A WAR STORY
You must all know by now that I love helping other people to tell their stories. They don't always directly concern Barlick, not everyone has fallen in Clogger's Beck but Stanislaw Bajkowski has lived in Barlick longer than I have! In 2004 I wrote some articles about Bob King, a mill manager in Earby. Stanislaw saw these in the BET and this prompted him to get in touch with me. I read his story and was blown away by it. Some of my readers were alive seventy years ago and had their own share of troubles in the Second World War, most were not even born. So, by living and working with us, his story becomes part of ours, thank God they are not all this harrowing. Following the award to Stanislaw by the Barlick Town Council on the anniversary of the Arnhem drop it seems a good idea to reprint it.
I was talking to Bob King in 2004 in New Zealand and here's what he said: “I noted in last week's internet edition of the BET an article on a man named Stanislaw Bajkowski who dropped into Arnhem as a paratrooper. From the age quoted in the paper of 78 years he must have been only 18 years old. I am sure this is the same Stan the Man who came to the Dotcliffe Mill, Kelbrook in the late 1940's to train to be a weaver and like all the 31 displaced people who came he proved to be a good employee. I knew Stan for many years, he married a girl from Earby, and was great company to have a pint or two with in the Railway pub in Barlick”. I gave Bob Stan’s address and phone number and got another call from Bob. “Stanley, I rang Stanislaw Bajkowski last night and you wouldn't believe it but he recognised my voice and in a thick Polish/Yorkshire accent he said "It's that b***er Bob King." We swung the lamp for half an hour, he has an excellent memory and it was a pleasure to renew old acquaintances”. Stan is now 79 years of age and has lived in Barlick for the last 58 years, he hasn't fallen in the Beck but I think he qualifies to call himself a "Barlicker". With every person there is a story and this could be a best seller. Stan the Man dropped into Arnhem at 19 years of age as a Polish Paratrooper, he came to the Dotcliffe Mill with 31 other displaced persons and learnt to weave, he lost his first wife and brought up three children as both Mum and Dad. Married a Polish woman and he works even at this age as an interpreter in the Polish Community. His son is a doctor with a practice in Wigan and Stan is a very proud grand dad of 9 grandchildren and 3 or 4 great grand children. So thanks for the phone number and the address, I will keep in touch with the old lad.” Bob has since died but he was right, Stanislaw qualifies as a Barlicker! Here's the story Stan told me:
Stanislaw Bajkowski was born on 27th September 1925 in Poland in the village of Holyszki, district of Wolkowysk, province of Bialystok. (Wolkowysk is now in White Russia.) His father Miesczyslaw and his mother Bronislawa Czaplejewska owned an arable farm of ten hectares near the village of Podorosk in the district of Wolkowysk. The Bajkowski and Czaplejewska families had lived in Poland's North Eastern Borderlands region (The Kresy) for centuries. Stanislaw's nearest relations included a brother and sister, two families on his father's side and four on his mother's side. All lived within the North Eastern Kresy region and although the ethnic Polish inhabitants represented only around 20% of the total population, they regarded themselves as Polish and spoke Polish as their mother tongue.
The outbreak of the Second World War on 1st September 1939 was a massive shock for the Bajkowski's and made worse on 17th September by the Soviet invasion of Poland from the East. “Then began the Polish Gehenna, most particularly for those deported to Siberia”. As soon as the Soviets had secured the new frontier and imposed their authority on the subjugated territories the deportations began. Early on the morning of 10th February 1940 a convoy of five sledges, each bearing a Russian soldier with bayonet fixed, arrived at the Bajkowski farm house. The family was given barely half an hour to pack all the necessary essentials for a long journey and instructed to take enough food to keep them alive for one month.
About 600 Poles from this locality were then grouped in the nearby mansion of wealthy landlord Pan Bochwica. The following morning, in 35 degrees of frost, they were transported 25 kilometres to the train station at Wolkowysk. There they were packed into waiting cattle trucks. Inside they found wooden beds, allowing them to sit or lie but not stand. The windows were small and barred, and as if to make things worse frozen over. In the centre was a so-called heater or small metal coal fire. A hole in the corner served as a toilet. And so it was that in these spartan conditions the Poles began their journey into exile.
The train took them to nearby Baranowice where they languished for a week until authorisation to proceed to the next stage of their journey into the depths of the Soviet Union arrived. Tears were shed as they crossed the border of the defeated and now non-existent Second Republic of Poland, many of them would never return. During the long journey they helped and supported each other. An atmosphere of sincerity and sympathy reigned transcending their awful fate and everyone tried whenever they could to raise the spirits of others. In the forester's wagon Chojnowski played the violin beautifully and a young bachelor Pan Witek cracked jokes incessantly. Despite the fact that he had barely reached 15 years of age, Stanislaw Bajkowski felt proud he was heading for Siberia along the same route taken by so many eminent Poles throughout Poland's turbulent and tragic history.
The deportees sustained themselves in the main with the provisions they managed to take with them. Occasionally, when the train stopped, an NKVD man would ask someone to fetch soup from a nearby canteen in a couple of buckets slung across the shoulders. The soup was shared by the fifty or so deportees in the wagon. When the hole in the corner froze over the train would stop somewhere in the countryside and the unfortunate passengers would be instructed to leave their carriages and attend to their needs in the fields. This was very demeaning.
Following a short stay in Moscow the train headed northwards to Jaroslawia on the Volga and then towards Archangel. After two weeks the train stopped at a small station called Kodino which was surrounded by heavily snow-laden forests. Since it remained at the station longer than at previous stops Stanislaw's father became impatient and asked an accompanying NKVD man, “Where is the next station?” He replied “This is a cul de sac, for you, this is the end of the world!”
The deportees were divided into two groups, one group was earmarked for Traktornej bazy and the other, which included Stanislaw, was earmarked for the special camp of Tushilovo in the Archangel Oblast in the Archangel Onezski region. The group was forced to walk across the frozen Lake Onega for three days to reach Posiolek Tushilovo. Sledges were made available for the sick, the old and small children. They reached their final destination totally exhausted by the long journey in the cattle trucks and their 100 kilometres trek.
The camp had previously housed around one thousand Ukrainians who had been sent there in the early 1930s. When the Poles arrived only some sixty of these Ukrainians were left, the rest had perished. The camp consisted of two separate groups of barracks both located round a large lake called Koze Ozierio. The Poles lived in Tushilovo itself and the Ukrainians lived across the lake in a place called Chabarowie. There were three so-called 'commandants' in the camp, an NKVD man, a military man and an administrator.
Each family was allocated a small living space in the centre of which was a small metal stove similar to that found in the cattle wagons. Soon after all baggage had been unloaded and housed securely forest clearing 'brigades' each consisting of ten workers were formed. Despite the hard work and extreme conditions food rations remained at starvation levels. A worker got 800 grammes of bread and soup consisting of water and a couple of spoonfuls of flour. The old, sick and children received 400 grammes of bread only and of course this starvation level of subsistence had to be paid for by hard labour. The forestry work, which involved transporting the felled trees by river, was extremely hard and demanding and many workers soon fell ill. There was no medical care in the camp and in the first eighteen months 80 people, mostly young and middle-aged lost their lives. Stanislaw's sister Zofia was one of the first to be struck down by typhus, she survived only by a miracle.
In this region of Siberia winter lasts nine months and the summer is short but beautiful. Bed bugs were a major problem during the summer. The bugs made their nests in the moss which covered the barracks ceilings and during the night they fell on the sleeping unfortunates. Despite the awful conditions the Poles didn't lose hope and believed that someone, somewhere, would remember them. In June 1941, quite unexpectedly a spark of hope appeared when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. From this day the deportee's conditions slowly improved.
At the beginning of September 1941 a meeting was called in the camp assembly room. The military commandant appeared on the stage smiling and said, “Do you know General Anders and General Sikorski?” Rather seriously everyone replied “Yes, we do”. He went on “Our government has reached an agreement with the Polish government in London, we will fight the Germans together, you are all free and may travel anywhere in the Soviet Union apart from European Russia. One of the crowd asked may we sing the Polish Anthem? The commandant replied “Please do. We will listen.” Instead of the Mazurka Dabrowskiego everyone sang the Rote. (An old patriotic song.) The deportees would remember this event and look back on it as an extraordinarily moving and uplifting moment in their ordeal. Soon they all received official papers showing that they were now 'amnestied' and free to travel. They were promised help and transport to the nearest railway station.
Unfortunately the rejoicing lasted only a short time. The promised help took a long time to materialise, things moved very slowly and orders took a long time to come through. In the meantime more deportees from the special camp and from prison in Archangel arrived on the scene. Amongst them was Stanislaw's uncle who after nine months spent in prison was unrecognisable. He and his family left the camp before Stanislaw and for a while contact with them was lost. From his uncle's family of five, four would die of hunger in Uzbekistan, however, the last surviving member, his daughter Irena made it safely to Tehran.
In the middle of February 1942 the time finally came for the Bajkowski family to leave the camp. There were then only two or three deportees left in the camp and Stanislaw never saw any of them again. As they travelled South Stanislaw's brother Leon had a recurrence of tuberculosis of the bones. He was made comfortable on a sleigh while the rest of the family, father, mother and sister journeyed on foot in heavy snow for 100 kilometres to the nearest station, Wonguda. They waited for over a week for transport which eventually came in the form of two cattle trucks almost identical to those in which they were deported to Siberia in 1940 but more luxurious, no hole in the floor. The plan was to go to Uralsk, however just before they set off something unexpected happened. A man of some thirty years of age jumped into the wagon and asked if they would take him along since he had heard they were travelling South. No one knew this man so they refused saying that there was no room. He left without hesitation but very shortly after he returned, knocked on the door, and as it slid open he threw a sack in the truck, after a moment he threw in another sack and then jumped in the wagon. It transpired that he had stolen two sacks of macaroni from a neighbouring wagon. He asked for a bowl and divided the macaroni equally amongst everyone. After a while he introduced himself. “My name is Wanka Nowik. I am a White Russian from Minsk. I have been interned in a camp for 12 years and have escaped. You Poles, if you want to live and not die of hunger, will have to steal, otherwise you will never see your beloved Poland again”. This man, it would transpire, would save the lives of this particular cattle truck's inhabitants.
At the next station, Oboziersk, a dramatic event happened. Six of the men folk from a neighbouring wagon went to find bread taking with them all their family documents. In their absence the train unexpectedly set off leaving the men behind. Without documents none of the men's families and relations could get hold of food and would starve to death. In these circumstance's Wanka's skills became priceless. On their onward journey, under Wanka's expert supervision, they stole whatever they could, bread, sugar, fish and so on and attempted to create a reserve for the times when it was not possible to steal. There was a period of eight days when apart from sugar and hot water from the steam engine there was nothing to eat. After a few days of this diet the stomach could take no more. Many vomited incessantly while others couldn't stand. Without Wanka's expertise many would have perished. After the war, in England, Stanislaw met some of the men left behind. They looked back at those tumultuous times and contemplated how they had managed in the Soviet Union without those documents and how their families cheated starvation.
The route from Archangel southwards passed through Vologda, Jaroslaw then Moscow and on to Wlodzimir where a miracle occurred. Although on the verge of exhaustion Stanislaw's father managed to arrange a meeting with the local war committee. He had a good education and spoke Russian well. Making the most of this he pleaded with the commandant to send someone to the cattle wagon to witness the plight of the people dying of hunger. The commandant turned out to be a decent man, he said “I believe you” and sent instructions to the town bakery to issue enough 400 gramme loaves to last 60 people for 6 weeks. Miesczyslaw got help from a market trader with his sleigh and returned to the train with his priceless cargo. From then on everyone slowly regained strength, they had water and bread, death from hunger no longer threatened them.
Travelling through Rozajewska, Saralow, Uralsk, Aryse, Tashkent, Okubinsk and Kagan, Stanislaw and his family neared their objective. At Okubinsk Leon died. His body was wrapped in a blanket and laid on the station platform. Stanislaw's father wanted to stay behind to bury him but hid risked being left behind and losing contact with his family forever. His wife Bronislawa persuaded him he must abandon his dead son and journey on, she said that they still had two living children and their duty was to ensure that they survived.
Following their arrival at Dzambul on the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan another miracle happened. The plan was to go forward to Aumaaty but while their wagons were temporarily parked in a siding waiting for a replacement locomotive a small loco arrived, coupled up the wagons and started off. They soon realised they were travelling in an unknown direction and after a while they stopped at a station called Czak Pak in Southern Kazakhstan. There, to their amazement, a train full of Polish soldiers was waiting. A Polish officer told them that they were to travel with them to Iran as military families. Stanislaw had difficulty believing this. It transpired that General Anders, taking advantage of the chaos reigning in the Soviet Union at the time had ordered the Polish Army to use every means to rescue Polish citizens and escort them to freedom and the army was following his orders.
At the end of April 1942 they arrived with the soldiers at the port of Krasnowodsk on the Caspian Sea. The transport ship Moskwa was waiting for them. During boarding no one was checked, they were herded on board like sheep. As the badly overloaded ship set sail for Pahlevi in Iran an unusually violent storm forced the exhausted and emaciated exiles to lie on the decks for safety, adding further to there seemingly never-ending ordeal.
As the sun rose the following morning they arrived at the promised land. After quarantine they were billeted in accommodation round Tehran. Unfortunately, after a short time, epidemics of Typhoid and Dysentery broke out. On the 26th April 1942 Stanislaw's mother contracted Typhoid after three days of freedom, she died two weeks later and was buried in the French cemetery in Tehran among 2,000 other Poles. Out of the ten members of the two Bajkowski families deported to Russia only four made it to freedom, Stanislaw, His younger sister Zofia, his mother Bronislawa and his father Miesczyslaw.
In Tehran Stanislaw and his father joined the Polish Army. His father was a platoon leader and as a consequence became one of the commanders of the Guard Company. He was based in Military Camp No. 4 until its liquidation and then moved to Palestine. In February 1943 Stanislaw travelled to Iraq and after two months volunteered to join the 1st Independent Polish Parachute Brigade forming in Britain. By June he was in Scotland where, notwithstanding fatal accidents, he passed out as a paratrooper.
In September 1944 he took part in the Battle of Arnhem. During the first phase of the action his battalion, the 1st Battalion IPPB was forced to abandon its intended drop at the last minute and turned back in mid-flight over the English Channel to return to England. Unfortunately the 2nd and 3rd Battalions had already landed. At the second attempt the 1st Battalion dropped into Grave with the American 81st Airborne Division. His battalion then linked up with the main body of the Polish Brigade at Driel but by then the element of surprise had been lost. As the paratroopers took up their positions they were subjected to heavy German machine gun fire. They had no artillery support and couldn't complete their mission so on 25th September they received orders to withdraw. For his part in the action Stanislaw was decorated several times. From 11th May 1945 until 1947 he was stationed with the Polish Parachute Brigade at Bramsche in Germany as part of the post-war occupation force. Following demobilisation Stanislaw settled in Great Britain where he married and brought up a family. He has a son Adam and two daughters, Danuta and Janina, nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren. He is the last Bajkowski of his generation to have passed through Russia. From the Czaplejewski side of the family, his cousin's son lives in Minsk in White Russia, he speaks Polish and feels himself to be Polish. Stanislaw would like to thank the people of Iran for welcoming him, his family and the Polish deportees so warmly to their country. Not surprisingly he says that he has a great affinity towards them.
So there you have it, one brave man's story of how he finally reached freedom after many heartaches. We've had Bob King's story of how Stanislaw ended up working with him at Dotcliffe. The thing that strikes me is that these days we often hear people complaining about Polish plumbers taking British jobs. Stanislaw's story reminds us that many migrants have paid their dues. It's all a long time ago now but look back to the Polish fighter pilots in the Battle of Britain and reflect that there were many like Stanislaw who stood beside us when things really were bad. I'm glad that he is alive and well and enjoying his retirement in Barlick. Bob King is dead now but if he was alive I think he'd like the fact that we have read the story and given some thought to his old friend. It's been a pleasure passing the story on to you.
SCG/27/09/14
3482 words.
Stanislaw with a comrade in Germany after 1945.
Stan in 2011 when I wrote the articles.
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