Forward

 

What leads someone to decide to give up the comforts of home and family to fight in a war on another shore? It gets more complicated when one’s own army provides a valid exemption from joining their ranks and yet there remains a desire to right wrongs being faced a quarter of the way around the world.

 

Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the outbreak of World War II, and by 1941 Nazi forces had occupied much of Europe.”

 

We can just imagine the talk around the Marchewka dinner table those fateful days in September 1939. The Mother country that the parents themselves had immigrated from not that long ago was being ravaged by the Germans. Both sides of the family still had relatives in danger in “The Old Country”. However, it was more than two years later that such dangers reached the shores of America. It was not until Japan attacked Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 that she was brought into the war. At the time, due to the US walking a tightrope between isolationism and supporting its allies, m                              ainly Britain, the country was ill prepared for war. The country needed to register and train the millions of soldiers that would fight the German and Japanese juggernauts. The men and women of the battlefront and Home front would become members of “The Greatest Generation”.

 

Was there a struggle of familial allegiances between the mother country of his ancestors and the country of his birth? I prefer to think it was more of a harmony shared by the many immigrants of the United States who wanted to put their dedication to America into action by going so far as to fight overseas perhaps against their own countrymen or even possibly their own extended family.

 

Edward Marchewka felt it was his patriotic duty to join the Armed Forces like the millions of other Americans especially given what had been done to the citizens of his parent’s mother country.                

 

The Selective Training and Service Act had been passed into law in September 1941so he, like all other men between the ages of 21 and 45, was probably already registered for the draft. However, when he submitted himself for service, he was rejected due to being color blind.

 

Keep in mind that he lived in the Pittsburgh area which was at the center of the “Arsenal of

Democracy”. Southwestern Pennsylvania provided steel, aluminum, munitions and machinery for the US during WWII. He could easily have accepted his fate and simply taken a job at one of the many mills in the Monongahela Valley. It was probably through the Pittsburgh Polish community that he heard about efforts in neighbouring Canada by which the Polish Armed Forces were recruiting soldiers to fight in Europe. By February 14, 1942 he had travelled there and enlisted

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The First Polish Armoured Division (1PAD) in Scotland

 

The Polish hussars or Winged hussars were one of the main types of cavalry in Poland and in the olish Lithuanian Commonwealth between the 16th and 18th centuries. The First Polish Armoured Division (1PAD) adopted the symbol of this legendary unit to represent their conversion from horse cavalry to a motorized division of tanks and armoured vehicles.

 

The Polish Army began forming in France in the Autumn of 1939 after the fall of Poland to invasion by Germany from the west and the Soviet Union from the east. A Polish government-in-exile was formed in France with Władysław Raczkiewicz as president and General Władysław Sikorski as prime minister and commander-in-chief of the Polish armed forces. The general had escaped through Roumania to Paris and many other Poles came via a variety of routes to join their compatriots and render assistance to their French allies against the common foe - Germany. After the fall of France in June 1940, the government-in-exile relocated to London and the task of organizing the surviving Polish armed forces continued with the help of its British allies. A significant number of Polish soldiers had managed to join in the evacuation from Dunkirk after the German blitzkrieg had swept all before them.

 

In October 1940 the Polish army in Scotland took over the defense of a large section of the Scottish east coast, from Burntisland in Fife to Montrose in Angus. The headquarters of the 1st Polish Corps was at Moncreiffe House, Bridge of Earn, and several other Scottish country houses and estates were requisitioned for its use. There were also several camps in the city and county of Perth. Tulloch Works on the outskirts of Perth were requisitioned by the Secretary for War from the dyeing and dry-cleaning firm of John Pullar & Sons Ltd and used by the 1st Polish Armoured Car Regiment. The newspaper reports of the time are sometimes a little coy about the exact location of such camps. The press was subject to censorship, but also careful to regulate itself so that useful information on troop movements and whereabouts should not fall into enemy hands. Often events involving Polish troops are described as happening ‘somewhere in Perthshire’, or even just ‘somewhere in Scotland’. Dupplin Castle near Perth was used as a military hospital and quite a number of the Polish soldiers buried in Perth died there. Taymouth Castle at Kenmore housed the Polish military hospital throughout the war and beyond.

 

On 27 September 1941 the Battalion was renamed the 65th Tank Battalion. During December 1941, volunteers arriving from the United States and South America were inducted into the Battalion. In early April 1942, the Battalion left Blairgowrie for Camp Langton near Duns in Berwickshire. The local population, here again, welcomed the soldiers of the Battalion into their homes. In both Blairgowrie and Duns, the Battalion left commemorative plaques, thanking the local population for their hospitality. Shortly after arriving at Camp Langton, the Battalion's Churchills were replaced by Covenanters.

 

On 25 March 1942, General Maczek was appointed Division Commander. The 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade and 16th Armoured Brigade formed the core o  the division. Maj Bolesław Sokołowski assumed command of the Battalion in June 1942. On 12

August 1942, the 16th Tank Brigade was renamed 16th Armoured Brigade. As a result, the 65th Tank Battalion on 13 August 1942, along with the formation of the 1st Polish Armoured Division, was renamed the 1st Armoured Regiment.

 

In the autumn of 1942, Crusader tanks arrived. Now training was mainly focused on the Covenanter tanks and the Crusaders. During 1943, more Polish soldiers arrived from the Middle East. These men, making their way from Russian internment camps under General Anders, helped to make up the shortfall in manpower in the division. From May till the end of September 1943, the Regiment participated in Divisional manovers in south-east England near Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk. Afterwards, the regiment returned to Camp Langton. On 21 September 1943, the 16th Armoured Headquarters was absorbed into the 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade.

 

On 12 October 1943, the combined Brigade was renamed the 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade. The 1st Armoured Regiment was now under the 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade. Maj Aleksander Stefanowicz assumed command of the Regiment in November 1943. At this time, the Regiment had begun to receive its final allocation of equipment, which included Sherman and Stuart tanks. The winter of 1943 was spent training on these new tanks. This included practice on the gunnery range at Kirkcudbright.

 

In May 1944, the Regiment left Duns for Bridlington in Yorkshire, where it remained for 2 months. In mid-July 1944, it moved to Aldershot, southwest of London. This was the Regiment's last staging area for the continent. Having made the final preparations and received its final equipment, the Regiment left for the marshalling area in Portsmouth, England for embarkation.

 

At the time he shipped over to the UK in 1942, Edward was a little over 24 years old. Based on his high school technical training and work experience in the United States he was assigned to a group in the 10th Armoured Brigade of the First Polish Armoured Division known as a “Workshop”.

 

Unlike Edward, his brother Henryk was accepted when he signed up for the United States Army. He ended up serving in the “Hell on Wheels” Second Armored Division of the US Second Army which saw service in north Africa and Sicily before ending up in England to train for the Normandy landings. As fate would have it his division would end up pushing the Germans from the west in the seminal battle of the first Polish Armored Division at the Falaise Gap. The Americans squeezed the bottle as the Poles became “the cork” preventing the surrounded German Seventh Army from escaping. Henryk also ended up fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.

 

 

D-Day – Invasion of France

 

After numerous delays and major planning changes, D-Day was set for June 5. However, on 4 June, as paratroopers prepared to board the C-47 SkyTrains which would carry them behind enem lines, weather conditions deteriorated. The decision was made to delay 24 hours, requiring part o the naval force bound for Utah beach to return to port. With a small window of opportunity in the weather, Eisenhower made the decision to go—D-Day would be June 6, 1944. Paratroops began landing after midnight as the massive invasion force took station off the coast. A short naval and aerial bombardment preceded the landings, which began at around 6:30 am.

 

Things went badly from the beginning for American forces landing at Omaha and Utah. At Omaha beach, the resistance was devastating for the early waves of troops. The landing force bound for Utah was blown off course, resulting in troops going ashore nearly a mile down the beach. American airborne forces of the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions were scattered behind Utah, sometimes tens of miles off target. To the east, the landings went more to plan for British and Canadian forces. Despite challenges and sometimes fierce enemy opposition, Allied forces persisted in establishing a beachhead in Normandy.

 

Allied planners envisioned a quick push into Normandy after establishing a beachhead. For all of the preparations made for OVERLORD, the Allied forces were ill-equipped for fighting in the hedgerows they quickly encountered in Normandy. Instead of wooden fences, Norman farms are enclosed by century-old hedgerows, man-made earth walls, deeply rooted with plants. Combined with the narrow, winding roads which passed between farms, this area known as the “Bocage” created a nightmare situation for Allied forces. German forces used the hedgerows defensively, creating deadly killing fields which Allied troops had to cross. This difficult terrain forced Allied troops to reevaluate tactics and come up with creative solutions for clearing the Bocage of German forces. This difficult situation slowed down progress in Normandy for the invading armies.

 

The British 3rd Infantry Division was to seize Caen on D-Day or dig in short of the city if the Germans prevented its capture, temporarily masking Caen to maintain the Allied threat against it and thwarting a potential German counterattack from the city. Caen, Bayeux and Carentan wer not captured by the Allies on D-Day and for the first week of the invasion the Allies concentrated on linking the beachheads. British and Canadian forces resumed their attacks in the vicinity of Caen and the suburbs and city centre north of the Orne were captured during Operations Charnwood (8–9 July). The Caen suburbs south of the river were captured by the II Canadian Corps during Operation Atlantic (18–20 July). The Germans had committed most of their panzer divisions in a determined defence of Caen, which made the fighting mutually costly and greatly deprived the Germans of the means to reinforce the west end of the invasion front.

 

 

The Poles Return to France

 

The 1st Polish Armoured Division arrived in France on the last day of July, which was also the first day of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The Polish Home Army seized control of the city on the assumption that the Soviet Army, whose spearheads were just a few miles away, would maintain pressure and force a general German retreat. It quickly became evident that Stalin was quite prepared to let the Germans destroy Warsaw and the anti-communist Home Army. On Aug. 3, the guns of the Red Army fell silent. Appeals from Churchill to intervene, or at least allow Allied aircraft to deliver supplies to the besieged city-using Soviet controlled airfields-were denied with Stalin insisting “the Soviet government does not wish to associate itself either directly or indirectly with the

adventure in Warsaw”.”

 

This was the state of mind of the 1PAD soldiers at the time of their deployment onto the European continent. Many of the fighters had found their way to the UK after fighting in Poland and then in France. The group’s goal was to liberate Poland from its oppressors. Now they are being told that even their supposed ally, Russia, would not stand up and fight for Polish freedom. Here they were willing to fight and die for their mother country, but at the same time it became questionable if there would be a country to which they could return.

 

The first units landed on the Normandy beaches on the 30 July 1944 (D-Day + 54) at

Courseulles Sur Mer on Juno Beach. Their eventual objective was to seize the Falaise area and link up with US forces near Argentan, which would bottle up German forces in the peninsular and cut off any retreat. However, the Normandy campaign proved to be tough and failure to capture Caen delayed the breakout by almost six weeks, and it also denied the Allies to breakout into the more open countryside suitable for tanks.

 

Montgomery made 3 attempts to take Caen. The first attempt was direct attack as part of and continuation of the invasion (Overlord) strategy on 7 – 8th June. The second attempt was to envelope Caen through the bypassing swing towards Villers-Bocage on 13 June and then finally Operation Epsom on 25th June. US forces had been designated the port of Cherbourg and the clearing of the Cotentin Peninsula (Operation Cobra) which was not achieved until 27 June. The US fighting in the bocage countryside was to be remembered by bitter fighting for feet rather than yards in small fields and sunken lanes, which brought comparisons to the Great War. The German defence utilizing these natural features, counter-attack strategies and planned withdrawals to prepared positions has been textbook material for future generals to study. Once St. Lô had fallen, Patton was able to breakout into the Loire valley.

 

Meanwhile, Montgomery’s push for Villers-Bocage had been slow and achieved none of its

objectives. Operation Epsom became a debacle with heavy casualties. The whole of the VIII Corp launched an attack on a 6 km front between the villages of Carpiquet and Rauray through thickly wooded areas towards the river Odon and southwest Caen to encircle the city. The fierce battle was reminiscent of Passchendaele with attacks repulsed by fierce counterattacks and the operation stalled by 1 July.

 

Montgomery launched Operation Goodwood 18 -20 July to capture all the river crossings

along the river Orne from Caen to Argentan. To the dismay of commanders like General ‘Pip’ Roberts of the 11th Armoured Brigade, the infantry and armoured divisions would have separated objectives and commanders’ requests to use self-propelled guns to assist in the rapid transport of infantry being denied, caused deep concerns. Vast bomber support to hit targets of Panzer Group West failed to destroy equipment and the resilience of the well dug in defenders whose equipment superiority and effective use inflicted high casualty rates and again the momentum of battle was lost. Goodwood failed its objectives to the loss of 400 tanks and 5,537 casualties.

 

The Polish 1st Division was directed towards Bayeux to build up the Division between late July and 7th August 1944 alongside the Canadian 4th Armoured Brigade. Montgomery had underestimated the strength of the 12th SS Panzer and 21st Panzer holding a line in front of Caen and so to avoid high casualties had swung the attack around Caen towards Villers-Bocage.

 

For the Polish 1st Division their ‘jump-off’ was on the night 7th - 8th August as part of Operation Totalize. With the Canadian II Corps they were to advance along the Caen-Falaise Road. After the infantry divisions of the 21st Army had attacked, the armoured units moved forward despite ‘friendly fire’ caused by US bombers hitting the divisional artillery. By midday infantry had captured swathes of countryside and surrounding towns from Fontenay to Tilley–la–Campagne while to the south of Caen the two armoured divisions had met heavy resistance, and the 1st Polish Armoured Division had lost 40 tanks and the momentum was lost 50km short of Falaise.

 

The 1st Polish Armoured Division was ordered back into operation on 10th August 1940 as part of Operation Totalize. Operation Totalize opened at 2300 hours on 7 August with over a thousand Lancaster and Halifax bombers carpet-bombing the Canadian/ Polish flanks between La Hogue and Mare de Magne in the east and Fontenay le Marmion and May sur Orne in the west shattering the German 89th Division. The Poles objective was to capture Hill 111 and the Chemi-Hause woods and then spent the next two days holding the line against heavy counterattacks. Operation Totalize dwindled much to Montgomery’s chagrin and this left opportunities for the Germans to reform their defensive lines along the River Laison.

 

 

The Falaise Gap: The Poles are the “Cork in the bottle”

 

By the middle of August, the Germans were surrounded on three of four sides. To their north, British and Canadian troops have captured Caen. To their west, Americans have secured the passage inland. To their south was Patton. The only way to escape was to the east, and the only reason Field Marshal von Kluge, commander of the German forces, had not taken that route yet was because of Hitler's demands to stand and fight to the last man.

 

The Allies started to close off that final avenue of retreat on 14 August, with the launch of

Operation Tractable, a push toward the town of Falaise by Canadian and Polish troops. The plan for Tractable was based on an earlier successful push, which combined an advance by mechanized infantry with tactical bombing by heavy bombers. That earlier advance was performed at night; Tractable was going to begin in the morning, but a heavy smoke cover laid down by artillery was to simulate the cover of darkness.

 

Unfortunately, a Canadian officer carrying a copy of his orders got lost the night before the attack, drove into German lines, and was promptly killed. The Germans found his orders and became aware of the impending battle, which gave them time to manoeuvre their forces in place.

 

Like previous attacks, this too began with an aerial bombardment, and like Operation Cobra, it suffered from friendly fire. Canadian troops incorrectly used yellow smoke to mark their position to the bombers above. This was a problem, since the Royal Air Force used smoke of the same colour to mark enemy positions and responded to the smoke signals accordingly. The spoiling of the surprise attack, as well as effective German anti-tank fire despite the smoke screen, greatly slowed down the offensive, preventing the liberation of Falaise on the first day. Meanwhile, the situation started to change on the German side as well.

 

Back on 20 July, even as the Allies were manoeuvring in Normandy, a group of German officers led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg tried to assassinate Hitler and failed. Kluge knew about the plan and even offered to support it when Hitler was killed, but withdrew his support when he learned the Führer was alive. On August 15, Kluge fell out of contact with his troops for several hours after his car was damaged by Allied bombs. What happened next is hard to determine, but there are two conflicting accounts. According to one, Hitler interpreted Kluge's temporary disappearance as an attempt to negotiate surrender with the Allies behind his back, and removed him from command two days later, recalling him to Germany. Kluge supposedly believed that Hitler learned about his involvement in the coup and committed suicide. The other version is that Hitler received clear evidence of Kluge's complicity in Operation Valkyrie and had a loyal SS officer execute the Field Marshal.

 

Either way, Kluge died and was replaced by Field Marshal Walter Model. Model was an excellent defensive commander who had earned a reputation by slowing down the Soviet juggernaut on the Eastern Front time and time again, and one of the few officers who could get away with ordering a retreat even despite Hitler's orders. His first order in his new command was to retreat. He understood that staying in place would allow the Allies to fully encircle and destroy his forces, while a successful withdrawal would still give him the chance to fight later. His job was made even more difficult when Allied forces landed on the southern coast of France on August 15 in Operation Dragoon.

 

While the Canadians and the Poles were trying to cut off the eastern escape route and the Germans were getting their act together, Patton finished securing routes to the south of the German forces and wanted to turn north. This way, the Canadian Polish advance from the north and Patton's own advance from the south would have met somewhere halfway, completing the encirclement. Much to Patton's chagrin, however, General Bradley ordered him to stop the advance and concentrate on securing his position. This kept the gap in the east open for longer than necessary, allowing many German soldiers to escape.

 

There has been much debate over Bradley's decision to stop Patton's advance. One of these focuses on the boundary line between American and Commonwealth forces. The area was divided into a northern and a southern part, and no force was supposed to enter the other half. British Field Marshal Montgomery planned this to avoid friendly fire incidents between U.S. and Commonwealth forces, who otherwise might have stumbled upon each other unexpectedly. For his part, Bradley later wrote that he was afraid of Patton stretching himself too thin. He had four divisions against 19 German ones, and was already blocking three escape routes. Had he reached for more, it's possible the Germans could have used a local superiority in numbers to break through in one spot, causing the Third Army heavy casualties.

 

With Model ordering a retreat and Canadian and Polish forces still trying to head south to close off the escape route between Trun and Chamois, the situation turned into a race. Canadian armor liberated and secured Trun on 18 August; Polish battlegroups freed Chamois on the 19th. Meanwhile, German tanks broke through newly established and still thin Allied lines in several places and headed toward Mont-Orel, a hill to the east. Two Polish battlegroups that have just liberated Chamois moved on to the same hill, which they nicknamed "the mace" (“Maczuga” in Polish) due to its shape on the map. The fate of German troops in Normandy was to be decided on the slopes of Mont-Orel, named "Hill 262" on Allied maps The first Polish soldiers already reached the northern hilltop of the Ormel ridge in the early afternoon of the 19 August, and immediately set about attacking the columns of Panther tanks driving past the hill. The Germans, who thought they were home free after breaking through the Allied lines, were at first surprised to face this last line of defense, but were quick to adapt to the situation. They realized that the only way for the retreat to proceed successfully was to eliminate the Polish defenders on the hill.

 

Around 2,000 Poles faced 100,000 retreating Germans. The Germans launched assault after assault against the Poles on the 19th, all day through 20 August and in the morning of 21 August, driving them further and further back, up to the summit, gradually destroying Polish tanks and depleting their ammunition. Some German units have already made it to safety beyond the Ormel ridge, only to turn around and attack Polish positions from behind. In between German assaults, the Poles called in directions for artillery strikes on the German tank and vehicle columns that were rolling past their positions, turning the roads into deathtraps blocked by all the wreckage.

 

In a typical Polish gesture, the defenders offered Polish-born ethnic German POWs the chance to change sides and fight alongside them. On the other hand, any SS men or soldiers who had participated in the invasion of Poland were dealt with mercilessly.

 

By the end of the 20 August, the Poles were down to their last reserves, and German attempts to overrun them did not seem to wane. Lieutenant Colonel Aleksander Stefanowitz, the Polish battle-group commander on site, took stock of their situation in a short speech he delivered to his remaining troops on the evening of the 20th:

 

"Gentlemen, all is lost. I do not think that the Canadians can come to our rescue. We

have only about 110 able-bodied men left. Five shells per [tank] gun and 50 bullets per

man. That's very little but fight all the same. Surrendering to the S.S. is futile; you know

that. Thank you. You have fought well. Good luck, gentlemen. Tonight, we shall die for

Poland and for civilization! . . . each tank will fight independently, and eventually each man for himself."

 

Salvation for the Poles came almost at the eleventh hour. After a final German assault that commenced at 11:00 a.m., Allied reinforcements reached the hill's defenders at noon. Alas, the defenders mistook the friendly reconnaissance regiment for yet more Germans and destroyed two British-made Cromwell tanks crewed by Polish tankers before the misunderstanding was cleared up.

 

It is hard to determine exactly how many German soldiers were trapped at Falaise and how many escaped before the gap was fully closed. Most historians believe that around 80,000 to 100,000 Germans were caught in the Falaise pocket, half of whom managed to escape, while everyone else was either killed or captured. A significant number of German tanks and artillery pieces were also destroyed. Even with 40,000 to 50,000 German soldiers living to fight another day, the envelopment significantly hampered Germany's ability to put up a fight on the Western Front for the rest of the war. Field Marshal Montgomery told the Poles: “The Germans were trapped as if in a bottle; you were the cork in that bottle.”

 

Even with so many Germans escaping, the retreat route past Mont-Ormel became a ghastly killing ground. Removing the dead bodies was a low priority for the Allies, and the job went on until November. In the meantime, the area was declared an "unhealthy zone" to keep people away.

 

Eisenhower wrote the following after his visit to the battlefield: “The battlefield at Falaise was unquestionably one of the greatest "killing fields" of any of the war areas. Forty-eight hours after the closing of the gap I was conducted through it on foot, to encounter scenes that could be described only by Dante. It was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh.”

 

A museum dedicated to the closing of the Falaise pocket stands on Mont-Orel today, and offers a view of the low-lying killing grounds where the German defenders of Normandy tried to escape. In recognition of the bravery and sacrifice of the Polish soldiers who fought on the spot, a statue dedicated to Polish commander Major-General Maczek and a sign were erected there after the battle. The sign simply reads "A Polish battlefield”.

 

 

1PAD from France to Germany

 

With the closure of the Normandy campaign the first important stage of the 1PAD’s combat trail was completed. Next came the pursuit of the German armed forces starting 29 August 1944 through northern France and Belgium to the Netherlands. It ended after the conquest of Breda in early November.

 

After the pitched battle by the Poles to hold the northern shoulder of the Falaise pocket where they fought hand-to-hand with the most fanatical SS troops of Hitler's army, the break out to the Netherlands went very quickly as the Germans abandoned France. The race to Breda was much more about fast movement and supply than about fighting.

 

Having arrived in Holland, the Allies had to make careful decisions about resources, and they tended to direct these to favored formations such as the Guards Armoured Division which supported Market-Garden.

 

The Poles felt they were fighting for the right to take back their homeland, but even as they were fighting in France and Holland, Stalin was allowing Hitler to destroy the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the most brutal fashion. Stalin obstructed Churchill's attempts to aid the Poles. For Polish soldiers in the Allied armies, aware of all this and of Stalin's complicity in Katyn, it must have been a bitter time, despite the victories.

 

As previously mentioned, Edward’s brother Henryk fought in the “Battle of the Bulge”. At the time the First Polish Armoured Division was fighting north of the Americans in the Netherlands while Henryk’s US Second Armored Division was in combat in neighboring Belgium. Consequently, they actually were physically not that far away from each other and were clearly in battle on the same front.

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The US Second Armored Division was holding positions on the Roer when it was ordered to help contain the German Ardennes offensive. The division fought in eastern Belgium, blunting the German Fifth Panzer Army’s penetration of American lines. The division helped reduce the Bulge in January, fighting in the Ardennes Forest in deep snow, and cleared the area from Houff Alize to the Ourthe River. The German 2nd Panzer Division was on its original mission to the Meuse River. Mechanized units of this Panzer Division ultimately ran out of fuel at Celes, where they were destroyed by the U.S. 2nd Armored Division and the British 29th Armoured Brigade.

 

By this time Edward had been in combat for several months straight. The trauma and the stress of fighting ended up materializing many years later into his false recollection promoted by late in life dementia that his brother Henryk died at that battle. We can only surmise that his anxiety somehow developed from the fear of his brother’s death but only evolved many years later. Of course, this could not be further from the truth because if that had happened none of the nephews and nieces would have gotten to know our dear Uncle Henryk.

 

 

The Yalta Conference – Poland’s Fate is Sealed

 

It was at this time that Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin all met at Yalta in the Middle East, purposefully excluding Poland from being invited to discuss their own future. The Yalta Conference was a stab in the back for an ally that had fought, bled and died for our freedoms.

 

Whilst at Yalta, East and Central Europe were handed over to the Communists with Churchill apparently being quite ebullient about allowing the communists to expand their area of influence.  Anthony Eden stepped in to voice his concern about the voraciously acquisitive nature of Stalin and the Communist Regime. He categorically refused to believe that they would behave well to the new populations within their expanded sphere, merely wanting to expand their reach and most definitely at the expense of absolutely anybody who got in their way.

 

At seven of the eight plenary sessions at Yalta, Poland was the subject. Stalin and his cronies were absolutely adamant that Poland should be made strong again but only under Communist guidance and that she should be well compensated from Germanys eastern territories for her own loss of territory although what Poland gained in no way made up for the massive area of land that she had lost to the Soviet invasion of 1939. It was already clear by 1943 that Stalin never intended to return any of the Polish territories and had already quite systematically brutalized the population with massive programs of deportations to the east having already been undertaken... and let’s not forget the Katyn atrocities.

 

The Western powers were quite simply out maneuvered at Yalta by Stalin, and left desperately trying to make it look like some sort of moral victory for the Polish people that is, until General Anders heard the results. He stated to Churchill that 'Yalta is the end of Poland!'

 

General Maczek considered the situation: the new Polish borders were to follow the Curzon Line which was the original British idea for the Polish borders in 1918, but his home, Lwow would no longer be Polish. He considered the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau and the expulsion of the Nazi abomination from the homeland and was left wondering if the main enemy were still the Nazis. He wondered if he could even return home at all?

 

During the progress through Europe, his soldiers liberated Ypres, Oostnieuwkerke, Roeselare,Tielt, Ruidlede, Ghent and Breda, fulfilling General Maczek’s prophetic axiom, “The Polish soldier fights for the freedom of all nations and countries yet dies only for Poland”.

 

 

The Division Crosses Into Germany

 

The third major combat phase started in the winter of 1944 and encompassed operations in the Netherlands and Germany. It was a period of patrolling services and intensive training during winter months with a short episode of fighting during German winter offensive in Ardennes. The April offensive in Germany finished with capturing Wilhelmshaven (8 April 1945 – 5 May 1945).

 

In April 1945, the 1st Armoured entered Germany around Emsland. On 6 May, the Division seized the Kriegsmarine naval base in Wilhelmshaven, where General Maczek accepted the capitulation of the fortress, naval base, East Frisian Fleet and more than 10 infantry divisions.

 

A few days after crossing the Rhine more serious actions begun and the regiment found itself again in the Netherlands, more precisely in the town of Ter Apel. Not the entire regiment, but three tanks of the Divisional Command Group, three reconnaissance cars and three motorcyclists. Front Line squadrons either got lost or for unknown reasons there was no connection with them.

 

And then, due to local Dutchmen, a message spread out that around 10 km further on there is a concentration or prisoner-of-war camp, where Poles are kept. No one knew whether these were political prisoners or prisoners of war, but for sure there were Poles. The camp was to be located by the road to Ober Langen. One of the Dutchmen, who freely communicated with the other side, swore that the camp was soon to be evacuated or dismantled.

 

“The commander of the regiment had his doubts. He was ordered just to reach Ter Apel, but on the other hand he could not let something like this happen. A decision was made to send a reconnaissance patrol. A tank, two reconnaissance cars and a motorcyclist. Finally, the gate. The tank abruptly turns right and batters it. On its left side stands a building which looks like guardhouse. After two series of machine gun fire at the windows, twelve Germans with raised hands jump out of it. Rifleman Witkowski drives up to them on a motorcycle and takes them at the gunpoint of his machine gun. But from the other building, located in the front, someone is still shooting. The tank breaks the second, internal gate. And then everyone notices a small silhouette running to us in a too long coat and a garrison cap with an eagle and a pennant of the 7th regiment of Lublin Ulans.

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– English? Francais? American? Canada sind Sie?

– Poles, Poles mademoiselle! The 1st Polish Armoured Division, darling!

– Poles, oh God, Poles! And we’re here from the Home Army. From the Warsaw Uprising. From Warsaw.

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And then from the barracks spills out a joyful crowd of women in the shreds of military uniforms.

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The soldiers got speechless. But still, the Germans could come at any moment, attack and make a massacre, because all the vehicles were surrounded by hundreds of cheering women. After a while Colonel Koszutski is approached by a woman with a sign of a liaison officer. As it turns out, it is Captain Lissowska, Commander of the camp. At once she orders an assembly. A fairly even rectangle is formed. The Chief orders barracks commandants to report. Barrack commandants come to her and saluting they report.

 

– “Colonel, I dutifully report a female battalion of the defence of Warsaw. Present: 1716 soldiers on the square, 20 in the infirmary and 7 infants. Battalion, attention!

(…) “I walk before the rows of the battalion. On no other inspection was I followed in such a way by the eyes of soldiers, and never have I looked in soldiers’ eyes in such a way. Eyes are mostly blue and mostly very young. Mostly in tears. I cannot see so well myself, as if through a mist.

 

So was liberated Stalag 6C in Ober Langen. At night colonel Koszutski drove to General Maczek to report. The next day the General himself visited and greeted the camp. And then began visits of soldiers of the entire division. Wives, daughters, sisters, closer and further families were being found. Love, romance and marriages were created. Also, lieutenant Janusz Barbarski found his future wife in Ober Langen.

 

 

VE Day – WWII In Europe Is Over

 

By March, Western Allied forces were crossing the Rhine River, capturing hundreds of thousands of troops from Germany’s Army Group B. The Red Army had meanwhile entered Austria, and both fronts quickly approached Berlin. Strategic bombing campaigns by Allied aircraft were pounding German territory, sometimes destroying entire cities in a night.

 

In the first months of 1945, Germany put up a fierce defence, but rapidly lost territory, ran out of supplies, and exhausted its options. In April, Allied forces pushed through the German defensive line in Italy. East met West on the River Elbe on 25 April 1945, when Soviet and American troops met near Torgau, Germany.

 

“On 30 April. as Russian troops entered the outskirts of Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. The leadership of Germany passed to Joseph Goebbels, but within 24 hours he too took his own life. Elsewhere, other Nazi leaders were either in Allied custody or running like fugitives.

 

The German surrender came on 7 May, a week after Hitler’s death. Nazism, the proud and boastful movement of the 1930s, was drawing its final breaths. The Nazis had promised the German people dignity, respect, and prosperity – and for a time seemed to deliver on these promises. But their ultimate legacy was a war that had claimed the lives of more than 48 million people, a racial genocide unlike any other in history, and a Germany that was devastated, occupied, and torn apart for more than 40 years.

 

VE Day did not sound the bells of victory and a time of peaceful reconstruction. It ushered in a new foreign occupation in which the new Poland, robbed of half her territory annexed by the U.S.S.R., found herself under the Soviet heel. The struggle continued for a further 45 years until true independence was once more restored in December 1990.

 

 

A Man Without a Country

 

You are stationed in conquered Germany late in 1945 aiding in the occupation efforts after VE Day. Your life has been on hold for more than 3 years, well over six months of which were on the front lines in combat. One would think that your conscription would end soon and all you have to do is hitch a ride on one of the many boats headed back home to the USA along with the millions of others who have fought to end the tyranny in Europe. Piece of cake, right? But then you hear rumblings regarding mustering out and you get correspondence from the US Foreign Service.

 

You are being told that you may no longer be a citizen of the country in which you were born. On top of that the country whose forces you have fought with basically no longer exists since it is being taken over by Communist Russia. Imagine the angst and consternation you would feel after jeopardizing life and limb for the cause of liberty and freedom. The above cablegram may have caused more confusion than clarity given that we saw earlier that the family submitted themselves to become naturalized in 1923.

 

At some point the Division gets relieved of their post-war occupation duties and is sent back to Scotland, by which time the issue of repatriating to the US has somehow been resolved.

 

The fate of Maczek and his soldiers after completing their duties in occupied Germany, was a bitter one.

 

Fate really did deal Maczek and his soldiers a cruel blow. After the end of the war and his demobilization, the communists not only stripped him of his Polish citizenship, but also his

livelihood. He was forced to work in a restaurant as a barman, which was far below his qualifications, and did not accord with his military merits and General’s temperament. He came to share the fate of many Poles in exile, who decided not to return to Poland. His soldiers dispersed around the worl and when the British government, fearing a worsening of relations with Moscow, distanced themselves from General Maczek and the role he played in World War II, the responsibility to commemorate his glorious history, came to rest on their shoulders. Over the course of the many years of the war, a unique bond formed between Maczek and his soldiers. If it is possible for a commander to be like a father who looks after his children with great care, in the case of General Maczek, this is certainly true. The only places where for decades, memory strongly survived about Maczek and his men, were Belgium and the Netherlands. It would perhaps be difficult to find better evidence of th durability of these memories and Maczek’s legacy today, than the newly emerging Memorial Museum dedicated to Maczek in Breda.

 

Many of the Poles who served in Scotland declined to return to a Soviet-controlled Poland after the war. Their continued presence was not universally popular and there were fears from the trade union movement that jobs needed by returning British ex-servicemen might be taken by Poles. Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, urged them to return to Poland, but many opted to join the Polish Resettlement Corps and remain in Britain. This organization, which was formed in 1946 and disbanded in 1949, aimed to ease the transition from military to civilian life, while keeping remaining Poles under military discipline. Quite a few Poles returned to Perthshire, as a look through the local telephone book in 1997 revealed plenty of Polish surnames.

 

 

Back Home at last

 

On 21 May 1946 Ed was discharged from the Polish forces and returned home to the Pittsburgh area. After the continual correspondence with Frances Baranowski during his deployment, they reconnected and were married in April 1947. Christine was born in 1948, Dan was born in 1950,  Edward was born in 1952, and Frances in 1958.

 

Both of my parents lived their Polish heritage. Besides joining the local Polish War Veterans chapter in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh (Edward as a veteran and Frances in the women’s auxiliary), they dedicated their time to endeavors such as running Polish Folk dancing events in the Pittsburgh area, especially the annual Polish Heritage days at the local West View and Kennywood parks. Additionally, my sisters and I attended Alliance College in northwest Pennsylvania where we continued our Polish studies and danced in the Polish Folk Dancing troupe called the Kujawiaki.

 

 

Afterword

 

Time and again anecdotal statements were made by the families of WWII veterans that their relatives did not speak of their service when they returned home. That was true in my father’s case as well. It was probably obvious by the lack of his first-person accounts in this work.

 

I now realize that I missed a golden opportunity back in 1967 when my parents took us on vacation to Expo ’67 in Montreal, Canada. At the time we stayed with one of my dad’s fellow soldiers nicknamed “Ziggy”. I can only imagine that they swapped some war stories during the visit, but alas I was not privy to them, nor did I have the wherewithal at the time to ask.

 

The only references I do recall as I grew up were that my father had been an electrical mechanic in a tank outfit during the war and a comment that he once made to my brother was that he arrived in Normandy at “D-Day + 10”. Normally that would have meant around 10 days after the landings on 6 June 1944 but I now know he meant D-Day plus 10 weeks. The 1PAD landed there around the end of July 1944. Additionally, in his later years he became very emotional when the topic came up or a war movie was playing. As mentioned above, he distinctly thought his brother Henryk died in the Battle of the Bulge which was not true.

 

The trip to Montreal was also memorable for me because Ziggy was really into photography and had built his own enlarger from an old bellows camera and a large lens. This was back in the day when film had to be developed, and photographic prints were made in a darkroom. I copied his plans and built my own version. This initiated my lifelong love of photography including starting a club in college and teaching new enthusiasts.

 

After my parents passed away, I inherited the family photographs and dad’s memorabilia from World War II. I digitized all the historical family snapshots including my father’s photographs from the war. These items plus some 1PAD paperwork and newspaper articles started my interest in his activities and I began studying the actions of the Polish forces during the war. I had assumed that his mechanical work kept him from the front lines but at one point I came across a quote from one of his fellow mechanics which described how at times they had to go to the front lines to repair vehicles My appreciation of his exploits grew.

 

In 2017, we had the opportunity to visit the UK, France and Poland. When preparing for this trip I realized that I wanted to visit the area of Falaise, France. We stayed in the town of Bayeux from which we toured the Normandy beaches. Afterwards we employed a private guide to take us from there to Paris (for our plane trip to Poland) by way of Mont-Orel. We spent time at the museum there and I donated his medals and his 1PAD campaign book to them.

 

Late in 2020 I stumbled across a photograph on Facebook of one of the tanks of the 1PAD fighting in the Netherlands. I asked the person that posted the picture if they had any others of the First Polish Armoured Division. He pointed me to the unit’s Facebook page that had been created in mid-2019 by Tobiasz Siotor. His grandfather was also in one of the workshop groups - just like my father – a different but similar unit. Tobiasz shared a wealth of information with me and he was an inspiration for me to put together this publication. I wanted to share what I had learned of my father’s trials and tribulations and leave behind his legacy to those that may never have known what he experienced.

 

Author: Dan Marchewka December 2021,