"For Your Freedom And Ours"

[leslie]

I have just completed reading “For Your Freedom and Ours: The Kościuszko Squadron – Forgotten Heroes of World War II” by Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud.
It has taken me quite a while to read it, not only because it contains a lot of text, but I was only able to read it for relatively short periods owing to the strong emotions it raised in me. Anyone who has read it, and everybody, particularly the British and the Americans, should read it, will realise why it raised such emotions.
The book deals in graphic, person and interesting ways the role of the Polish airmen in the Battle of Britain and their exceptional achievements, but it also continues through the rest of the war in a more general way and after the war until Poland once again became a glorious, free nation again, always including comments on the ‘Heroes’ whenever relevant The meetings and relationships between Britain, USA and USSR are detailed and discussed, and it was certainly these, and of course many other failure incidents that raised in me the strongest emotions. Of course, it is all history now and the Poles seem to have forgiven at least the British – thank goodness. I was just a boy growing up during the war and I was hardly aware of events as they happened – particularly as Poland was never, to my recollection, mentioned. Afterwards for a few years I was too involved in the development of my own career, but when I started to settle down the force of what had and was happening to Poland stirred my distant roots.
I could make many unforgiving comments, but, as I say, it is now history – but not forgotten!
Sorry, that’s all I can write.
Leslie

[piwo]

Sir Knight OTHCB,

When I first wrote of this book to you, I was unsure how you'd receive it, especially after we chatted off-line about your thread on the B.O.B. Yes, it stirs some emotions to say the least. That neither author was Polish removes the temptation to cry "homer" (a slang we use here for those who can ONLY root for the "home team), and after I saw a taped interview with them, well, I knew I had to read the book. Some parts were not so exciting, but these two, who who's mission was only to try and find an "untold" or "little known" story of the 2nd world war merely followed the story not having any idea where it would go, and no personal stake in it's conclusion. Yes, they editorialize from time to time, and in the end, after reading all the source material, formed a strong opine. As a lover of American history, I am quite accustomed to reading of successes and failures. Those of policy, character and national conscious abound both good and bad. Our complicity with Churchill to sell out Poland to appease the Russians is horrific, yet history books here still barely to touch it. Too painful I suppose, perhaps why growing up I, nor you ever heard about it. Well, I did, but only from family, not school! Like the enigma code breaking by the Poles, yet it took till 1985 till GB "fessed up" that it wasn't they, but the Poles. All those years accepting credit for what they knew they didn't deserve. Well, plenty of that in the U.S. history as well, and it sure doesn't feel good. I believe Poland has for the most part forgiven the US as well, I'm just now quite sure how!

With such strong showing in WWll (resistance, number of troops in the field from the allied perspective though fighting in the uniform of other countries), I've always wondered why growing up there were all the "Polak jokes". My theory on this developed as I began to understand the level that Poland was wronged and betrayed by the world during and after WWll. People ridicule what frightens them, or what they wish to discredit. My theory is that one could way to eliminate your own guilt or complicity, is to implicate or ridicule that what makes you feel so bad. The poor, the homeless, the minorities, the Police, the Indians (American)and everyone you want to knock down a notch to make yourself feel less guilty. And maybe that's why those who carry some Polish ancestry, whether one drop or 90% are so fiercely proud of it: because we've always known better, and that knowledge is like a glue!

[hussar]

I enjoyed that book thoroughly, it's also where I got my favorite Bible passage from. I love the part about the early beginnings of the Polish fighter pilots in Britain and how they were not well liked because they still did things their own way. It was also interesting how they don't soften up Churchill's and F.D.R.'s roles by saying they did all they could. They walked into the meetings without much knowledge while Stalin controlled everything.