Mr Hegseth @SecWar , you’ve got a bloody nerve, you bastard. You looked at fifty flags in Kabul and somehow missed the coffins coming home under them. That Polish flag weren’t there to make your headquarters look pretty. Behind it were soldiers out on patrol, clearing explosives, escorting convoys and taking fire. Forty-three Polish soldiers and one civilian paramedic lost their lives during that deployment. Not a flag collection. Not extras in your war story. People with names.[1] So before you tell that “I Saw Americans Fighting” joke again, have a read. These are their names, with the Polish ranks recorded by Poland’s Veterans’ Centre, including posthumous promotions. 14 August 2007 - por. Łukasz Kurowski. 26 February 2008 - st. kpr. Szymon Słowik. 26 February 2008 - kpr. Hubert Kowalewski. 8 April 2008 - kpr. Grzegorz Politowski. 21 June 2008 - por. Robert Marczewski. 20 August 2008 - plut. Waldemar Sujdak. 20 August 2008 - kpr. Paweł Szwed. 20 August 2008 - kpr. Paweł Brodzikowski. 10 February 2009 - st. chor. sztab. Andrzej Rozmiarek. 10 August 2009 - kpt. Daniel Ambroziński. 4 September 2009 - sierż. Marcin Poręba. 8 September 2009 - kpr. Artur Pyc. 10 September 2009 - kpr. Piotr Marciniak. 9 October 2009 - kpr. Szymon Graczyk. 9 October 2009 - kpr. Radosław Szyszkiewicz. 19 December 2009 - kpr. Michał Kołek. 12 June 2010 - plut. Miłosz Górka. 15 June 2010 - kpr. Grzegorz Bukowski. 26 June 2010 - plut. Paweł Stypuła. 6 August 2010 - st. kpr. Dariusz Tylenda. 27 September 2010 - chor. Kazimierz Kasprzak. 14 October 2010 - sierż. Adam Szada Borzyszkowski. 22 January 2011 - sierż. Marcin Pastusiak. 22 January 2011 - Marcin Knap, civilian paramedic. 3 April 2011 - mł. chor. Bartosz Spychała. 20 April 2011 - kpr. Paweł Staniaszek. 2 June 2011 - mł. chor. Jarosław Maćkowiak. 28 July 2011 - sierż. Paweł Poświat. 18 August 2011 - sierż. Szymon Sitarczuk. 4 October 2011 - sierż. Rafał Nowakowski. 23 October 2011 - sierż. Mariusz Deptuła. 21 December 2011 - mł. chor. Piotr Ciesielski. 21 December 2011 - sierż. Łukasz Krawiec. 21 December 2011 - sierż. Marcin Szczurowski. 21 December 2011 - sierż. Marek Tomala. 21 December 2011 - sierż. Krystian Banach. 22 December 2011 - sierż. Zbigniew Biskup. 23 January 2013 - mjr Krzysztof Woźniak. 20 March 2013 - sierż. Paweł Ordyński. 10 June 2013 - st. chor. Jan Kiepura. 3 August 2013 - st. chor. Łukasz Sroczyński. 24 August 2013 - st. chor. sztab. Mirosław Łucki. 2 September 2013 - st. chor. Sylwester Janik. 16 September 2014 - st. chor. Rafał Celebudzki. And let’s keep the record straight, shall we? That’s the full deployment death toll, not a claim that every one of them was killed in a firefight. It includes deaths from wounds, an accident and illness. We don’t need to fiddle the facts to make your sneering look shameful. The facts do that all on their own. Nobody needs to belittle American soldiers to honour Polish ones. You could try showing the same bloody decency. Argue about troop numbers. Argue about who carried what share. But don’t stand there turning your allies into a punchline. Those families got a coffin, bab. They don’t owe you a laugh. Finally, apologise and fuck off.