The Polish contribution to the defense of Britain in the 2WW.

(Click on Title to link to Poland in Exile)

With the extensive amount of programming on the BBC in particular to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain it was very disappointing to notice how little, if any, mention was made of the contribution of Polish forces that flew with and supported the RAF during that desperate period. Not only did Poles fly and fight in the historic Battle of Britain and downed proportionately a very high number of German planes there were large numbers involved in ground support, radio operation and maintenance. There is one good book about the Polish pilots called 'The Forgotten Few ' by Adam Zamyosi. Generaly the involvement of large numbers of Polish forces under British military control who fought and died to protect this country which was not their own is indeed forgotten, and not even known to those who were not involved or have researched throughly.
Because my father was one of those I have been able to find out something about what actualy went on, and much of it, particularly the treatment of those that found themselves having contributed to the defence of this country and then effectively told to go back to a Soviet controlled, devastated and physicaly repositioned state, is a very disturbing story.
Approximately 83,000 Polish troops served in France offering their support to the threatened French. Their mistreatment is still virtualy unknown and uncomemorated both here and in France. My father was one of those put into what were effectively French run Concentration Camps which housed a mixture of ex-Spanish Civil War combatants who had fled from Fascist Spain and many others that the French virtualy Fascist government deemed a danger to the state. There were a large number of these particularly in the south and it was in one near Perpignan that my father was placed until the combination of the appaling conditions and then the signing of an agreement between Hitler and the Vichy regime made it absolutely necessary to get out. This he and others managed to do and made there way with no practical assistance from the French to the south western coast. Here, from a small port called St. Jean De Luz, British ships picked up those that could be fitted onto the hastily commandered vessels and made the dangerous crossing to England. The boat he was on, the Arrandora Star, was torpedoed and sank a mere two days after having docked in Liverpool. It was then carrying mainly Italians who were being deported to Italy. Approximately 27,000 Polish troops reached England and Scotland. The fate of the 56,000 that were not able to get onto one of these ships sent by Churchill is very obscure. Once France was effectively collaborating with Nazi Germany, although the south was still nominaly under French control, it is most likely that those still in the camps would have been sent back to occupied Poland or to Germany to who knows what fate. Given that the Vichy Government treated even its own French citizens who were deemed to be undesirable, Communists, resistence members and Jews harshly keeping them in camps and prisons, they are hardly likely to have treated the remaining Poles any better. It is documented that Jews were sent to the concentration and extermination camps in the Reich, it is not so well recorded what happened to the Polish that had attempted to help France defend itself from occupation. It is certain that considerable numbers of Spanish veterans of the Civil War were sent to the camps in the Reich, amazingly some survived until liberation. The notoriously brutal Matthausen in Austria was one were Spanish prisoners were incarcerated.
Once in the UK the arriving Poles for the first time since being forcibly expelled from their own country by the joint invasion of both German and Soviet Russia, got some decent treatment and were welcomed into the mobilised forces of the country. My father was part way through training to become an officer in the Polish Air Force. He was just past his nineteenth birthday when Poland was attacked on 1 September 1939. His station at that time was an air base near Krosno in the south east corner of Poland. Following the destruction of the facility he and his compatriots @ 500 men, marched at night for around 200 miles through the Carpathian Mountains. They managed to reach the Romanian border and crossed days before the Russians then occupied that part of Poland. Note the Russians not the Gemans, this was the deal that had been struck between Molotov and Ribbentrop. As most know later this was reversed and Germany attacked eastward but at this stage the Russians closed the Polish border to prevent Poles from leaving. Romania was technically neutral at this point. they were treated realativly well in a poor country, but still interned into camps. They were better than those in France, my father said. From there he and others made contact with a British Legation office in Bucharest. After weeks in hiding, there were already German officials in Romania, which was soon to be deliberately destabilised and brought into the Axis powers, they managed to get passage on a small ship sailing from Balchic on the Black Sea to Beruit, then part of the French controlled Syria. There was a strange echo in Balchic as my father had grown up in Wilno in the far north east of Poland near the Baltic Sea.
This journey through the Dardanelles into the Aegean took seven days in a heavily overcrowded cargo ship in which they were the human cargo and it was a rough and dangerous sea in winter. On December 25 the Captain sent the SOS signal as sinking was a strong possiblity. They eventualy reached Beirut at the end of December 1939.
From there another larger cargo ship took them across the Meditterranean Sea to dock in Marseille at the end of February 1940. In France they were briefly at an Air Force base but it was evident that there was no real plan or will to fight and defend the country. As stated earlier, after a period in an internment camp, my guess is the French did not know what to do with them, he and colleagues made their own way to the coast and finaly got to England.
Although he spoke Polish, obviously, and also Russian and a little German, my father had never heard English before. It is quite remarkable that within another year or so he had learnt enough English to get by and in 1942 he met and married my mother, who was working as a secretary at Eastwood Films in Fleetwood, having been evacuated from London. He had been seconded to the RAF and within the Polish Division worked to train and instruct fellow Poles in radio operations. His postings were at RAF Blackpool, RAF Halton ( Bucks.) , RAF Halton (Somerset) and RAF Cammeringham (Lincs.) in the Polish Technical Training School and the Polish Deputy Inspectorate General.
At the end of the war the Polish Resettlement Corps was formed. This was a unit made up of Poles that was to arrange for those that had served in the UK to now go back to Poland. It was not compulsory to return but it was encouraged. Now remember that Poland had been drasticaly altered by border changes which effectively moved the country 100 miles to the west. Where my father was from was now no longer in Poland and hundreds of miles into Russian territory. Even within the borders of what was now called Poland there was an illigitimate puppet government controlled by Stalin in Moscow. Here there was hostility from the Unions and members of the new Labour government, which actually had some Communist members. Stalin declared that all Poles those that had fought in a 'foreign' armed force, despite it having been allied to Russia from 1941, were to have no rights to citizenship and no military medals. The British government did protest this, but it was not changed. quite what this meant for the thousands that did return is again unclear, but having no rights to citizenship in the country you come from is not a good thing. I read some exchanges from the time in Parliament and there was clearly pressure being put upon the Poles that wished to remain to leave and even the suggestion, which I do not know if it happened, that those that were uncertain could be sent to Germany. An incredible proposition to be even considered after what that country had just done to its neighbour.
My father worked in the PRC who in London were based at the Savoy Hotel, oddly enough. This must have been very strange, sending back to a devastated and Communist controlled country fellow Poles who had worked to defend this country. He became a Naturalised British Citizen in 1949 and recinded Polish citizenship. He never returned to Poland.