Kowalski? A Corporal?

Tanks of the 1st Polish Armoured Division in Breda, the Netherlands
(Source)

"Hey Nowak, what are ya reading?" Though Bill Zielinski knew it was probably Stars & Stripes, the GI newspaper, he couldn't be sure. As his buddy Bogdan Nowak had been born in Poland and could speak at least four languages that he knew of, besides English! Could be a Kraut or a French newspaper for all he knew, Nowak spoke both in addition to Polish and Russian.

Nowak and Zielinski were both from a little town in Vermont which had a large Polish population, both of their fathers worked in the machine tool industry. They'd enlisted together just six months before when they had turned 17, their birthdays were only a week apart. Now they had been assigned to C Company of the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry of the Big Red One. They hadn't joined their unit yet, they were in some German town on the outskirts of Aachen waiting for a truck to take them up to the line.

"Just reading about how the Poles liberated the Dutch city of Breda." Nowak answered his best friend. Two individuals couldn't be so close and yet so different from each other. Nowak was a voracious reader and had finished high school at the age of 16, Zielinski had dropped out of school in order to enlist with his best friend. Now here they were, somewhere in Nazi Germany, waiting to fight the enemy of their blood, the Germans. While reading about how others of Poland's sons were already killing Germans and liberating the oppressed.

Well, Nowak was reading about them...

With that, I'd like to introduce not only two new characters, but the first guest post from one of Poland's native sons, long time reader and frequent commenter, Paweł Kasperek. Take it away Paweł!

Two Dutch girls writing welcome slogans on one of the 1st Polish Armoured Division's Sherman tanks after the liberation of Breda, their hometown, October-November 1944. Note the symbol of the Dutch resistance movement - OZO (Oranje zal Overwinnen - Orange Shall Conquer) - written on the tank.
(Source)

29th October, 1944, Breda, Netherlands.

Corporal Kowalski was in his element. No, not the fire and noise of the tank's gun, though that was his element nowadays too. He had two nice girls, one on each shoulder, and was flirting in a weird mix of English, French, and German. One girl was a teacher at a nearby school, hence her ability to speak French and English in addition to her native Dutch. The other girl was a telephone operator at the central exchange, who had had to learn German and speak it nearly every day for the last few years. He remembered that it had been pretty busy a day earlier, but it had paid off.

Old Man Maczek, CO of the division, veteran of the 1939 Polish campaign, a man who had retreated fighting all the way to the Hungarian border. He had fought again in 1940 in France until the tanks ran out of supplies and they’d been evacuated to UK to form this division. General Maczek had devised a smart plan to outflank Breda and as a result the city was captured with practically no civilian casualties, and “only” forty or so dead in the division itself.  

After the ending of the Falaise pocket operation, the division had pursued the fleeing Germans, liberating cities like St. Omer, Ypres and Ghent in a race to the Rhine. They had heard of their fellow countrymen in the 1st Independent Airborne Brigade (Polish) fighting nearby at Arnhem during the ill-fated offensive to take the bridges over the Rhine there. Kowalski had  sworn that his division would have made it to the besieged paratroopers in time, unlike the slow-and-steady tankers of XXX Corps. Alas, there was no quick route to the Ruhrgebiet, the German industrial heartland that was still pouring out tanks and cannons to the frontlines. Resistance on the road to Arnhem had been fierce.

It looked now that they would have to settle for a rest and refit period until the time inevitably came to cross the Rhine and strike the final blow into Germany itself. 

His thoughts drifted into the future, when the war would be over. He was worried for his country. Though Germans were being pushed out by the Soviets, it seemed they were barely better. What news filtered down from the other side of Europe was grim: Polish guerillas helping Soviets liberate Wilno (Vilnius) and other cities in the East of prewar Poland were immediately rounded up and arrested. When Warsaw erupted in uprising, Soviet armies stood down and waited until the Germans thoroughly put it down, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process. It seemed that the end of one occupation would be only the beginning of another. 

Well, he tried to cheer himself up, this is nothing his worries could help, better to enjoy the nice company now and the Dutch beer which has been a great treat. With just a hint of bitter taste lingering, and not just from the beer.

It's good to know what that scamp Kowalski has been up to! I see he got promoted as well!

Very nice Paweł! Dziękuję!

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