Minesweeper work - a challenge for the best or moderately ridiculous absurdity?

The vast majority of prospectors associate them with the Cossack, who has eggs so hard, it takes a bang, to crush them. The general opinion is also consistent with this, that in Poland, sappers have much less to do than, for example, in France. However, is it true?? Before you, the shadows and shadows of an engineer life in Poland.

A big shock for the vast majority is the fact that there is a private sector in the sapper industry - the so-called civil sapper. The topic was revealed to outsiders a bit due to several large scandals (and how else would the matter gain publicity in our country?), but still the sapper is clearly associated with the army and translation, that this job, like any other, is quite troublesome. In Poland, professional qualifications to perform the profession of a sapper are obtained after successfully completing the sapper exam, preceded by a course. In practice, it looks like this, that after 3 on the days of the course you go to the exam, which, by some strange coincidence, has 100% pass rate. Sounds suspicious? Welcome to Poland.

Minesweeper is associated with a man, I can see about it, which wire to cut. The problem is that, that this is not what his job is about with us. In our conditions, civilian sappers mainly deal with the so-called land clearing. The theory says, that knowledge is needed to find and pick up dangerous items. The practice leaves no illusions, Anyone can become a sapper in this country, who has about PLN 2,700 free, ma 3 days for the course and is able to learn the basics of weapons and ammunition as well as health and safety during the course (I would like to remind you about the 100% pass rate). So we have quite a large group of people, which works on demining land without any real preparation.

A blessing in disguise, that the work of the native sapper is not to disarm the charges, missiles or min. The law does not allow it and the methodology of work does not cover this type of handling of dangerous objects. A civilian minesweeper has to find an item with a detector, dig, assess whether it is safe or not and send it to the warehouse of hazardous materials. In Poland, the vast majority of dangerous finds include unexploded ordnance and abandoned ammunition (you can read the definitions in one of my articles, so it doesn't make sense to dwell on that here), thus finds quite resistant to attempts to initiate charge through manipulation of the object. Hence, accidents involving explosives are quite rare (several over the past few years, quite intense in terms of demining material). Such trivial matters cause damage to the sapper's health much more often, such as injuries due to body overload and accidents related to the work environment. As you probably guessed, from time to time someone will fall into nettles or try to gouge out their eye with a branch, according to the rule: "Protective equipment is for the weak".

So it would seem, that being a sapper is fun. Adventure with a detector and a spade in your hand, historical curiosities all around and they still pay for it at the end, pretty good too. Of course, appearances are deceptive, and it's damn. First of all, it is quite hard physical work (ot, and comes out the secret of short and "effective" training), where you don't need to know what you're working with, as long as you work quickly and efficiently. The second myth are the amazing "side" finds when working with detectors. Work is usually carried out in places, where practically nothing is left behind except ammunition and its remains, so about a full helmet trunk, a bucket of bayonets and pockets full of Guderian's decorations you can basically forget. The least amusing of the paradoxes is this, that you work harder for them, the less you earn. The methodology of the civil sapper's work assumes a remuneration per cleared hectare. So it is logical, that on "clean" hectares, with low intensity of signals in the ground, you earn more, and he works with a spade less. Similarly - when you go to hell, where day after day your back is forced to take up even several hundred missiles and hundreds of kilograms of scrap metal, your earnings will be ridiculously low.

So is working as a minesweeper in Poland a dirty reality?, not living on the edge? Unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases, yes - Poland stuck in the field of sapper knowledge in the years 40. Specialist staff is not trained, because the Polish Army deals only with the emergency taking of hazardous materials and the disposal of it, what civilian sappers will find. Fortunately, the opportunities for planting by civilian companies are quite limited. Hence, vehicles of engineer patrols filled with rusty death are racing our paths, often by urban areas. The unthinkable in the West, normal for us. Combined with practically zero knowledge of civilian sappers, we have a beautiful picture of the "third world", about which hardly anyone in Poland knows.

What are the bright sides? Apart from the obvious show off with your buddies - pick up the text “Hey girl, throw a sucker for a sapper "still has effectiveness, especially in those places more forgotten by gods and civilization, and this is often what the landscape of former military training grounds looks like, which in recent years has been cleaned with EU money. A brigade of several dozen sappers in the quarters usually introduces a lot of color to the life of the village, and how do we add a fact to it, that it is an eminently masculine company. Neither does a minesweeper a fish, likes to drink after a hard day, and daredevils who snort death in the face usually do not lack fantasy in their evening maneuvers. If only after a few deeper ones, one of the spade friends did not like too much, because among the sapper brothers there are no hysterics and other tubers.