Kowalski's War

Many teenagers believe the world is against them, but in 1939 this really seemed to be the case for 17-year-old Zbigniew Kowalski. Fleeing his homeland and leaving loved ones behind in the face of the Nazi invasion, he arrived in France to join the Free Polish Army, itching to give the Germans some payback. When France also collapsed, he decided to head to Britain no matter the obstacles thrown in his way. All he had to rely on were his wits, his luck and the kindness of the French people.

In 1944 he returned to France as part of the Allied army of liberation. Triumph, however was tinged with sadness, losing his best friend in combat and then being shot twice by a sniper.

For his refusal to accept defeat and his brave escape from Occupied Europe, the French nation honoured him just over 50 years later with the Croix de Guerre. Today Zbigniew Kowalski is a grandfather and happily retired from a long and distinguished career at the petrochemical giant John Brown.

I count it a moment of great pride to listen and record this man’s amazing story and share it here in English.

STR: You were lucky enough to leave Warsaw before the Germans arrived in force. How did this happen?

Zbigniew Kowalski: My father worked in the finance department from the Polish Ministry of Defence. Just before 5 September 1939, it was decided all military institutions in Warsaw, including my father’s, were to be evacuated – he decided to also take my mothers, my two sisters and me. My father and I were at the station waiting when my mother arrived with my sisters. She was wearing a Red Cross armband and told us she had been mobilised to work in the hospital and had to stay behind. It was over ten years before I was to see her again.

STR: What was the rail journey south like?

ZK: Soon after we left Warsaw, the Junkers Ju-87 Stukas flew in to bomb us, but thankfully they missed the target. On 14 September, we arrived in the Lwow area, where my aunt lived. My father decided it would be safer for my sisters to stay with her, while we two continued on to the south. Again it was to be ten years before I saw them.

At that stage we had no idea that the government was planning an evacuation into Romania, but we soon found ourselves heading for the border town of Zalishchyky. Before we got there, however, we called into a railway junction near a small village where the passengers went to get supplies. A captain and myself stayed behind to keep an eye on things; they chose me because I was a cadet and they gave me a rifle with five bullets ‘just in case’. Suddenly, Stukas came roaring overhead and then dived down to strafe and bomb us.

I remember the rail tracks being blasted into the air and, spinning bent and buckled, coming back down to the earth. Amazingly – like the last time – none of the bombs damaged the train or the line it was on. Being a silly young teenager, I decided to fire back. After the Stukas left, the passengers came rushing back; they were concerned that we had both been hurt. Then they noticed my hand was bleeding. Like a fool I’d cut it working the rifle’s bolt and had to keep telling them that I wasn’t hurt and that it was merely a scratch.

STR: Having escaped Poland, you joined the Polish army assembling in France. How did that come about?

ZK: After travelling into Romania, we ended up in a northern village with a large Polish population. I remember the day I was asked to join: November 11. The date of the First World War Armistice is also Independence Day for Poland. My father and I attended a church service, and afterward a Polish officer approached me and said: ‘Don’t you think it’s time you joined the army in France?’ Then he looked at my France, who bowed his head in agreement. And so that was that. I was told to go to Bucharest and wait for the official call up from the Polish legation.

My father and I travelled to the Romanian capital, where I had to wait for three weeks until my official summons arrived. When they did, I headed straight to the legation and was sworn in. I was told that the next shipment of volunteers was leaving from Split, in what was then neutral Yugoslavia, for Marseilles. I was given the appropriate documents and said goodbye to my father, who went on to serve in a Polish military hospital after the fall of France.

STR: What was life like as a new soldier in the Free Polish army in France during the ‘Phoney War’?

ZK: On arrival in Marseilles, we new recruits were put straight on to a railroad coach travelling north. They took us to a training camp on a mountainside behind the town of Avignon and it wasn't long before they gave us uniforms, which were of the modern French type, except we wore special brown berets. Part of the 2nd Polish division, our unit was the 5th Malopolski Regiment of Infantry.

One day our commanding officer, Major Allinger, arrived. We all lined up for inspection, where he 'volunteered' me for the heavy machine gun section. After basic training, our division went north near to the Alsace region. We were housed in a ramshackle farm with holes in the roof. We slept on straw and would wake up covered in snow.

STR:So it was a tough time?

ZK: Well I was on one franc a day: not much even at that time. But in this region of France there were many Polish émigrés who had come to work in the mines. At some point a Polish miner, whose job made him exempt from military service, approached me and asked if I could write a love letter for him to his sweetheart. In those days many people were still illiterate, so his request was not unusual. As payment, he took me to the local café and bought me warmed wine. Obviously he was happy with my effort and told others, because word soon spread that Kowalski wrote the best and most beautiful Polish letters. People would buy me drinks for my writing and, of course, the more people who came, the more drinks I had. On some nights they had to drag me back to my quarters!

Food, however, was a problem: our rations were poor quality. I’ll give you an example of how bad it could be. I was put forward to become a lance corporal and sent to a training centre, where one day I was told to unload some food supplies. I noticed that the loaves were all labelled ‘1918’ and the meat stamped ‘1915’. The French were supplying us with frozen surplus left over from the Great War. That meat was so tough that we had to cut it up into fine pieces and make goulash out of it.

STR:What happened to your unit once the Germans launched their blitzkrieg on France?

ZK: In May 1940, our sister division – the 1st – was north of Nancy and the plan was to rush us there so we could fight together in the same theatre. We were loaded onto trains heading north, but at some point a decision was taken for us to back-track south to Besançon, in the Franche-Comté region close to the Swiss border. Near Besançon we were housed in an old garrison located close to rail lines. Soon enough, German aircraft flew over on the way to attack a nearby railway station. We had no time to get the machine guns on their supports, so we used a fence. It was overly-optimistic to fire, I suppose, but we were keen to score a victory.

Within a few days our battalion was deployed a little farther to the north and our particular unit was sent to guard a bridge close to Port-sur-Saône, a small village in a mountain valley. Although we had dug in some way back from the bridge, we could still see the Germans prowling around on the opposite riverbank.

The next day we received orders to go west to Montbéliard, the main area of operations for our battalion. As we approached we heard lots of shooting. Suddenly Polish motorcyclists were racing towards us. We flagged them down and asked what was happening. ‘Run away, run away!’ they shouted. ‘The battalion has surrendered!’ At that point it was decided our unit would retreat with the motorcyclists and then regroup with any surviving remnants of our battalion in some nearby woods. Here an officer gathered us together and laid out the facts as he knew them. We were particularly shocked when he told us that the Germans were threatening Paris.

‘From now on you have three options, he said. ‘One: you can march through the mountains and head into Switzerland. Two: you can march back to your homes in Poland’ – which got a laugh, as that prospect was more impossible than ever – ‘Three: join me and head south.’

We all decided to go with him. An impromptu convoy was arranged and we headed south. Passing Besançon, we drove past German sentries guarding a bridge – as we went by they presented arms to us and I can only assume they had no idea we were Polish.

STR: When did you meet the Germans face to face?

ZK: We were captured on a mountain road after one of our trucks broke down. One side of the road was a steep wooded incline and the other had a sharp drop, so none of the vehicles could pass. To clear the road, our troops began to push the broken-down lorry down the escarpment. As they were doing this a number of shots rang out. The unit scattered and I ran into the woods and climbed a tree, where I waited for the firing to die down.

I clambered down when I thought it was safe, but then heard someone walking up behind me. I turned around to see a German officer approaching: in one hand he held a revolver and, in the other, a stick grenade. I walked slowly ahead of him back to the road, where I saw the rest of my unit had been rounded up by the enemy.

At this point the German soldiers began to shout at me to drop my weapon. At first I didn’t understand, then I realised my rifle was still in my hand. I slowly set it on the ground and joined my comrades – now no longer soldiers, but prisoners of war.

The Germans were short of transport and drivers, so we were made to get back into our trucks, which our troops drove to the north under the glare of guards.

We hadn’t driven far, however, when the Germans called a halt. The area where we stopped was, in my mind, a good place to try and make an escape. I had also noted – don’t ask me where it had come from – a 5kg vat of marmalade, the type they used in the canteens, which I decided would offer the perfect distraction if I were to tip it over.

I pushed the marmalade over as soon as the Germans became engrossed in conversation and dashed down the roadside slope into the nearby woods. My heart was pounding. Nothing happened. The Germans either hadn’t seen me or didn’t care that I had bolted.

STR:What did you do next?

ZK: After ten or fifteen minutes I heard captors and captives drive off. Back on the road I began to walk south. That evening I came across a barn, where I decided to spend the night. I had just settled in when a dog started barking furiously and alerted the farmer. He burst into the barn and demanded who I was. I quickly explained, but he wanted me to leave anyway: ‘The Germans are near and if they find here then they’ll execute me.’ I begged. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘you can stay, but at five in the morning you go’.

At 05:00 the next day he came in with coffee and sandwiches. After I had finished breakfast he said ‘Bon voyage’, which was my cue to leave.

I continued south and came to a place called Morez and then walked on into the hills, where I reached the Swiss border and came across a guard post. A Swiss soldier shouted at me to come over. But the idea of spending the rest of the war stuck in a neutral country appalled me. I continued down a valley to a small place called Gex. Starving, I found a restaurant and just stood in front of the window looking at the customers eating. A man came out and asked me who I was. I explained and he brought me a meal and took me to a nearby nunnery, where they gave me a bed to sleep on. I slept for 24 hours.

STR:Did you have a plan for getting out of France at this stage?

ZK: I had decided to head for Marseilles, which I knew to have a Polish consulate. I hoped that it would be able to get me out of the country and into Britain. So I continued onward and was lucky to enough hitchhike a ride on a truck to Annency, a small, picturesque town next to a large lake. In the market square crowds had gathered and the French tricolour was being slowly lowered. Many there were openly weeping. I asked what had happened and people told me that General Pétain had capitulated and that France was now divided into two.

But I had to carry on, so I continued on foot and then caught a coach to Ugine, a village close to Annecy. The driver allowed on the bus, despite not having any money. On board, a Polish émigré approached and gave me her sandwiches and some cash, which allowed me to pay for a bus ticket to Albertville, where – most unfortunately – I was immediately arrested.

Taken to the police station, I told them who I was. By this stage I was wearing civilian clothes, but I can’t remember who gave them to me or when I had changed into them. The men detaining me had an animated discussion, which was followed by a gendarme – with a holstered pistol – ordering me up and out of the building. Marching in front of him, I heard his footsteps becoming more and more distant. I realised he was purposefully hanging back and wanted me to escape. I saw some bushes and darted off through them.

From Albertville I continued past Grenoble, down through Sisteron and then to Manosque, a village with a railway junction. Here I managed to clamber on to a stationary goods train that then headed on to Marseilles.

STR: Getting to Marseilles must have been a relief for you.

ZK: Not really! At the Polish consulate there was a sign saying: ‘Closed until Victory’. I knew there was a legation in Toulouse, so I had little choice but to sneak on a train and try my luck there. Thankfully, the train was overcrowded, which stopped the ticket inspectors from doing their job.

On board I noticed an airman talking in broken French about bombing Germans. I shifted up to him and asked if he was Polish. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘we’ll travel together and I’ll make sure you’re all right.’ His name was Marian Jakubowski.

At Toulouse the Polish legation was still open and its personnel found a place for us to stay. Soon we were supplied with passports and visa for Dutch Curacao. It was cover of course, for as soon as we were out of Vichy waters were to head for the United Kingdom. The ship we were to take was leaving from Port-Vendres, just south of Perpignan.

We reached our destination without a hitch and, much to our delight boarded the ship. At this point officials turned up and, although they didn’t detain us, they kicked us off.

Heading overland towards Spain, we hoped to somehow travel on to Portugal and head for Britain from there. It was going to be risky: General Franco, the fascist dictator of Spain, had no love for the Polish people, many of whom had volunteered to fight for the Republican cause, including its Communist wing, during the Spanish Civil War.

STR: Were there any difficulties at the Spanish border?

ZK: Where we crossed, between the ocean and the foothills of the Pyrenees, the terrain was not harsh. But at one point I took a tumble and cut my leg badly. I hobbled to a stream and tried to stem the bleeding, but it didn’t work Jakubowski came over and said: ‘Pull down your trousers.’ A very odd request given the circumstances, but I followed his instructions. Then he urinated on my leg! It was very painful, but it stopped the blood flowing.

Moving on, we came across a woman washing clothes in the river. Hungry and needing help, we stumbled towards her shouting ‘Mademoiselle!’ It was at that moment three Spanish border guards appeared.

STR:How did they treat you?

ZK: They were very pleasant. They were on their lunch break and invited us to join them. After being relieved they took us to a nearby village and handed us over to the police?

STR:What did they do?

ZK: They took us to Figueres and frog-marched us through the streets to a castle. I was taken to see a captain, made to make a quick explanation of our situation and was then forced to hand over my passport and documents. While they decided what to do with us, we were detained with three other prisoners – foreign legionnaires, I believe.

Every morning in the courtyard they lifted the Spanish flag and every evening they took it down. On each occasion they would perform a small ceremony that we were forced to attend. We would all have to shout: ‘Viva España y Viva Franco!’ It sounds ridiculous now, but at the time it was deadly serious.

After a few days, I was put onto a train, where someone told me that my destination was going to be a concentration camp. The train was moving slowly south through the countryside when, early in the morning at about 04:00, we stopped at a station in Bardalona, a small town close to Barcelona. On one side of the station, where the shadows fell, soldiers were patrolling. On the lighter side, workmen were checking the rails with hammers. Because it was so early, none of the guards had their eyes on me, so I decided I’d take my chance and try to escape. With nobody watching, I slowly climbed down from our carriage and walked past the labourers. I reached the end of the platform and then walked out of the station.

STR:It seems amazing no-one saw you leave.

ZK: I was lucky. I walked into some fields of sugar cane and then stopped to rest. After a lengthy nap, I picked myself up, dusted myself down and got on to the road to Barcelona. Nobody travelling that day seemed to notice me and no-one stopped to ask who I was.

STR: What happened when you reached Barcelona?

ZK: I went straight to the honorary Polish consulate, but the man who ran the place – a Spanish businessman – opened the door and bluntly told me: ‘We open at three.’ So I wandered around and then returned at the appropriate hour. This time the Polish wife of the Spaniard opened the door. I explained to her who I was and what had happened to me. She allowed me to stay at their house while documents were secured to grant me permission to continue to the Polish legation in Madrid.

After I arrived in the Spanish capital, the head of the legation said: ‘Why did you come? Don’t you know I’ve had all sorts of trouble from the likes of you?’ I couldn’t believe it. I actually thought I was going to cry. Apparently he was very pro-Franco and didn’t want to annoy the regime by helping Poles who had fought for the Allies.

I spent three weeks waiting at the legation when I was taken to stay in a Jesuit castle and abbey on the outskirts of Madrid. After another three or four day’s wait, I was taken back.

STR:Were they more helpful this time?

ZK: Yes; they had the documentation and passports ready for me. Along with a couple of other people, I boarded a train bound for Portugal. We were taken off, however, at a station on the border and taken by officials to stay in a tavern. I phoned the legation in Madrid and asked for assistance. They told me they would send help the next day and, sure enough, some policemen and a man from the legation soon turned up, stamped our documents and declared we could continue into Portugal.

After more documents were prepared for us at the Polish Legation in Lisbon were finally got on to a ship heading to Gibraltar and then on to the UK as part of a convoy. The journey was not a direct one: because of the U-boat threat, we sailed across the Atlantic, past Cuba, up the coast of North America, on to Iceland and then down to Liverpool. It took 21 days.

STR: Where did you go after you arrived in Liverpool?

ZK: They took us to a camp in Biggar, Scotland, where most Polish forces in Britain were based. Nearby was a military hospital, where my father was stationed – he knew I was okay because I sent word to him via the legation in Madrid.

STR: What role did you play in the Polish army in Britain?

ZK: We all received new uniforms and I was placed with a Highland battalion that had seen action in the Norweigian campaign at Narvik. Our duties were to watch the Scottish coast and prepare for a possible German invasion from occupied Norway. We would spend 24 hours on watch and then have 24 hours in camp.

In the summer of 1941, I was asked by my commanding officer to join a recruiting mission to Canada. We were desperate for more men and Canada and the northern USA had large Polish communities were obvious places to look for new recruits. I stayed out there for a year and we helped get a number of volunteers to join up.

I returned Britain in the summer of 1942 and rejoined my unit, which was attached to the Polish 1st Armoured Division. We spent the next two years preparing for the liberation of Europe. We were not in the first wave to land in Normandy: we landed on 31 July, 1944, under Canadian command and took part in the fighting around Caen.

STR: How did it feel to come back to Europe as part of a victorious army?

ZK: Well I thought – most of us thought – we would drive all the way through Germany and on to Warsaw. My morale was very high, although there was great personal sadness too: my best friend, Jozef Rudnik, was killed on August 8. On the 60th anniversary of the Normandy landings I took part in many of the ceremonies, but I found the time to visit his grave.

On August 14 we were advancing when we were hit from the air by our own side. The lead bomber dropped its payload short and on to our lines; the following aircraft flew over and dropped their bombs into the dust clouds thrown up by the first explosions. I remember that in this incident they hit the jeep carrying our regimental flag: all that was left of it were parts of the pole.

I was wounded on August 18. I was an NCO by now and in charge of a 3inch mortar platoon. My men were part of a special formation of infantry and support units charged with taking a hill on the approach to Chambois, the village where the Poles closed the Falaise Gap, stopping the German armies caught within a pocket from escaping.

Anyway, my mortars were in a nearby wood and I was giving the order to fire and dropping my arm at the same time. I had just done this, when I heard ‘Paf! Paf!’ The first sniper’s bullet pierced my helmet and scratched my head. The second shot went into and then out of my arm. I was taken to a field hospital where Canadians, Poles and Germans were all being treated. From here I was sent back to the UK where I recovered, although I remained unable to return to frontline duty.

STR: What became of you from then on?

ZK: On 1 November, 1944, I received my commission and became a 2nd Lieutenant. I was asked to become an instructor, but decided to focus on my education. My war was over, so I went to OxfordUniversity to study law and then on to London, where I studied economics.

My mother and sisters were eventually allowed to come and visit my father and I. In 1966 my father returned to Poland permanently, but couldn’t adjust to life under the communists. He died shortly afterwards.

As for me, I married and settled in Britain, where I took citizenship. Years later I was awarded the Croix de Guerre from the Republic of France and I spend both the annual sum from this award and my French war pension on presents for my grand children.