Excerpt from A Question of Honor
Prologue
They marched, twelve abreast and in perfect step, through the heart of bomb-pocked London. American troops, who were in a place of honor at the head of the nine-mile parade, were
followed -- in a kaleidoscope of uniforms, flags, and martial music -- by Czechs and
Norwegians, Chinese and Dutch, French and Iranians, Belgians and Australians, Canadians and South Africans. There were Sikhs in turbans, high-stepping Greek
evzoni in pom-pommed shoes and white pleated skirts, Arabs in fezzes and
kaffiyehs, grenadiers from Luxembourg, gunners from Brazil. And at the
end of the parade, in a crowd-pleasing, Union Jack-waving climax, came at least
10,000 men and women from the armed forces and civilian services of His
Britannic Majesty, King George VI.
Nearly a year earlier, the most terrible war in the history of the world -- six years of fire, devastation, and unimaginable
death -- had finally ended. At the time there had been wild, spontaneous celebrations in cities all over the globe. But on this grey and
damp June day in 1946, Great Britain's invited guests, representing more than thirty
victorious Allied nations, joined in formal commemoration of their collective victory and of those, living and dead, who had contributed to it. As church bells pealed and bagpipes skirted, veterans of
Tobruk, the Battle of Britain, Guadalcanal, Midway, Normandy, the Ardennes, Monte
Cassino, Arnhem, and scores of less famous fights were cheered and applauded by more than 2 million onlookers, many waving flags and tooting toy trumpets. The marchers snapped off salutes as they passed the reviewing platform on the Mall, where the king, his queen, and
their two daughters stood. Prime Minister Clement Attlee was alongside the royal family, but the attention of many was focused on Attlee's
predecessor, Winston Churchill, who had led and inspired Britain through the
final five years of the war.
As the Victory Parade's last contingents marched by, a thunderous roar was heard overhead. The crowds stared up at the leaden sky,
transfixed, as a massive armada of aircraft -- bombers, fighters, flying boats,
transports -- approached from the east at nearly rooftop level. Leading the fly-past was a single, camouflaged
fighter -- a Hawker Hurricane, looking small and insignificant compared to the lumbering giants that flew in its wake. The Hurricane's pride of place, however, was
unchallenged. If it had not been for this sturdy little single-seater and its more celebrated cousin, the Spitfire, the Victory Parade and the
triumph it celebrated might never have occurred. In the summer and fall Of 1940, RAF pilots had flown Hurricanes and Spitfires against Adolf Hitler's Luftwaffe
and had won the Battle of Britain. In so doing, they changed the course of the
war and the very nature of history.
Standing along the parade route that day was a tall, slender, fair- haired man with the difficult name of Witold
Urbanowicz. As he watched the Hurricane flash by overhead, a flood of memories returned to him. He had been up there in a Hurricane during the Battle of Britain. He had gazed down on this city when it was blazing with fire. His squadron had become a legend of the battle. On the first day of the London
Blitz -- Hitler's attempt to bomb the British civilian population into
submission -- Urbanowicz's squadron was credited with shooting down no fewer
than fourteen German aircraft, a Royal Air Force record.
Setting records had already become a habit for 303 Squadron -- or the "Kościuszko Squadron," as it was also known. In its first seven days of combat, the squadron destroyed nearly forty enemy planes. By the Battle of Britain's end, it was credited with downing more German
air craft than any other squadron attached to the RAF. Nine of its pilots, including
Urbanowicz, were formally designated as aces. Writing in Collier's three years after the battle, an American fighter pilot described 303 as "the best sky fighters I saw anywhere."
Yet, despite its accomplishments in the war, none Of 303's Pilots took part in the fly-past. None marched in the parade. For they were all
Polish -- and Poles who had fought under British command were deliberately and specifically barred from the celebration by the British
government, for fear of offending Joseph Stalin. A week earlier, ten members of Parliament had written a letter of protest against the exclusion.
"Ethiopians will be there," the letter declared. "Mexicans will be there. The Fiji Medical Corps, the Labuan
Police and the Seychelles Pioneer Corps will [march] -- and rightly, too. But
the Poles will not be there. Have we lost not only our sense of perspective, but
our sense of gratitude as well?"
On a June day six years earlier, Winston
Churchill had risen in the House of Commons to declare: 'The battle of France is
over. I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin." From the first,
the new prime minister, who had been in office barely a month, made clear that
Britain would not follow France into ignominy: there would be no British
capitulation to Germany. "We shall fight on the beaches," Churchill famously
said. "We shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and
in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender."
The courage and character that Churchill pledged for Britain had already been demonstrated by Poland. It was the first country to
experience the terror of the Nazi Blitzkrieg, the first to fight back, the first to
say -- and mean -- "We shall never surrender." Poland fell in
October 1939, but its government and military refused then, and refused for the
rest of the war, to capitulate. In a remarkable odyssey, scores of thou sands of
Polish pilots, soldiers, and sailors escaped Poland -- some on foot; some in
cars, trucks, and buses; some in airplanes; some in ships and submarines. They
made their various ways first to France, thence to Britain to continue the
fight. For the first full year of the war, Poland, whose government-in-exile
operated from London, was Britain's most important declared ally.
When dozens of Polish fighter pilots, including 303 Squadron, took to the air during the Battle of Britain, the RAF already had lost
hundreds of its own fliers, replaced in many cases by neophytes who barely knew
how to fly, much less fight. The contribution of the combat- hardened Poles,
especially the men Of 303, was vital. Indeed, many believe it was decisive. "If
Poland had not stood with us in those days. . . the candle of freedom might have
been snuffed out," Queen Elizabeth remarked in 1996.
In all, some 17,000 Polish airmen fought
alongside the RAF during the war. But the pilots and air crews were not the only
Poles to play an important part in the conflict. The small Polish navy
participated in several important operations. Polish infantry and airborne units
ought in Norway, North Africa, Italy, France, Belgium, and Germany. By the war's
end, Poland was the fourth largest contributor to the Allied effort in Europe,
after the Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain and its Commonwealth. "If
it had been given to me to choose the soldiers I would like to command," said
Field Marshal Harold Alexander, commander of the Allied forces in North Africa
and Italy, "I would have chosen the Poles."
Perhaps as significant as its role in combat
was Poland's contribution to the Allies' greatest intelligence coup --
deciphering the German military codes generated by the Enigma machine. Only
Churchill and a handful of other British officials knew at the time of the
Victory Parade that Polish cryptographers had provided the initial breakthrough
for cracking Enigma -- with incalculable importance to the outcome of the war.
And what did the Poles want in return? "We wanted Poland back," said Witold
Urbanowicz. Throughout the war, Winston Churchill, moved by the Poles' valor, grateful for their help, and horrified by the
Nazis' unprecedented savagery in their homeland, promised they would get it. "We shall conquer together or we shall die together," Churchill vowed to the Polish prime minister, General
Wladyslaw Sikorski, after the fall of France. Meeting Polish troops as they
arrived in England in June 1940, British war secretary Anthony Eden declared:
"We shall not abandon your sacred cause and shall continue this war until your
beloved country be returned to her faithful sons."
Yet, as the great long line of marchers proceeded down the Mall on that June morning in
1946, and as the crowds cheered and basked in the postwar world's rebirth of freedom, proud Poland remained in the shadows. Despite Eden's pledge, its "sacred cause" had been abandoned by its two closest allies, Britain and the United States. One occupier, Hitler, had been replaced by
another Joseph Stalin. And on that gala day, Polish war heroes like Urbanowicz and his follow 303
pilots -- once called "the Glamor Boys of England" -- were forced to stand on London sidewalks and watch.
One young Polish pilot looked on in silence while the parade passed. Then he turned to walk away. An old woman standing next to him looked at him quizzically. "Why are you crying, young man?" she asked.
Copyright © 2003 Lynne Olson
and Stanley Cloud
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