This month marks the 80th anniversary of one of the largest and most famous battles of the Second World War: The Battle of Arnhem and Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands. It was designed to seize key bridges and crossings over the Rhine, and thereby allow the Allies to quickly advance forces into Germany, with the aim of dramatically shortening the war.
The background of some of the men involved was remarkable; they had travelled halfway around the world to end up at Arnhem, with stories that sound like the plot of a Hollywood movie. However, the stories of many of these men have remained hidden until now: Stanley Kulik was one of them.
Born in eastern Poland in 1924, Stan had been 15 years old when the Nazis invaded the west of Poland. Soon after, the Soviets seized the east of the country, and occupied the village where Stan’s family lived. The Red Army came to their home in the middle of the night, and at gunpoint they gave Stan’s family half an hour to pack up their things and leave. They were told that they were being taken to another village in Poland, but it wasn’t true – instead they were put on cattle trucks and taken to a gulag in Russia.
In the gulag, Stan was put to work; age 15 was old enough. If you didn’t work, you didn’t eat. There was never enough to eat, but Stan managed to survive. Then, after more than a year, news came through that Hitler had invaded Russia. A rumour started that the Poles could leave the gulags and join a Polish army that was being formed somewhere in the Soviet Union, but nobody knew exactly where it was.
It was a solo journey that would take Stan months and which would cover thousands of miles, first across Russia and then down through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Stan, still only 17 years old, eventually arrived in the city of Tashkent, in Uzbekistan, which was swollen with refugees; like a leech that had sucked up so much blood it was ready to burst.
By day he worked on a cotton farm, or searched for food and news about the Polish army. By night he stayed warm by sleeping on the ashes that people had thrown out from their fires.
Then one day, close to giving up, he heard that the Polish army, known as the Anders Army, was nearby. Stan was accepted into the army, who had to fake his age as he was too young. He was taken across the Caspian Sea to Iran, and then to Iraq, where he worked in a camp which helped Polish refugees. He was there for almost a year, before being taken by ship to India, and then on to the UK, where he joined up with the First Polish Independent Parachute Brigade. The brigade was based in Fife, near Edinburgh, and the area still has a lot of links with the Polish paratroopers.
In September 1944 the brigade was dropped in Operation Market Garden. The objective was to seize and hold the bridges over the river Rhine at Arnhem, but the situation had rapidly deteriorated. Germans pretending to be British assassinated one of the brigade officers, an American volunteer. Stan’s section was holed up in a house which came under fire from snipers, resulting in his friend and his company captain being shot.
Eventually, the retreat was ordered, but there were not enough boats to get everyone back across. When dawn came, Stan was caught behind enemy lines. He took refuge in a makeshift hospital that had been set up in one of the houses in the town. It was guarded by the Nazi SS, and each morning they would come to take away prisoners, but each day Stan managed to hide from them.
He discovered that some of the nurses in the hospital were in the Dutch underground army. They came up with a way to sneak him past the SS guards at the hospital, by dressing him up and pretending he was also a Dutch nurse. They managed to cycle right past the SS guards, and weren’t stopped, even when the chain came off Stan’s bike right beside the guards!
The Dutch underground risked their own lives to hide him in their houses. The Nazis knew that paratroopers were being hidden, and every few days Stan would need to change houses, as the net tightened around him.
One day, the SS came into the house where Stan was hiding. He heard their footsteps outside, crunching over broken glass. He only just had enough time to throw a long winter coat over a pram and crouch underneath, before they entered the room. They came near enough to him that he could almost reach out and touch them from his hiding place.
He was in hiding for about a month, always on edge, always hungry, always tired and never being able to relax. Then came a plan to try to rescue him. They would disguise a truck like a Red Cross vehicle, hide him in the back and they would try to drive straight through enemy lines.
Stan’s story can be read in From the Soviet Gulag to Arnhem: A Polish Paratrooper’s Epic Wartime Journey. Written by Nicholas Kinloch and Published by Pen and Sword.
Order your copy here.
By Author Nicholas Kinloch
Posted September 9th 2024
