A Special Duty (13 page)

Kopki Dwor, where Eddie was ‘turned in’

(Photo taken 2013)

At Brindisi, a brief report in the Squadron record book read: “W/O Storey did not return from Poland and nothing at all was heard of him after take-off.” In Ludlow, a knock at the door of the Unicorn Hotel in Corve Street with a telegram from the Air Ministry, told Rita that her husband of eight months was missing. In Sarzyna, the fifty hostages were released after the capture of Elkington-Smith and Congdon.

¹
Adred, Boyes, McCall, Fairweather, Bettles, Reynolds, Chalk, Blynn & Brown crews.

²
901 (KLACZ)

³
Mercator projection is the method by which the curved surface of the Earth has been drawn on a flat sheet of paper. The lines of latitude and longitude are all parallel so the navigator can draw a straight line to his destination and know the compass direction to continually take.

⁴
JP220 and JP224 newly built by the London Aircraft Production Group.

⁵
Feathering the propeller in the event of an engine shutdown minimizes drag.

⁶
See Appendix 1

⁷
Code name ‘Kret’.

⁸
The aircraft should not have shown navigation lights, but it is possible that the switch, which was on the cockpit roof, was accidentally flipped during the on-board emergency.

⁹
Words of Larry Toft, Halifax pilot.

¹⁰
The Junkers JU 88 was a twin-engine, multi-role aircraft used by the Luftwaffe throughout World War II

¹¹
Tom achieved a credit in German in 1936.

¹²
Codename ‘Klos’- Commander Nisko Circuit BCh - Bataliony Chlopskie (Peasant Battalion).

¹³
Codename ‘Wilk’ – Commander BCh.

¹⁴
This helmet was presented to the Storey family by Piotr Galdys, in April, 2013.

¹⁵
It is water.

¹⁶
Ukrayinska Povstanska Armiya (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), an enemy of the People’s Army of Poland.

¹⁷
Codename ‘Grzes’.

¹⁸
The silk map is still in the possession of the Wolcz family.

¹⁹
A single-engine short take-off and landing German Aircraft often used as a spotter plane.

²⁰
Armia Krakowa ( Polish Home Army).

²¹
German settlers living beyond the borders of The Reich.

A
ll RAF crew were briefed on, and knew, the official evasion procedure: to conceal lifesaving equipment and move away from the crash site using woods and ditches for cover; lie low for three days; live off escape rations, and then seek help from isolated farmhouses or individuals. Tom and Charlie had been handicapped by injury and loss of boots, which forced them to seek help quickly, but their actions were in line with advice. This adherence to correct procedure together with a lot of luck had successfully delivered them into partisan hands. I say ‘luck’ because Eddie and Hap had also followed evasion procedure, and yet they were now prisoners of war. Walter came down very close to a forced labour camp, which is probably why he heard whistles, but he walked away from immediate danger and eventually got the opportunity to ask for partisan help, as did Patrick and Jim, who stuck closely to advice and eventually sought help from an outlying farmstead. It had only been a couple of weeks since Brotherton-Ratcliffe had given a talk to the men about his own successful evasion in enemy territory, which would have been fresh in their minds. However no amount of advice can adequately prepare a man for the trauma of being in an aircraft one minute, and on the ground in an alien landscape the next. The mental and physical strain of those first days on the run was acute, and it showed. Unshaven and in shock, Tom limping badly, they were a pathetic sight in their wet, mud-spattered battledress, but their youth and good manners aroused compassion in the people they met. The villagers of Tarnogora could not have been prepared for seven Allied airmen dropping from the skies into their midst, but this was a BCh stronghold, with a number of active partisan soldiers among the men of the village and, being a small, close-knit community, the network was in place to handle such an emergency.

Left to Right: Patrick, Tom, Jim and Charlie after baling out

Correct procedure now for the men was to place themselves unreservedly under the orders of the partisan commander, in this case, Zenon Wolcz, known as ‘Wilk’, head of the Nisko District BCh. It was a remarkable achievement for this unit to have rescued and concealed the men in an area crawling with soldiers and dogs, but two attempts to get them to partisan controlled forests on the other side of the River San had failed, and the Germans were closing in. They were trapped in a triangle created by the flow of the San River into the Vistula, which limited their escape routes and gave advantage to the Germans, who could conduct their search in a contained area. The river presented a real barrier because all checkpoints across it had been reinforced as part of the search, and the dangerously fast current, generated by its course from the Carpathian Mountains, was a daunting natural obstacle. The stretch of river close to Krzeszow Bridge was too well guarded for another crossing attempt so, after liaising with an AK unit on the far side of the River San, Commander Wolcz arranged to take the airmen four miles downriver to a crossing point opposite Kamionka Dolna, where they would rendezvous with forty partisans from a specialist AK sabotage and diversion unit, who would help them to fight their way across if necessary.
i
The commander of this unit was Stanislaw Belzynski, a doctor of philosophy and university professor before the war, but now a partisan commander, totally committed to the resistance movement.

As darkness fell on the night of the 28
^th
April, the four men, escorted by a group of BCh partisans, left the dugout and made their way through the forest to a prearranged rendezvous with the AK escort, who had brought an interpreter with them. The entire party then made their way cautiously to a natural curve in the river, opposite the village of Kamionka Dolna, and within sight of the German garrison at Kopki Dwor (where Eddie had been turned in). Had it been necessary to fight at this stage it would have been disastrous, as the pistols of the AK escort would have been no match for the machine guns of the German patrols. Luckily, they reached the river without incident. There was a large log lying on the riverbank which, when rolled over by one of the escort partisans, turned out to be a roughly-hewn-out boat; their ‘ferry’ to the other side. The men gathered to discuss how to manage the crossing, and it was decided that the party of twelve should split into two groups of six, with the airmen and an escort going in the first boat.
ii
The unstable, partially submerged boat was pushed away from the bank, and it rolled and swirled down the right bank of the river, over a sandbar and out into the fast-flowing current, with the men holding tight to their wounded skipper and clinging on for their lives. Charlie Keen, who couldn’t swim, remembered it like this:

“The current was fast and some of us slid into the water, but our brave escort, strong Polish partisans, swam alongside and caught us, hauling us to safety on the opposite bank.”

As they tumbled from the boat they saw a young girl on horseback waiting for them and learned that she was to be their guide through the next section of treacherous marshland. Sixteen-year-old Nina,
1
the daughter of a hunting estate manager, had lived in these forests all her life, becoming a partisan scout and courier at the age of eleven, following the destruction of her family home by advancing German soldiers.

The River San looking towards the Krzeszow Bridge (Taken in 2013)

She made a lasting impression on the men as she moved unchallenged through the forests, speaking fluently in Polish, Russian and German, and they would see much of her in the coming weeks. On this occasion, though, after guiding them to safety, she said farewell and rode off to re-join her own unit.
2
After the war, Charlie Keen returned twice to Poland to try and trace her but, only knowing her nickname, ‘Nina’, had no success. Fifty years were to pass before the War Office revealed her real name, and Charlie managed to track her down, quite remarkably, to Southampton, England; just fifty miles from his own home in Brighton. They remained friends until the day he died.
iii

Once on the other side of the river they came under the protection of a small, mobile forest unit
3
commanded by Jan Orzel Wysocki, known as ‘Kmicic’, and the final stage of their journey took them by car to the village of Ujscie, deep in partisan-controlled woods, where the unit was based. Most of the fighters were away raiding a large German farm, but Jerzy Lyzwa (George), a recent recruit, was on patrol in the forest when a breathless young man came running up to him, saying: “I’ve been looking for you – there are two cars coming this way with uniformed men inside”. George, assuming they were Germans, sent him to warn the village and then hid in bushes at the roadside to wait. The cars came into view, floundering through deep, sandy wheel ruts, and he noticed that the occupants were not in German uniform; the khaki was the wrong colour and they were not wearing hats. He then recognised the man sitting alongside the driver as Stanislaw Belzynski, commander of the AK sabotage and diversion unit, and felt confident enough to stand up and approach. Belzynski told him that the uniformed men were English, and that he was having difficulty understanding them so, as George spoke good English, could he ask them some questions. Turning to the four bedraggled young men in the back of the car, George said: “Are you English?” To which they smiled with relief and confirmed that they were. Belzynski suggested that they continue the questioning at the village, and a runner was sent ahead to let people know that it was not the Germans approaching, but the English!

The car swept into the woodcutters yard at Ujscie under the gaze of a curious group of bystanders, and Tom was asked what they would like to do first. He replied, without hesitation, that they would like to wash and shave, if possible. He was too shy to admit that this was because they were not only very dirty and unshaven, but they had also picked up lice during their days of living rough and were desperate to get clean. George found them some soap and a razor and the woodcutter killed one of his chickens and set about preparing a meal for them.
iv
After they had eaten Tom lit a cigarette and the questioning began. Who were they? Where had they come from, and why? Tom introduced himself and his crew, one by one, and explained that three of his crew were missing, and he had no idea where they were. The gathered partisans then listened in awe as ‘Tommy’ described the sequence of events that had brought them to the Polish forest. For the most part he seems to have told them the truth but, either by way of adding a little colour or because of misunderstanding in the translation, the story conveyed to the partisans was that the aircraft had been attacked and hit by fighters over Czechoslovakia while on its way to supply the Polish Home Army, and although Jim Hughes had opened fire in defence, the crippled aircraft had crashed on Polish soil, forcing the crew to bale out. All faces turned towards Jim with growing admiration as Tom told them that he had shot down many German planes since joining the RAF. The partisans were impressed by the RAF men, and a bottle of vodka was produced.
v
Toasts were drunk to the brave partisans for having successfully pulled off such a daring rescue operation, and to the four young men who had flown all the way from Italy to bring them aid. Tom learned to say: ‘
Na zdrowie
!’ as he downed his vodka shots, much to the amusement of Smola, who had accompanied them all the way from the Tarnogora bunker. He joked later that these were the only Polish words Tom learned. It was just five days since they had baled out of their aircraft, and there was a huge sense of relief that they were out of immediate danger.