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The Documentary Podcast

Poland's Amateur Defenders

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.32.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Playing war-games in the woods has become an ever-more popular pastime in Poland as thousands of young people join paramilitary groups to defend their country against possible invasion. Others – so-called “preppers” - are building bunkers and storing food supplies so their families can survive any disaster. Now the government plans to recruit such enthusiasts into a state-run volunteer defence force – to counter a possible Russian threat. But are the authorities stoking fear – and creating an amateur force that’s no use in 21st Century warfare? Tim Whewell reports from the forests of north-eastern Poland, close to the Russian border.

Producer: Estelle Doyle

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is a BBC podcast.

0:02.4

You can get all our podcasts and our terms of use

0:04.9

at BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts.

0:11.0

Welcome to assignment on the BBC World Service. I'm Tim Hewell, deep in a Polish

0:18.3

forest very late at night. What's happening?

0:23.0

There is some contact, but we don't know who.

0:26.0

When you say contact, that's the first firing we've heard.

0:30.0

Yeah, that's the first firing we've heard.

0:32.0

I'm goingching in a kind of a sand pit in the middle of the night in a Polish forest.

0:42.0

Spooky silhouettes of pine trees all around and the equally spooky

0:46.8

silhouettes of the people I'm with, heavily armed men and one woman in camouflage fatigues. They're fighting in an epic battle between the Republic of the East,

0:57.0

otherwise known as the Reds, that's us, and the Coalition of the West. Of course, it's just a pretend battle, even though I'm finding it

1:06.1

rather scary between war games enthusiasts, it's all just for fun. Or is it? I'm in Poland to find out why more and more young people are taking

1:16.4

part in war games like this and why the government here is warning that they might have to

1:20.9

defend Poland for real.

1:27.4

Mickey's a boyishly friendly English teacher with a pointy blonde beard and very blue eyes.

1:30.8

You are really tired, you're all sweaty etc. This is really better than running or

1:37.8

cycling. This is really great. I really love it. I really love wearing this heavy kilograms of vests and magazines and ammunition, water,

1:50.0

etc. This is an exact simulation of war. You get to know what you're willing to do for your friends, for yourself, for your country.

1:58.0

This game called Combat Alert is being played on a big scale. There are nearly a thousand participants

2:06.1

battling from night for one day to night for the next across 40 square kilometers of

2:12.1

forests fields, lakes and rivers.

...

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