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| Why did Stalin let the Polish Army leave the USSR? | |
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Aleks replies At the time when Stalin let us go, the Soviets were still being hard pressed by the Germans at Stalingrad and elsewhere. He sorely needed the supplies coming in from Britain and the USA. Stalin also kept asking the Allies to open a second front against Hitler in the West in order to reduce the number of German units fighting in the Soviet Union. Perhaps he felt it was necessary to curry favour with his allies by allowing us to join the British Army then being pushed back in North Africa, which threatened the movement of supplies through the Suez Canal. And, as I mention in Without Vodka, Stalin may have worried that having well clad and fed foreign troops around had the potential for undermining his propaganda and his control of the outlying Soviet states. With a large foreign army stationed there, he might have feared revolt, or at least guerilla action, in some of those territories. But I must emphasize the role of the Polish Government-in-Exile in London, under the leadership of Sikorski, and the part played by General Anders, who had served in the Tsar's army in WWI and understood the Russian temperament. Those two statesmen had a face to face meeting with Stalin, making it clear to him that the Polish 2nd Corps would refuse to serve under Soviet command. For further information, I suggest Anders's readable memoirs. They were published in the US under the title An Army in Exile: The Story of the Second Polish Corps. This includes the period when he commanded Polish forces attached to the British Eighth Army. | |
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| Russian Sayings | |
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Thoroughly enjoyed your book. Insightful, educational and an easy read. Liked the title and wondered if you recall any other "sayings" from that time? ---- C. May, USA Aleks replies
And here is a series of toasts often used when drinking:
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| Finns vs. Soviets | |
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I just finished reading your book, it was quite an adventure. I am looking forward to the sequel..... The book would be interesting to anybody but it has perhaps just a little bit more meaning to our family than others being that we're Finns. Both of my grandfathers fought against the Russians in World War II. On my father's side our land was part of Karelia ceded to the Soviets. Consequently it was very tough to make a living in post-war Finland and the family ended up moving to the United States where some relatives sponsored the family.... We have read other books about Finnish families that had emigrated to the US and Canada early in the century. When things were bad here in the 1930's, many decided to move to the "worker's paradise" and help build the "great society." They were located to Karelia, parts of Finland that Russia had occupied for a long time. Most were never heard from again. A few that had managed to escape had written books about their experiences. The Soviet mindset that you described is very consistent with what they had also described. Our family of course knew the goings on of the war from the Finnish point of view but I'd often been curious as to what the Russian vantage point had been of that war. It's not so surprising that they chose to repress those memories and send their veterans to labor camps. ---Heikki L Aleks replies Thank you for writing me about Without Vodka and sharing with me some of your family's experiences with the Soviets. I've been pleased to hear from many people like you who know first or second hand about what conditions were like in the Soviet Union during the war. Some readers who'd lived through it told me their experiences under the Soviets were much like mine. They gave the book to their children because they wanted them to understand what it was really like.... It's good to hear about families like yours who have worked hard and prospered in North America and made use of their opportunities to get ahead in the world.. Good luck in attaining your goal of becoming an airline pilot. |
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| Pre-war Polish cadet uniforms | |
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I have a hobby interest in various aspects of Polish military history and I discovered your book Without Vodka yesterday. I was very interested to see the photograph inside where you are standing in parade in the high school cadets corps. May I ask some questions about the high school cadets ? For example:
B. Redknap, Reading, England Aleks replies There were five cadet schools in Poland with a long military tradition. They were established by the last king of Poland, Stanislawski August Poniatowski, in 1774 and known as the schools of knights (Szkola Rycerska) . These schools were for young men who had decided, at an early age, to make a career in the army. Although they studied the same program as other high schools, they emphasized civic duty, discipline and physical fitness. Sons of professional soldiers–mainly officers but occasionally the sons of NCOs-- had a better chance of being accepted into these cadet schools (skola kadecka) known collectively as the "Korpus Kadetow". They all had the same distinctive uniforms, and caps bearing a rising sun emblem. Three of the schools that I know of were in Warsaw, Rawicz, and Krakow. Those of us who did not attend these schools looked on their grads as conceited and yet not as well educated as we were. The cadet schools also taught the students good manners and social etiquette. A year or two before the war, a few schools were founded for training future NCOs for technical corps such as artillery and sappers, but I know little about those schools. In the top two years of Polish high school (ie liceum, where boys were usually 16 to 18 years old), the military training program was compulsory for boys, except those excused for medical reasons. This training was two or three hours a week, usually on Saturday morning. We were trained in military theory and practice, such as shooting (usually 22's). There were no distinct uniforms. We wore our standard high school uniform – dark blue trousers and blazer, with red piping down the side of the long pants and on the upper edge of the sleeve’s cuff. (Uniforms of students in the lower grades of high school, ie gimnazium, had pale blue piping.). All students wore navy blue peaked caps with a band plus piping of blue or red around the crown. Fashion dictated that the cap look well worn and faded with a broken peak. Only students in the cadet schools had distinctive hats. We were required to wear our school uniform not only to classes but whenever we went out on the town so that we could be spotted and reported if we smoked in public or went into a bar or a forbidden movie, etc.. In warmer weather, students wore linen blouses (bluzka) that buttoned up the front, with blue denim plus-fours. For field exercises our PW (Przysposobienie Wojskowe, ie Military Preparedness) group wore loose fitting khaki cotton uniforms-- long pants with a button-up jacket and our usual school cap.. Summer training camps, for one month following the first year of the liceum, were held at special military camps, often far from the student’s home. There the work and training was hard, with physically demanding things such as long marches and digging trenches. It was also closer to army training because the students shot army rifles and threw live hand grenades. The war started before I finished my first year of liceum and so I never went to such a camp. However we had occasional "concentration exercises" (koncentracja) of one or two days, often on a weekend and sometimes with students from other schools. During these exercises we marched, drilled and learned such things as firing small infantry mortars and anti-tank guns, modified so that the gun actually shot a 22 calibre bullet although the firing mechanisms and trajectory distance, etc. remained the same. This saved money as well as our ears and possible damage from bad aiming. The picture on the front of the international edition of Without Vodka was taken during one of the koncentracja weekends. We are wearing regular army uniforms that had been issued to us from the Mob (ie mobilization) army stores along with rifles. We returned all this army issue when we left to return home. It was early Spring and still cold, and so we were also issued greatcoats. Being much shorter than most boys of liceum age (I had just turned 16), my great coat was far too long for me. I pinned up the bottom with safety pins so that it wouldn’t trail on the ground. ___________________________________________________________________ Dear Mr. Topolski, Many thanks indeed for the interesting information about cadets and school uniforms. I have a few more questions: -did your school uniform carry any form of rank insignia stripes on them ? I have seen some pictures in books where there are 1, 2, or 3 short horizontal bars on a pupil's shoulder strap. I have attached a small example as a picture (the detail is not very clear I'm afraid). And possibly I have seen some short bars on a pupils hat, at the front. What was the purpose of these bars or stripes on the shoulder strap ? - Enclosed is another picture showing a Polish school pupil's hat which dates from around 1914 -- do you recognise the style at all ?? I suppose it is similar to an Austro-Hungarian style, but I am wondering if it was a typical school uniform. - I have read that there was compulsory military service for boys who had finished school at 18, but that in 1938 the rule was relaxed and it was no longer compulsory. Can you remember why this compulsory military service was suspended in 1938? Aleks replies Our school uniforms did not carry any rank insignia stripes. The only marker on our uniforms was the number of the high school on the shield on the sleeve of the jacket worn in winter and on the blouse worn in summer. I don’t recall ever seeing students with bars on a shoulder strap until I was a student at officers school in Uzbekistan during the war. After Poland was re-established in 1919, there were many changes in the army uniform. For example the NCO ranks in the new Polish army were shown by bars on the shoulder straps and not by chevrons on the sleeve as in most other armies. I think the rationale behind this was to lessen the emphasis on the difference between the NCO’s and officers. As you realize, Poland did not exist as a country until 1919 and so any student hat from about 1914 would have been based on the traditions of one of the three occupying powers: Germany, Russia or Austria. That was before I was born in 1923. Some schools in the new united Poland kept the same uniform they had worn in their region for years. In the Austrian-Hungarian Empire students had their rank designated by the stripe(s) on their collar. My father grew up in Galicia, an Austrian-Hungarian province which became the southeast part of Poland after 1919. I have a picture of him as a high school student with four stripes on his school uniform collar. The colour of the stripes (silver or gold) and the number of them indicated what grade the student was in at high school (Gimnasium). At the time the picture was taken my father, Aleksander Mikolaj Ogonczyk Topolski, was 18 years old and in the final year of high school (known as Grade 8). After a student completed his matriculation, ie university entrance (usually at age 18 or 19), he was normally called up to do his military service in the army for two years, three years in some more specialized services such as the air force. The minimum was two years. Full-time university students were allowed to defer their military service until they completed their studies (or dropped out). High school graduates would be considered eligible to become officers. Non high school students were all drafted into the army at the age of 21 for two or more years. If you want further information about such matters, I suggest you go to the Sikorski Institute on Princes Gate in Kensington, Central London. | |