Poland has five special operation units within the Polish Armed Forces but I can tell you that none of them are as well-known as JW GROM. In Polish, the unit’s name is Jednostka Wojskowa GROM which translates to Military Unit GROM, which stands for Grupa Raegowania Operacyjno-Manewrowego (English: Group for Operational Maneuvering Response). If that isn’t confusing enough, this also means “thunder”.
JW GROM was officially placed into service on July 13th, 1990 and was named after the Silent Unseen which was Poland’s elite World War II special operations unit. The Silent Unseen itself were an incredibly highly capable unit that would be trained in Great Britain to deploy behind enemy lines and do their thing, which they did well.
JW GROM’s history starts off in 1989 when Jews were allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel, with Poland being one of the handful of countries to provide aid. As a result of Poland’s involvement, many Middle Eastern countries were not happy with them. This resulted in two Polish diplomats being shot in Lebanon at which point Poland sent Lt. Col. Stawomir Petelicki to Lebanon to secure the return of civilians and Polish diplomatic outposts.
When Petelicki returned to Poland, he presented a plan to the government for the creation of a special military unit that would be trained to deploy in the defense of Polish citizens in situations similar to the one in Lebanon, basically anti-terrorist operations. Thus, JW GROM was born and Petelicki was elected as the first commander of the new unit.
In order to ensure JW GROM was filled with elite professional soldiers, Petelicki looked to already-existing special units within Poland for potential candidates. These professionals came from highly regarded units such as 1 Batalion Szturomowy, Polish Navy divers, Anti-terrorist units of the Policja and Reconnaissance units of the Polish Air Force amongst others. However out of all the recruits from these units, only a small group passed the selection and training phases, and they were sent to the United States and UK to be trained by their special forces.
It would 2 years until JW GROM would become known to the public when in 1994 JW GROM was utilized in an operation in Haiti. JW GROM has recently been more used as the War on Terror hit. Initially, a 40-man JW GROM element was deployed to Afghanistan in 2002. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, JW GROM was part of the core of the Naval Special Operations Task Group which also included the US Navy SEALs, British Royal Marines, and other US Psy Ops and civil affairs teams. After this, JW GROM was utilized several times alongside SEAL teams and were proven to be extremely effective with great success in their operations.
So, what does it take to be JW GROM? Candidates who apply must pass psychological and durability tests along with a so-called “truth test”. The truth test is a physically and psychologically exhausting field test designed to filter out the remaining weak candidates. If they make it through, JW GROM soldiers train in a variety of disciplines including anti-terrorism, special operations, frogman, sniping and parachuting. Interestingly enough, 75 percent of JW GROM soldiers are trained as medics or paramedics and each group is supported by several professional physicians.
Their motto is “Sila I Honor! Tobie Ojczyzno!” which means “Strength and Honor! For you, Fatherland!”.
