Copied from a plaque at the Polish Garden of Remembrance, Northolt London.
(source unknown)
“Poland fell after being invaded on 11 September 1939 by Germany and by Soviet Russia on 17 September, despite this the Polish Government and Army were re-established in France and later Britain.
The Polish Army fought on in the Norwegian campaigned, the Battle of France, North Africa (Tobruk), Italy, France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany.
The Soviets deported approximately 1,500,000 Polish civilians and military personnel to various parts of the Soviet empire. Thousands perished including approximately 22,000 prisoners of war who were murdered on Stalin’s orders at Katyn and elsewhere.
Some of the Polish soldiers murdered in Katyn Forrest
The Polish 2nd Corps, led by General Anders, created mainly from Polish citizens released by Soviet Russia in 1942, took part in the Italian campaign. Monte Cassino blocked the road to Rome; three allied assaults had failed to capture it. In May 1944 the Polish 2nd Corps succeeded but the cost was high 1,000 killed and nearly 3,000 wounded or missing.
The First Armoured Division under General Maczek took part in the Normandy campaign of 1944. Captured Hill 262 Mont Ormel, ‘the Mace’, it closed the Falaise Pocket, holding the hill for three days, suffering almost 30 percent casualties and 325 dead, it helped block the withdrawal of 100,000 German troops.
1st Independent Parachute Brigade
The 1st Independent Parachute Brigade was formed to support an uprising against Germany in Poland but were sent into operation at Arnhem as part of Operation Market Garden where during gallant fighting they suffered heavy losses.
Members of AK
The Home Army or Armia Krajowa (AK) was the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. The AK with its strength of around 400,000 soldiers played a vital role in sabotage and intelligence-gathering, even smuggling parts of a V2 rocket from Poland to Britain.
The Warsaw uprising in 1944 was intended to last a short time but with the Red Army, on Stalin’s orders, halted its advance on the of the Vistula, it lasted 63 days. During this time the Germans massacred civilians and systematically destroyed Warsaw. Some 200,000 civilians and 25,000 AK soldiers were killed.
The Polish Armed Force as a whole are considered to have been the fourth largest allied army in Europe after the Soviet Union, United States and United Kingdom.
After visiting the Polish War Memorial in London, I saw the following on a plaque near the memorial and after taking a photograph found the text was too small to read online so decided to copy the content and post it on this site along with appropriate photographs.
“On 1 September 1939 Poland was invaded by Germany and on 17 September by Soviet Russia. Polish aircraft were outclassed by the latest German designs, but the Luftwaffe still lost 285 aircraft, 126 credited to air-to-air combat.
With the defeat of Poland inevitable, most members of the Polish Air Force evacuated through Romania to France where they flew with the French Air Force and were credited with a further 60 Luftwaffe aircraft.By June 1940 some 8,000 members of the Polish Air Force re-formed in Great Britain. The initial RAF scepticism changed to admiration for the skills of pilots and ground crews alike. Polish airmen fought in Fighter Command throughout the Battle of Britain. 145 Polish pilots, some five per cent of Fighter command’s strength claimed 203 German aircraft destroyed for the loss of 30 killed. This represents 12 per cent of the total allied victories, or 1.4 enemy aircraft for every pole engaged. At the same time the two Polish Squadrons suffered losses 70 per centless than most RAF units.”
303 Squadron (Polish)
“On 15 September, celebrated in the United Kingdom as ‘Battle of Britain Day’, one in five of the pilots in action was Polish. At the end of the 16-week campaign the top scoring Fighter Command Unit {Squadron} was 303 Polish Squadron which in only six weeks was credited with 126 enemy aircraft. Arguably the most successful individual pilot- with 17 victories- was Sergeant Josef Frantis, a Czech member of 303 squadron”.
303 Squadron (Polish) IWM
“Eventually, the Polish Air Force amounted to 18,000 personnel, formed 14 squadrons plus two additional special flights attached to British units {RAF squadrons} and supported by Polish training schools, engineers and administrators. Individual Polish pilots also flew with the RAF and USAAF squadrons. “
Polish War Memorial (Alan Malcher)
“At the end of the war Poland was handed over by the allies to the control of the same Soviet Union which had invaded her in 1939. Polish Armed Forces were excluded from the 1946 Victory Parade. The Polish Government in Exile established during the war years remained in Great Britain until Poland regained sovereignty in 1990.” (Source Polish War Memorial, Northolt, London)
At the rear of the memorial and close to the remembrance garden will be found the names of 1,936 Polish airmen killed during air combat over England and other countries.
Exercise Tiger was intended to prepare American soldiers and seamen for the invasion of Normandy.
On the night of 27 April 1944 Slapton Sands on the coast of Devon was selected for American troops to practice their landing at Utah beach because the area resembled the French coast. It was around 2 in the morning when their convoy which included landing crafts full of American soldiers were heading towards the beach when they were suddenly attacked by German E Boats which were on a routine patrol.
By the time the fast-moving E boats had left the area and the Royal Navy arrived 639 (some reports state 749) American soldiers and seamen had been killed. A subsequent investigation discovered many who abandoned their ships and landing crafts died from hyperthermia, others died in the flames of burning oil on the surface of the sea and many soldiers wearing heavy equipment drowned because they had not been taught how to use their life preservers.
To ensure D-day remained secret those who survived were ordered not to speak of the attack, all leave was cancelled to ensure news did not leak out and these soldiers later took part in the seaborne invasion.
The Slapton Sands Memorial
The fall details of the loss of American servicemen only came to the attention of the wider public in 1984 and there is now a memorial to those who were lost at Slapton Sands.
No.161 Special Duties Squadron RAF was responsible for supporting SOE and other agents working in occupied France and pilots flew alone in a slow, single engine Lysander aircraft which was unarmed and had an extra fuel tank bolted between the undercarriage to allow them to fly deeper into France and return to England. Pilots used moonlight to identify land marks whilst also watching out for night fighters and ground defences and had to find remote farmland to pick up or deliver agents.
When Hugh Verity was asked why he decided to make one pickup in pitch darkness and no moon he replied, “I wanted to see how frightening it was and that’s why I never did it again”. The truth is, he volunteered to take the mission after being told an SOE agent was attempting to escape the Gestapo and if he was not extracted he would very likely be captured, tortured then executed. Verity was the OC of ‘A’ Flight? and because it was not known whether it was possible to complete this sortie without moonlight and it was widely acknowledged it could be a one-way trip, due to the additional and unknown dangers Verity would not contemplate ordering one of his pilots to fly the sortie and decided to do it himself. After over eight-hours of fear and uncertainty Hugh Verity successfully rescued the agent.
No. 138 Special Duties Squadron supported SOE, MI6, MI9, the Free French and resistance movements throughout occupied Europe. Apart from dropping agents by parachute most of the weapons, sabotage stores and money to finance resistance arrived by parachute during moon periods and 138 Squadron was base at RAF Tempsford near Sandy Bedfordshire.
Flying Officer Reginald Lewis Halifax Observer/bomb-aimer
My trips from Tempsford involved going down to the south of France, a couple of trips to Norway and one in Germany itself. That one always surprises me, because we had an agent dressed up in a German uniform.
The squadron was operating as far as Poland and that was quite a long flight in wartime conditions, from the UK up to somewhere like Warsaw was something like fifteen hours. Apart from the danger of the flight itself it was almost at the complete endurance of a Halifax. They just couldn’t hold any more octane. And a couple of crews were lost, particularly over the Baltic, to night fighter attacks.
Squadron Leader Frank Griffiths Halifax Pilot
Polish crews joined us… and they were marvellously aggressive… The British would come back the proper way as briefed, but you’d be very surprised to come back and find that the Poles were about an hour ahead of you, because they’d come back through the middle of Germany, and they never had a bullet left. Having got rid of the packages to be dropped or the men, they would go on a shoot-up in Germany. And, of course, in many places the aircraft got hit and then we had to repair them…. You couldn’t help but admire them… They were wonderful chaps. There was no turning back with the Poles.
Wing Commander Ken Batchelor Halifax Pilot
People were attacked, intercepted, here and there. I did a dog-leg to avoid the German airfield near Caen and of course flew right over the bloody airfield and we were at nought feet. It was very interesting over the housetops with tracer bullets horizontal over and under your wings.
Pilot Officer John Charrot Halifax observer/bomb aimer
In France they had these trains which were usually carrying troops… but you couldn’t tell that on the back they had a gun, a flak gun, and this night we didn’t pick it up and they started firing. But Terry, from the rear turret was so quick that he knocked it out before much damage had been done until we heard the dispatcher screaming over the intercom, ‘All the joe’s {agents} are hit and the aircraft is riddled with holes.’
During the same interview Frank Griffiths who was the pilot added:
As a matter of fact, the expression he used was, ‘It looks like a butcher’s shop in the back.’ None of the RAF crew were hurt, fortunately, but we turned around and came back…. After we landed the petrol was still pouring out of the aircraft and the medical officer on the station sent the casualties off to hospital. Then a medical orderly who’d been told to clean up all the syringes and things we’d used in our first aid kit, found the ear of a man… and the ear was packed in ice, rushed down to the hospital and sewn on and it was quite ok, he got his ear back. I don’t know what his hearing was like, but it was quite a gory job.
Squadron Leader Frank Griffiths Halifax Pilot
I was to drop this load off just north of Annecy, about halfway between Annecy and the Swiss town of Geneva. Most of the equipment, military equipment, was for the Plateau des Gliéres, this very high plateau, which was an excellent place for the Maquis {French Resistance} to hide out… On the third trip one engine failed. At first it sounded like fuel starvation. I wasn’t over worried. Slapped it into coarse pitch, which means less drag, and the flight engineer started to try and sort things out… we seemed to be doing quite well on three {engines} and even climbed a bit. Then {we} turned around and came back…. There’s nothing worse than having a four-engined bomber that won’t climb in the bottom of an Alpine valley in the middle of the night, even if it is a full moon.
The next thing that happened was the other engine on that wing went. That’s no.2 engine… I sent the crew to crash stations and then we hit the first house. In fact, the last thing the dispatcher said to me over the intercom was, ‘All Ok, skipper. Crews to crash stations.’ That was actually the last spoken message. Before that, this chap McKenzie, the co-pilot, who’d merely come for the trip because he was so keen, had wrestled with the escape hatch over my head and got that off. Then the aircraft broke up and I got shot through this hatch and partly through the window screen with my seat attached and about a good hundredweight of thick steel armour plating behind.
I ended up in telephone wires between two poles. Meanwhile the aircraft had crashed, and the crew were killed, though I believe Maden, the dispatcher did get as far as the hospital in Annecy and then died. It’s hard for me to say exactly what went on. There was a tremendous fire…
As with all countries under German occupation, in France the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) and the Gestapo employed huge resources to track down wireless operators. Apart from resistance movements being unable to function without arms, explosives and other support which could only be obtained through wireless links to London, Hugo Bleicher who was a senior non-commissioned officer with the Abwehr and responsible for crushing resistance in France, said they regarded wireless operators as a rich source of intelligence because they had knowledge of every message and orders received from London.
Hugo Bleicher
The headquarters of the French Section in London were aware of the dangers facing their agents and those volunteering for wireless training were told their chances of survival, with a bit of luck, was six-weeks and if captured they would very likely be tortured by the Gestapo for their personal codes which could be used by a German operator to ‘play-back’ their wireless to London. Only later did the section become aware ‘play-back’ had been used by the Germans with great success in the Netherlands and many agents along with members of the resistance had been killed or transported to concentration camps where they were later executed. (information about the Dutch section will found at the link provided)
Jacqueline Nearne, former courier with SOE French seen in the public information film ‘School for Danger: Now the truth can be told’ which was produced after the war.
Agents volunteering for wireless duties were sent on a technically challenging course at the Wireless and Security School and the two main establishments were located at Fawley Court in Henley-on-Thames and Thames House in Oxfordshire. Apart from learning to send and receive Morse Code at a sufficient speed they needed to understand radio wave propagation, the use of cyphers and learn how to repair their wireless in the field. They also needed to prove their competence in the use of various security measures intended to make it difficult for German direction finders pin-pointing the safe houses they were using whilst in contact with London.
A recent photograph of Fawley Court
When wireless trained agents arrived in France their first task was to find several suitable locations from which to use their transmitter to pass messages to London as quickly as possible whilst ensuring they never stayed on the air for over twenty-minutes, but for a variety of reasons some operators broke the twenty-minute rule and did not survive the war.
It was not long before the Germans introduced radio jammers which apart from making it difficult to send and receive messages they were also intended to force operators to remain longer on the air to pass messages.
Information about the Wireless War against SOE D Section (Dutch)
In 1940 after SOE decided they needed a clandestine naval section to support their agents in France they quickly became aware finding officers and men with the essential seamanship skills and experience would be difficult. They needed men who could quietly navigate rocks and sandbanks close to enemy shores in pitch-darkness and without the aid of moonlight.
Through their network of discreet contacts SOE was given the name of Gerry Holdsworth and discovered he had all the qualifications they were looking for in a commander: whilst working for D Section SIS (MI6) he used a small yacht to reconnoiter the Norwegian coast and whilst operating at night and close to the shore he frequently navigated the various hazards.
After being approached by SOE to command their naval section he accepted the appointment and he along with his wife who had also served with D Section established the flotilla on the Helford Estuary at Port Navas in Cornwall.
Those he recruited included Fishermen with extensive experience of the enemy coast and former smugglers which one officer described as the buccaneer type who if they overheard we needed something they would go out and pinch and it would suddenly appear on the quay. Apart from transporting agents to and from Brittany they also delivered weapons and sabotage stores and rendezvoused with French fishing trawlers and loaded them with Tuna packed with explosives, detonators and timing devices.
The Mutin
One new recruit who previously served as a quartermaster with the Royal Navy later recalled, “On my arrival at the quay I saw heaps of sails on the deck covered in blood. Shipwrights were digging out shrapnel from bow to stern and I thought to myself God what have I let myself in for! … I was later told, after dropping off an agent the Mutin {name of vessel} was spotted by a German aircraft and raked by cannon fire during which the engineer was killed…”
This 16th century manor house located near the Hogs Back in Guilford, Surrey is now private property which has been divided into several expensive apartments. Located in the small village of Wanborough from which it took its name, before being converted after the war Wanborough Manor was one large property in several acres of its own private grounds with a medieval barn and a small chapel.
In 1940 this large, isolated property along with its grounds were commandeered for war service and become the preliminary training school for the French Section of the Special Operations Executive and was officially referred to as STS 5, Ironically the manor is not far from a village called Normandy, and the first ‘students’ arrived in February 1941.
Apart from fitness training and being taught basic military skills Wanborough was used to weed-out those considered unsuitable to become agents, students the training staff believed would be unable to pass the advance training in Scotland or the finishing school at Beaulieu in the New Forrest. Wanborough was used until March 1943 when the Students Assessment Board (SAB) was established at Winterfold House near Cranleigh in Surrey.
Harry Peulevé undertook three missions to France and eventually formed a clandestine circuit called Author where he armed and trained more than 4000 members of the resistance. He was aware of being on the Gestapo wanted list but turned down an opportunity to be extracted from France by the RAF Special Duties Squadron. Peulevé and several members of the local resistance were later arrested at a safehouse and eventually taken to the Gestapo headquarters in Paris where they were separated before being interrogated.
Peulevé was tortured for several days but refused to answer their questions and was transferred to a solitary confinement cell at Fresnes Prison. During an escape attempt he was shot in the leg and after being refused medical treatment was forced to remove the bullet by digging it out with a dirty prison spoon whilst hoping the wound would not become infected. He was later deported to a concentration camp and after eleven agents were executed and knowing he could be next he swapped his identity with a French prisoner named Marcel Seigneur who had died from Typhus. In early 1945 Peulevé, now known to the SS guards as Marcel Seigneur, was transferred to a labour detail where he was forced to dig anti-tank ditches near the River Elbe and after advancing American forces reached Magdenburg he managed to escape.
Several hours later he was stopped by two SS soldiers but managed to convince them he was a French collaborator trying to avoid the advancing Americans and then warned them to remove their tunics and insignias because the Americans were shooting members of the SS. As they began to undress Peulevé grabbed one of their pistols and later handed them over to soldiers of the 83rd US Infantry Division. After being debriefed he returned to England and landed at Croydon Airport on 18 April 1945.
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) Memorial in Valençay, France in the department of Indre was erected close to the area where the first SOE agent, George Bégue (aka George Noble) infiltrated France by parachute and made the first radio transmission to London and arranged the first weapons to be dropped by parachute to members of the French Resistance.
The role of honour lists the names of the 91 men and 13 women members of SOE who did not return from France and the monument symbolises the clandestine nature of SOE.
Dark columns evoke the clandestine side of night flights during moon periods when agents were sent to France, weapons and sabotage stores arrived by parachute to members of the resistance.
It’s clear column evokes the courage and the final victory of resistance.
Between the columns, a disk evokes the accomplice moon for the favourable full moon periods for clandestine air operations (parachute, landing and pickups
Three bright blocks evoke the markup L prepared on the ground by those receiving the agents to assist guiding the planes
The memorial was dedicated by the Minister of Veterans Affairs for France and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother on 6 May1991 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of F Section’s first agent to arrive in France. The monument is called the ‘Spirt of Partnership’.
Alan Malcher 