, and that rather than execute him — a man who had served the rebel cause loyally and effectively — Sandino decided to let him go. Why a falling out? Girón’s statement, along with other documents, suggests several reasons: that he had grown disenchanted with the rebels’ penchant for mutilating the corpses of slain enemy soldiers and desecrating their graves; Sandino’s military blunders (one of which is described here under “Edson Contact”); the rebels’ excessive violence against other Nicaraguans (most notably, the San Marcos murders); and the November 1928 election of a constitutional government in Managua, which prompted many Sandinistas to abandon the rebel cause. Girón’s statement provides an invaluable insider’s look at the rebellion during its first 18 months. It is followed by three ancillary documents: 1) Hanneken’s February 4 telegram to his superiors containing additional information not included in the prisoner’s statement, 2) the transcript of the bush trial that tried Girón and sentenced him to death, presided over by Escamilla (photo at left, USNA2), and 3) a dispatch from the US Legation in Guatemala of 13 June 1929 reporting on press reports on these events & enclosing a clipping from El Tiempo of 12 June. A decade before, in 1919 in Haiti, Lt. Herbert H. Hanneken had led an audacious assault on the camp of Charlemagne Péralte and killed the renowned Caco rebel chieftain, described in an embellished short story by John W. Thomason, Jr., Fix Bayonets! And Other Stories [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926], 398-416. He was clearly hoping to pull off a similar exploit with Sandino, though as it turned out he never came close. The only changes to the text are the bold-faced names, to make them easier to spot first time they appear; correct spellings and first names are added in brackets.
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Ancillary Documents 1. February 4, 1929. Field Report, H. H. Hanneken, Sacramento (day after capturing Gen. Girón)
2. March 2, 1929. Gen. Giron’s Court-Martial and Sentence of Death by Voluntario General Juan Escamilla (English translation only).
3. June 13, 1929. US legation in Guatemala City reporting on local press coverage of the death of Gen. Girón.
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- By modern standards, the tank is completely obsolete and will fare badly in Russia’s invasion.
- Ironically, the larger crew means the T-62 will increase Russian personnel losses in the long run.
The Russian Army has begun deployment of one of the oldest tanks in its stockpile, the T-62 main battle tank. The T-62, which the Soviet Union produced between 1962 and 1973, is poorly armored by modern standards, with little of the protection that modern vehicles offer. Relying on these tanks will only exacerbate Russia’s losses in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine—both in hardware and in human lives.
In just over 100 days, the Russian Army has lost an estimated 15,000 personnel, killed in action. Russian equipment losses have been especially heavy, as well, with at least 761 tanks, 840 infantry fighting vehicles, 271 artillery pieces, 30 fixed-wing aircraft, and an entire guided-missile cruiser destroyed. Much of Russia’s war machine has proved hollow, with numerous cases of substandard or crudely-maintained equipment, poorly-trained soldiers, and overall lousy morale.
Both in the field and in deep storage, the Russian Army has approximately 12,420 tanks, according to Global Firepower, a website that maintains rankings of global military strength. Russia has built comparatively few tanks since the end of the Cold War, relying on thousands of T-72 and T-80 main battle tanks that the Soviet Union produced between the late 1970s and 1991, when the USSR broke up. Decades old, Russia has renovated and upgraded these tanks into improved versions, including the T-72B1, T-72B3, and T-80BVM. Although enhanced, they still suffer from 50-year-old design decisions that make them more vulnerable to catastrophic destruction.
On May 25, social media posts reported sightings of even older tanks—T-62Ms and T-62MVs—loaded on trains arriving in Ukraine. Users also spotted T-62-series tanks in the field on June 5, heading west in the direction of cities like Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih. That same day, footage showed the first reported losses of those tanks.
The T-62 is a second-generation main battle tank. The Soviet Union produced it to replace the older T-55 tank; it first deployed the T-62 in large numbers with the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany in 1963. The T-62 was equipped with a U-5TS 115-millimeter main gun and a 7.62-millimeter PK-T machine gun mounted coaxially. The tank had 230-millimeter frontal-turret armor and 100-millimeter frontal-hull armor, making it heavily armored for its time. Unlike later tanks, a humans had to manually load the gun, giving it a total crew of four.
© GEORGES GOBET – Getty ImagesAn Afghan soldier sitting on top of a T-62M tank near the Salang Pass, August 1989. Note the laser rangefinder mounted at the base of the main gun and the additional armor, with white markings, wrapped around the front of the turret.
In the early 1980s, baseline T-62s were upgraded into the T-62M and -MV standard. The tanks featured NII Stali BDD appliqué armor designed to boost the tank’s chances of survival on the battlefield, increasing frontal-turret protection from 230-millimeter to 450-millimeter against shaped-charge warheads used by anti-tank missiles. The tanks also received ballistic computers, laser rangefinders, and an improved gunner’s sight and gun stabilization systems. Tanks upgraded to the -MV standard received reactive armor consisting of explosive boxes meant to counteract the effects of a shaped-charge attack.
Unfortunately, as impressive as this sounds, none of it is particularly useful in Ukraine. The 450-millimeter armor protection was an acceptable standard in 1982, but in 2022, many tanks feature 900-millimeter protection or more. Modern anti-tank weapons provided to Ukraine, particularly NLAW and Javelin, fire their warhead downward through a tank turret roof.
© MAXIM GUCHEK – Getty ImagesA Russian T-72B3 tank sporting a “cope cage.” The cages have not worked as intended.
The T-62 still has just 30 millimeters of turret-roof armor, as much as it did in 1965, leaving it critically vulnerable to modern weapons. T-62s sighted in Ukraine have grid cages installed on the turret roof. The cages, derisively nicknamed “cope cages,” are supposed to provide additional protection against shaped-charge attacks. Unfortunately, there are numerous examples of even newer tanks equipped with the cages destroyed on the battlefield, strongly suggesting they don’t work as intended.
There are other problems with the T-62s. As we’ve seen with the rest of Russia’s vehicle fleet, many tanks and armored vehicles—even relatively new ones—have been poorly maintained and suffer from reliability problems in Ukraine. Any T-62 pressed into service is at least 40 years old, suffering from decades of neglect. Unlike newer tanks, the T-62 has a crew of four, increasing manpower demands on an already manpower-strapped force. And if the tank is destroyed, total destruction of the T-62 results in the loss of four tankers, not three.
© John Moore – Getty ImagesThe T-62 is virtually defenseless against modern anti-tank weapons such as the Swedish NLAW, shown here in Ukraine.
The T-62 tank is so old that the anti-tank weapons facing it were developed long after it was considered obsolete. There is no comparable tank like it left today in the West; it would be unethical to force soldiers to fight in a tank as obsolete as the T-62. Yet to all of this, there is a silver, morbid, lining: if deploying T-62s to Ukraine accelerates Russian army losses, it could hasten an end to the war.
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Somebody is getting smarter!
“MILEY” ADJUSTS HER SIGHTS ON HER SNIPER-RIFLE. PHOTO: MIHIR MELWANI
‘I Want to Know How to Kill’: The Training Camp for Ukraine’s Future Soldiers
At a compound in an undisclosed location in Western Ukraine, trainers with codenames like “Charon” and “Prophet” try to psychologically prepare young Ukrainians for the horrors of war.
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VICE World News is at “Everest,” a compound at an undisclosed location on the outskirts of Lviv in the west of the country, where Ukrainian Territorial Defence recruits are preparing to be bound and blinded to see if they are ready for war.
Charon, who was given his moniker after the mythical Greek ferryman of the dead, leads recruits individually into the pitch-black basement of a derelict building to see whether they are psychologically resilient enough to be sent to war. Aging remnants of the Soviet-era factory – wires, splintered wood and plastic – litter the uneven ground, while old desks and sharp grates obstruct the maze of corridors and rooms.
Charon – who along with all the recruits and trainers at Everest VICE World News is not naming for security reasons – pushes his cadets, blinded by black bags, through the narrow and obstacle-filled hallway of the basement. “Believe me, the Russians are not gonna be that polite to you,” he jokes. I have also been bound at the wrists with zip ties and blindfolded with a bag over my head to try out the so-called “stress test” that hundreds of Ukrainian volunteers are being put through. After being led through dark passages, I am left on the ground with my hands bound and legs tied. A knife is thrown nearby, the lights are shut off, and the bag comes off my head. The mission: cut myself free and find a way out.
But it doesn’t end there. Without warning, instructors begin tossing practice grenades into the hallway. About 1 second after you hear the pinging sound of a practice grenade bouncing off of the floor, there’s a loud bang and a flash of light. As an instructor throws one into the pitch-black hallway of the basement, the right move is to crouch, cover your ears, and look away. If you don’t, your eardrums start to ring painfully.
“CHARON” LEADS US INTO A STRESS TEST. PHOTO: JEREMY CHAN
The aim of all of this is to simulate the stresses of war, testing the mental capacity of the recruits. The training is based on US specialised military training prep, says Charon, who trains dozens of cadets a month. This psychological test is unique to Everest, and was implemented in response to a lack of mental resilience prep in the standard training regimen.
It’s been over three months since Russian forces began their invasion of Ukraine, and as each day passes, more troops are needed to defend their homeland. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, says up to 100 of his soldiers are being killed every day as fighting intensifies around Donbas in eastern Ukraine, with hundreds more wounded. But the many people who have been psychologically damaged are not counted in this number. As the military is being forced to draft untested fighters to the frontline, a generation of Ukrainians is being scarred by the trauma of battle. With limited time and resources, military boot-camps and training centres are rushing to train civilians on how to handle an AK-47, but few explain how to handle the horrors of war. The new volunteer-run training centre that VICE World News trained at, which is sending troops to both the Ukrainian Army and Territorial Defence Forces, has introduced a stress-test as part of its training to filter out those who are unfit for battle.
And, as VICE World News discovered, blindfolded and unable to find a knife thrown on the floor among shards of glass, the test isn’t easy. “Some of our cadets start singing, some shout, others get violent and start throwing the obstacles out of the way,” Charon explains. It can take hours for some to make it out, but instructors aren’t just interested in whether they succeed. Instead, they’re watching to see whether recruits can keep their composure during the test. Not all are able to.
TRAINEES CONDUCT A ROOM-CLEARANCE EXERCISE AT EVEREST. PHOTO: MIHIR MELWANI
“We had an example of a person who had a panic attack in there, and we had to stop it,” Charon says.
“[The failure of the test] shows us that in the middle of the battle, when the mines and the missiles are going to be firing and exploding, that the person is going to get too much fear and they’re just gonna get stressed out and panic,” Charon says. And in battle, panic leads to failure.
Newbie soldiers at Everest are put through an 18-day intensive training programme before being sent to fight. Advanced soldiers are sent to the Ukrainian Army, while others are sent to the Territorial Defence Force. But during the three weeks of training, instructors keep an eye out for those showing potential for greatness – they’re placed into an “elite” group, and stay behind at Everest to be trained in specialised tactics and skills.
Everest is sanctioned by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, but it’s run by a purely volunteer staff. Nazar, who ran a construction firm before the war, developed the operation in collaboration with two friends. Soon enough, they had former troops with significant combat experience onboard, keen to pass their wisdom on to new soldiers. One of Everest’s senior instructors, known as “Prophet”, injured his spine in combat, and can’t fight on the frontline anymore.
The necessity of psychological preparation is clear when examining what actually happens to young and inexperienced troops in combat. VICE World News spoke with Mykyta , a soldier currently on the frontline in Donetsk. He told us that six of the 30 men in his squad just couldn’t handle the stress.
He says they were “young guys, 22 to 25 years old, who just know about war by watching movies.”
Mykyta, who VICE World News is not naming in full for security reasons, said they were incapable of fighting. “In the time when everything was fine, they [were] fine. When someone was dying nearby, they [were] afraid they would die too, so they [were] just stuck,” Mykyta explained, from his battle position over a shaky phone line. “They [did] nothing when the battle [was] going on.”
INSTRUCTORS PREPARE TO HAND OUT WEAPONS TO TRAINEES. PHOTO: MIHIR MELWANI
Mykyta’s commander, an ex-Soviet officer, sent the six soldiers to the rear lines, away from the trauma of the front. “On the frontline, these guys are a little bit useless,” Mykyta said. “We had to spend some of our attention not on the enemy, but on these guys. So it’s better for all of us that the squad is without.”
At Everest, cadets go through hundreds of drills, from shooting practice to mine-clearance. Cadets even get “snake-training,” where they are taught how to deal with Ukraine’s venomous snakes, which are supposedly common in the forests where much of the fighting is happening, and to care for their habitats.
Specialised courses, such as sniper training and air intelligence, are offered only to the elite few who the instructors deem worthy.
SNAKE TRAINING AT EVEREST. PHOTO: JEREMY CHAN
A young recruit, codenamed “Miley”, is one of these elite trainees. She was chosen to be a sniper.
“I want to know how to kill,” she says. Before joining, Miley contributed to the war effort volunteering by making camouflage netting and molotov cocktails with a friend, who she says describes her as aggressive. “I’m aggressive because they [the Russians] made me aggressive,” she says.
She’s 23, with no combat experience. When she’s not training, Miley works in a beauty call-centre part time. Her dream is to make music – like Miley Cyrus, her favourite singer. But that comes after the war.
“I feel like after this work, I need to go to the psychologist. So yeah, so I’m worried about that,” Miley explains, “but still, I have to do it, because I’ll regret it all my life if I do not.”
TRAINEES CONDUCT LIVE-FIRE EXERCISES. PHOTO: MIHIR MELWANI
And while Everest places an unusually strong emphasis on the mental preparation required to fight before deployment, there are also serious consequences to ignoring soldier’s psychological needs after they come home. Andriy Sadoyvi, Lviv’s mayor, understands the shortfalls of how Ukraine faced combat trauma in soldiers who fought in Donbas in 2014.
Physical wounds were treated, but psychological wounds were not. “We are aware of some examples of [veterans] dating back to 2015, when wounded people received prosthesis,” Sadoyvi told VICE World News. “But they were not really offered any psychological support, and so quite a few of them committed suicide.”
Sadovyi is planning a rehabilitation centre for victims of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“Vivaldi” is a more recent case of battlefield trauma. He was critically injured in March when a mortar landed at his feet while he was fighting in Donetsk. VICE World News spoke with him at a military hospital in Lviv, where he is being treated for injuries suffered in the blast.
“VIVALDI” DRAWS A MAP TO HELP EXPLAINS THE EVENTS OF THE DAY OF HIS INJURY. PHOTO: MIHIR MELWANI
“I was afraid that an infantry attack would follow the [mortar] attack,” he said. “I urged my unit to leave me with grenades and fall back.”
His squad refused to leave him. They applied four tourniquets to him – one on each limb – and carried him to safety.
For a month after his injury, he was unable to sleep.
At night, he was stuck in ‘military mode’, hypervigilant to threat. Vivaldi’s doctors continue to prescribe him medication, which he can’t sleep without.
Vivaldi refused the optional psychological consultations offered by the military hospitals, as did two other injured soldiers who spoke with VICE World News about their trauma.
At this time, the typical Ukrainian army training regimen does not emphasise mental health. Beyond an outdated written character assessment, there is little in the way of preparation for the horrors of the battlefield – or the ghosts that inevitably haunt those after the fight.
“I go to the big mountains a lot and I know how difficult it is to prepare and climb to the top,” Nazar says. “I know how it feels when you climb to the top and come back to your family alive.”
Additional reporting by Jeremy Chan, Alicia Chen and Vlad Fisun.
This piece was supported by the Pulitzer Centre.
