Photo By Sgt. Maj. Michael Pintagro | Lt. Gen. John and Buffy Kolasheski await the V Corps change of command ceremony April...... read more read more
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The final mission of Lt. Gen. John S. Kolasheski’s distinguished career was a doozy. He organized, trained, equipped, deployed, and commanded a storied Army formation amid smoldering international tensions and the highest of stakes for regional security. Fittingly, the “Victory Corps,” its Soldiers and its commanding general all returned to their roots in the process.
However apropos or even poetic, Kolasheski’s culminating mission was emphatically not easy.
The corps, prominent in European missions from its inception during the latter stages of World War I through the liberation of Europe in 1944 and the ensuing Cold War, fittingly deactivated in Wiesbaden, Germany in 2012. Following its reactivation in 2020, the Corps, its incoming commander and a tiny but dedicated team of “plank holders” fell in at the Maude Complex on Fort Knox, buckled their chinstraps and launched into a consuming drive toward “full operational capability.”
The CG, known throughout his tenure as “K3” (shorthand for his name and rank), and his fledgling staff confronted the herculean task of assembling and developing a “three-star” headquarters from scratch as fills poured in from units and schools across the Army. A pitiless series of intense training events, inspections and administrative activities ensued, testing the patience if not the sanity of leaders and Soldiers alike. Battling through COVID restrictions that exacerbated already long odds, the corps miraculously achieved “FOC” status in fall of 2021, just over 12 months after activation.
Rather than a respite, destiny dealt the “fully operational” but thoroughly exhausted corps and its commander another challenging and even more consequential mission.
“And then immediately we were deployed during probably the most critical period of time, at least in recent history and the last 50 years in Europe,” K3 recalled. “After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we became responsible for all of the rotational forces, as well as some of the assigned brigades in an area that's about 2,000 kilometers, by about 1,500 kilometers square.”
The aggressive timeline – corps personnel reached Poland and Germany within a few months of attaining FOC – surprised the world, not to mention the Soldiers. But the mission did not.
“We’re purposefully built for our theater of operations,” K3 said. “The timing of our activation and certification were highly significant: it gave Army senior leadership, the Joint Staff and (Office of the Secretary of Defense) options in terms of appropriate command and control headquarters in Europe ready to assume responsibilities as we saw events unfold in 2022.”
The unique construct, posture and mission distinguished the corps from its rebirth.
“We’re America's only forward-deployed corps – we've got about a third of the headquarters in place in Poland and the other two thirds back at Fort Knox,” K3 observed, noting the unique substance of his team’s mission. “It’s not just training and exercises, not just the partnering locally, but the warfighting symposiums, the lethality initiatives – those are all, I think, critically important as we look at taking this generational opportunity that we have as an alliance, to consolidate gains, fully implement the deterrence and defense of the Euro-Atlantic area (typically expressed by the acronym “DDA”) and executable plans focused on large scale combat that flow from DDA so that we never see another Ukraine in the future, but we are prepared to defend the alliance if deterrence fails.”
Corps command marks the pinnacle of a career spanning three and a half decades and including key leadership assignments at U.S. Army Forces Command, 1st Infantry Division, and 4th Infantry Division. No stranger to the demands and grim realities of war, K3 commanded a brigade in Afghanistan and a squadron in Iraq in addition to combat duty as a senior staff officer. His career came full circle when he assumed command at V Corps. After earning his commission as an armor officer from Bucknell University in 1989, he attended the Armor Officer Basic Course – then conducted at Fort Knox. Three decades later, he returned to Knox as CG of “America’s forward-deployed corps.”
Perhaps destined for senior leadership in Europe, K3’s journeys took him from Heidelberg and Schweinfurt to Wurzburg, Heidelberg and finally Ansbach in Germany, not to mention his warm intimacy with field life at the legendary theater training hub at Grafenwoehr.
Notwithstanding the division’s location at Fort Riley on the Kansas plains, moreover, his extensive tenure with 1st ID featured a heavy mix of European-facing missions, both as a field grade and a general officer. As “Danger 6” – the call sign for CG – “24 of the 27 months of my command were focused on support in the European theater of operations. We resourced the division forward headquarters and we put several rotational units into Europe.”
K3’s command of those rotational units began almost poetically in his ancestral homeland. “During the initial activation of the headquarters,” he recalled, “I was promoted, and we unfurled the Corps’ colors at Kosciuszko Mound in Krakow, Poland. It’s kind of fitting since our forward headquarters is named Camp Kosciuszko.”
“The countless rotational divisions that have come through, and the brigades associated with them, they've had an impact – a strategic and operationally positive impact,” he said. “They understand that they must be ready to defend alongside other members of the alliance NATO territory if deterrence fails, so yes, their presence, their warfighting readiness, their service matters. Same thing with this corps headquarters. It provides the leadership, the guidance, the resources, and the direction these formations require, ‘24/7’, 365 days a year. So, this assignment has been special for me and strategically important for our Army.”
K3 counts driving interoperability and increasing Alliance warfighting and lethality among his proudest career achievements.
Gen. Darryl Williams, the U.S. Army Europe and Africa commander, provided historic context for K3’s role in regional security and the European alliance system during the change of command ceremony, held April 8 at the corps’ forward headquarters on Camp Kosciusko, that marked the culmination of Kolasheski’s corps command and Army career.
“John’s strategic timing and personal commitment assured the corps met urgent critical needs in Europe,” Williams told a robust allied audience. “John brought V Corps back to Europe. The corps and its two divisions integrated with our allies and partners, executing its assure and deter mission in support of NATO.” Moreover, he “fostered enduring relationships with our allies and partners, enhancing interoperability and reinforcing European security architecture” at a time when “V Corps forward in Europe is perhaps more important than ever before.”
“His strategic view of the operational environment is unmatched and has been the driving force for change,” added Command Sgt. Maj. Raymond Harris, the corps senior enlisted leader from fall 2021 through summer 2023. “His ability to build partner relationships and build international capacity is beyond comprehension.”
K3 leveraged his understanding and team building skills to develop individuals, formations and even regional partnerships.
“I think what comes through for me is Lt. Gen. Kolasheski's passion for warfighting and training the next generation of leaders,” said Col. Wilbur Hsu, who commands the corps’ main artillery formation and spearheaded a series of “summits” on the signature High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System initiative. “I haven't seen a person more invested in sharing lessons across the community and driving the discussion to make people better. From NATO interoperability to core warfighting, Lt. Gen. Kolasheski spends a significant amount of his time-teaching others to make them better, which I think is an amazing trait.”
Poised, measured, immersive and intense, K3 digested and processed unfathomable quantities of information and plumbed depths of detail usually unexplored by micro-biologists or accountants.
“I don’t know that I’ve run across a more focused and disciplined officer in any branch or any component,” Maj. Gen. Timothy Thombleson, the corps deputy commanding general, said during the runup to the change of command. “The rest of the world doesn’t necessarily see the intense preparation that goes into everything he says and does. He scrutinizes everything and agonizes over every detail. He understands the gravity of his words and actions and puts incredible energy into doing the right thing every single time.”
“The demands he imposes on himself are extraordinary,” added the Indiana National Guardsman, who served in two key senior leadership roles during K3’s tenure. “Truthfully, they’d probably crush most guys. We definitely put in a day’s work at V Corps, but the man who works the hardest is the one who commands it.”
There’s no sugar-coating the rigors of life in senior command. The demands on a senior leader’s time, patience, energy and physical not to mention mental stamina simply beggar belief. Unlike even the most conscientious of subordinates, a senior commander remains fully engaged during all meetings and events. K3’s military duties frequently consumed every waking hour of his day. Weeks and months passed without significant “down time.” The six-hour gap between European and local time in Kentucky compounded the burdens of a relentless travel schedule.
Those burdens are often transparent to subordinate leaders and Soldiers, who frequently associate the unforgiving operational tempo and daunting requirements with senior leaders rather than the harsh realities of the European theater and mission set in the 2020s. Those closest to K3 saw a side of him not readily apparent during most staff meetings.
“He truly cares about Soldiers and families,” said Harris, a dynamic part of the corps “command team” for much of K3’s tenure and one of his closest confidants. “He puts a lot of thought and deliberation into decisions that affect Soldiers and families... he takes that on fully and owns that as his responsibility.”
“He has personally been a mentor and friend to me and my family,” Harris added. “He is the definition of what engaged and committed leadership is supposed to be. He is an example to all, and his leadership will be missed.”
K3’s own family life blended naturally into his professional role. Born into a distinguished Army family (his father served for more than a quarter-century and commanded an armor battalion in Germany in the late 1970s) and married into another, he subsequently joined a third when his sister married then-1st
Lt. and now Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie. Appropriately, Norrie subsequently commanded a division under K3’s purview along “Europe’s Eastern Flank.”
K3 married his wife Buffy as a young captain at Fort Carson, Colorado. “It’s pretty darned special,” he recalled, “surrounded by family and friends at the same chapel where my father-in-law would go on Sundays when he commanded the 4th Infantry Division and Fort Carson back in the late 1970s.”
“My husband and I met in middle school,” Buffy added. “We both grew up in the Army, so we truly don’t know any other way of life.”
The couple takes immense pride in the three grown daughters Kolasheski described as “simply the finest people I know” during his change-of-command. They’re also partial to Golden Retrievers like their gigantic dog Hudson, albeit “he’s a handful.” The family cat rounds out the household. K3 somehow remained physically active, healthy, and fit throughout his command notwithstanding his merciless meeting schedule and weakness for pizza and gelato. He prioritized family activities as much as humanly possible under the circumstances, and somehow managed to attend a healthy share of his daughters’ milestone events.
Buffy, who dedicated much of her own life’s energy to Army and unit family advocacy endeavors since the couple’s marriage in 1993, acknowledges the hardships inherent in frequent moves and “the Army way of life,” noting the couple’s youngest daughter “attended 11 different schools by the time she was a senior in high school” as well as “the long hours, separations, deployments and missed family events.”
But she has no regrets after more than three decades as an Army wife and mother.
“It’s the life we’ve chosen, and I think we’re better for it,” she said, noting other walks of life also entail hardship and sacrifice, and that the family deliberately sought out and embraced communities and opportunities around the world. “If we could rewind and start all over again, we would! It’s been a fabulous career with fabulous, lifelong friends we’ve met along the way.”
Prominent among those “lifelong friends” are subordinate leaders grateful for K3’s devotion and mentorship.
“We sincerely appreciate his leadership, support, and dedication to the corps, our Soldiers, and their families,” Hsu said. “He has made the corps a stronger, better unit and is leaving a lasting legacy on the U.S. Army.”
Modest, reserved and substantive by temperament, K3 typically deflects credit and attention, invariably steering focus back to mission, organization, and national objectives. Gratitude, kindness, and humility lurk just beneath the surface.
“I've been just given a unique opportunity and I am very, very thankful for it,” he said. “I've never taken it for granted. I have worked very, very hard to live up to the ideals, the values that are baked into our U.S. Soldiers. I'm thankful and I have throughout my career tried to follow the Golden Rule and be somebody that does things for good and drives positive change. It truly has been an honor to serve and as a Polish American, it has been an honor to lead V Corps from Poland.”
| Date Taken: | 04.22.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 04.22.2024 11:58 |
| Story ID: | 469078 |
| Location: | FORT KNOX, KY, US |
| Hometown: | POZNAN, PL |
| Hometown: | FORT CARSON, CO, US |
| Hometown: | FORT RILEY, KS, US |
| Web Views: | 67 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, ‘It Was Done’: V Corps ‘original plank holder’ concludes career in ancestral homeland, by SGM Michael Pintagro, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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