125th birth anniv. of Polish "liberator of France, Holland"
General Stanislaw Maczek, a Polish Army general, commander of the Polish 1st Armoured Division which proved instrumental in the Allied action to liberate France and Holland, was born 125 years ago in Shchezhets near Lviv in pre-war Poland on March 31.
General Maczek used to say that "the Polish soldier fights for freedom of other nations but dies only for Poland". "He was a soldier and commander who has never lost a battle", Piotr Potomski wrote about the general in his book on the outstanding commander.
Drafted into the Austrian army at the outbreak of World War I, soon after graduating from the university in Lviv, Stanislaw Maczek fought on the Russian front in the Carpathian Mountains and on the Italian front in the Alps. He joined the Polish Army immediately after Poland regained its independence in 1918. He was already a major by 1920 when assigned the command of an assault battalion during the defence of Lviv in the war against Soviet Russia.
Next, after completing his studies in a military academy in Poland, he formed the Polish Army's first armoured brigade which fought against the 13th Panzer Division in the opening days of World War II. Interned in Hungary, he fled to France and after its capitulation in 1940 to Britain where as major general he was named commander of an armoured brigade and in 1942 of the 1st Armoured Division of the Polish Army.
The Division took part in the Allied invasion of Normandy and played an instrumental role in the battle of Falaise by circling the 7th (Wermacht) Army and 5th Panzer Army, and in liberating the Dutch town of Breda as well as capturing the German town of Wilhelmshaven. General Maczek himself accepted surrender acts form Wilhelmshaven Kriegsmarine base command, Ostfrisland fleet, 10 infantry divisions, 8 infantry regiments and the artillery.
In the course of Belgian town Ypres recapturing by General Maczek's division, he noted in his log: "The history is looking upon us not only from the hights of this medieval city walls (...) but also from thousands of crosses dug after the previous war into the Allies' cemeteries that we pass on our way (...) Today the tactics of the speed prevails"
Another famous quote by Maczek is "fight hard but knightly" which words he addressed his soldiers during the Allied invasion of Germany in 1945.
In 1945 General Maczek was awarded the French Legion of Honour and until demoblilization commanded Polish troops in UK. Soon after Gen. Maczek was stripped of Polish citizenship by communists and forced to stay in England, where refused a military pension, worked as a bartender at an Edinburgh hotel until late 1960s. In 1971 he regained Polish citizenship.
He was promoted to the rank of a Polish three-star general in 1990. In 1992 the "liberator of France and Holland" received the highest civilian order in Poland, the Order of the White Eagle. At the request of 40,000 inhabitants of Breda who signed a petition, General Maczek received Dutch honorary citizenship.
General Maczek died in 1994 at the age of 102 (in Edinburgh). According to his last wish, he was laid to rest among his soldiers at the Polish military cemetery in Breda, the Netherlands. (PAP)
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