By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Brad Crawford, a former Hays resident and U.S. Army veteran, left his family in 2022 and risked his life to train fighting forces in Ukraine.
Crawford was a senior combat adviser for the Ukrainian Marine Corps from April to September last year.
During his almost two decades in the army, he helped train soldiers in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
"My job was to train the Ukraine army and marines to be war fighters," he said. "We trained them to fight and win the war."
Once you are a soldier, you are always a soldier, he said.
"When I saw the struggle that was going on over there," he said, "and I saw what Russia was doing over there, targeting the population of Ukraine, I couldn't sit back here in the United States and do nothing about it."
He contacted the Ukrainian embassy, and a couple of weeks later, he was on the ground in Ukraine working with soldiers.
Crawford spent time in Kyiv and then moved to Kherson, which was the site of heavy fighting in the early days of the war with Russia. Russian forces occupied the city for a time. Ukrainian forces ordered the area evacuated earlier this month after the nearby Kakhovka Dam was destroyed, which caused extensive flooding in the area.
"I spent a lot of time on the front line," Crawford said. "I wasn't just a trainer. Being a combat adviser means you go where the danger is too."
Working with the 28th Mechanized, he was about 400 meters away from Russian forces.
"When I went up there in that position, we got shelled 200 times in 48 hours," he said. "We had artillery coming down on us like you wouldn't believe, man."
Crawford said he saw extensive shelling of civilian homes and non-military targets.
"I wish I could tell the American public ... A lot of people are saying a lot of things about Ukraine," he said. "We shouldn't support it or it's a money pit. I would say this to a lot of those guys.
"Wake up in the morning and half your house is blown up by a rocket. Wake up in the morning and the grocery store down the street is gone. Wake up in the morning and your neighbor, their house is destroyed and they're all dead. These are the realities of what they live through over there."
Crawford was stationed for the majority of his time in Ukraine in the port city of Mykolaiv. When he arrived in May, the city was an industrial city, but by the time he left in September, 25 percent of the city had been wiped out.
The Ukrainian people have accused Russian forces of war crimes. Crawford said he has seen evidence of mass graves and heard reports of abuse of women and killing of civilian men.
"Let me tell you something about the Russians," he said. "They indiscriminately fire these weapons—these big caliber missiles and artillery. They do it every day. One day in Mykolaiv, we got hit 65 times by these rockets. They were hitting schools and hospitals and private buildings."
The shelling was constant, he said.
"It was intentional because they wanted the population to fear them," he said.
Crawford said the level of ferocity of the fighting in Ukraine was something he had not experienced before.
"I had never seen the amount of weaponry used in a single engagement," he said.
As a combat adviser, he said he was a target.
"It came to a head a couple of times, and I almost lost my life three times over there," he said. "One of the nights I was there, I was staying in a farmhouse outside of Mykolaiv in the middle of nowhere. ... At about 2:30 in the morning, Russians fired a cruise missile right at my house, and they missed by 60 feet. It blew a hole in the ground 14 feet wide and 10 feet deep."
As he and other soldiers were running down the street, the Russians launched cluster bombs, which released hundreds of baseball grenades.
"They definitely wanted us to not be standing at the end of that," he said.
Crawford said the Ukrainian soldiers are the bravest soldiers he's met.
"When you're talking about the Ukrainian military, their backs are against the wall. They don't have any other choice but to fight," he said. "The one thing about the Ukrainians is they have a high morale. They are ready to fight, willing to fight and are able to fight."
He said he has great respect for the Ukrainian soldiers.
"Not just because they are my battle brothers, but they have a different mentality. They have a no-quit, no-lose mentality. It is hard for any military around the world to see that," he said.
Crawford said he saw heavy casualties on both sides of the fighting with hospitals full of the injured. He was injured twice and had to have shrapnel fragments removed from his head without a numbing agent after being hit with light shrapnel in a missile attack.
Crawford said he believes if Russia had been able to take Ukraine in the early days of the war, they would have moved on to Poland, a NATO country, an invasion that could have resulted in world war III.
He said he chose to help fight in Ukraine so U.S. soldiers didn't have to fight.
Crawford has a 15-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter. He said he went to Ukraine to protect them.
"In two years, my son would have been eligible for the draft," he said. "I didn't want my son to have to step into a world of war—not only my son and daughter but other people's sons and daughters.
"We went over there and stopped that."
Crawford said he does not believe the American people understand the sacrifices Ukraine is making for the rest of the world. He said he strongly supports continued U.S. support of the Ukrainian military.
"Ukraine is shouldering the defense of the free world for all of us," he said. "We should be blessed that our children, our sons and daughters, are not over there fighting that war. We should give them anything they need to continue fighting that war because if Ukraine falls, freedom dies with it."
Crawford said he does think Russia being successful in the war in Ukraine in the long term.
"I think what we have seen is many cracks in the Russian leadership," he said, "especially in regards to [Vladimir] Putin and [Yevgeny] Prigozhin."
When Crawford lived in Hays, he owned the Tactical Experience on Vine Street, which he operated until 2020. He now lives in Cincinnati and owns a tactical training company that trains law enforcement and civilian security.