大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Elizabeth Perez of Stockport Libraries on behalf of a gentleman who wishes to remind anonymous and has been added to the site with his permission. He fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

This story told me by my now dead mother is perhaps a love story as well as a tale of resilience.

"Stan, as I knew him, was born in a small Polish village, the second son to the Mayor and his wife the postmistress. The village was small, uninteresting and of no strategic importance. Like many young men, the two brothers joined the Polish Army at the outbreak of the war with Germany and they were separated and sent off for training. How much training they actually received I do not know, but the shattering defeat of the old-fashioned forces sent the boys back home to their village.

Unfortunately the elder brother arrived home first and was arrested by the German soldiers who had entered the village. The first Stan knew was when he was grabbed by a local farmer and bundled into a hayrick with a hurried warning to be quiet. Later, when it was dark, the farmer returned with the bitter news that Stan's brother had been shot as a spy because he was in his civilian clothes, and his mother and father had also been killed in their capacity of community leaders as a warning to others in the locality not to help or shelter returning soldiers; they were to be handed over to the German commander to decide if they would go to working camps in Germany or executed. As far as Stan could see, the choice was a swift death by firing squad or a slow death as a slave and he wanted neither.

Stan made his escape from Poland over the next few weeks, he hid out by day and moved only after dark and as far away from habitation as he could. He travelled across much of Poland hidden in a pig train sharing their swill and water, and hoping the train would take him far from the German forces, but this was not to be, the train was on route to Germany itself. Stan thought his troubles would be over once he reached the River Rhine and crossed over out of Germany, but he was wrong, in fact he needed to swim the Rhine three times at different points before he managed to get ahead of the massive forces strung out along its banks. At some point after his final crossing, Stan met up with a few other soldiers and, because he spoke French as well as German, Russian and Polish, made himself understood to their leader. He joined them as they fled towards a small point on the coast of France, a place called Dunkirk. Here he was one of the lucky ones to be picked up off the beaches and carried across the Channel to Britain.

When they landed, a woman in black stockings and a Salvation Army bonnet thrust a mug of scalding hot tea and a thick slice of bread and jam, no butter or marg, into his hands, whilst another draped a blanket over his wet cold shoulders. When all the paperwork had been finalised, Stan was sent to join up with the Free Polish Army and signed up to train as a parachutist and commando ready to be dropped back on the mainland of Europe.

His training took place in the Scottish lowlands and it was on his way to embarkation ready for the Arnheim landings that he had his road accident. He was riding pillion on a friend's motorbike on their way to report in when the bike went out of control in the dark countryside around Edinburgh. They were rushed to the main hospital in the area that usually dealt with the bomb victims from the Rosith dockyards, and it was here that Stan met the nurse he was later to marry, Betty. For several weeks Stan hovered at death's door. His smart Sam Brown belt buckle had been pushed right into his stomach and he had to lie on a hospital bed with sterile water being continually flushed through the open wound. Betty was now a theatre nurse at the hospital even though her training had been as a district midwife. She had volunteered after her brother was killed on H.M.S. Hood, and she was often taking x-rays unprotected by the lead aprons and lead lined rooms of the modern hospital, in the corridors when there had been a raid on the docks.

By the time he was fully recovered, the war in Europe was all but over and his remaining service was spent as a translator and interviewer because he spoke so many languages. Stan always said that he owed everything to the British people, and he never returned to his home country, there was nothing there for him except bitter memories. Unfortunately both Betty and Stan are now dead, Betty died in 1979 from cancer perhaps induced by her wartime activities at the hospital, and Stan died in the early 1980s after a long illness. His abilities as a commando meant that I was never locked out of my house next door even if I forgot my keys."

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