My Boyhood War

by Bohdan Hryniewicz

  After nineteen years I reconnected with old friends. I found Pobóg, Borys, Wiera, Dąb and several others while in Warsaw. I also visited Holski, who was very ill and died shortly after. From then on, I stayed in touch with all of them.

  Upon our return home, Linda and I decided to move to Europe. I wound up my construction jobs, arranged management of our concrete block plant and sold our house. In May of 1966, with three small children and José, our Puerto Rican houseboy who asked to be taken along, we sailed on a French liner from San Juan to Le Havre and drove to Stockholm. We lived in downtown Stockholm while Lars and I developed hotel projects. We formed a group that acquired the patent rights to a vacuum sewage system that had been developed by a Swedish inventor. I became the managing director of the group and the rights were sold to Electrolux AB. For the next few years I travelled all over the world promoting the system as a special consultant to Electrolux. During that time, we visited Poland a few more times.

  Our youngest son, Gregory, was born in October 1970. In 1971 we decided to return to Puerto Rico. I started a new company that designed, manufactured, leased and sold pre-fabricated forming systems for reinforced concrete residential construction. Over the next ten years, more than 10,000 housing units were constructed in Puerto Rico utilising this system. When construction in Puerto Rico came to a standstill following a recession in 1982, I liquidated my construction business. In the meantime, I was a director of a public corporation that owned and operated a 180-room hotel. I was offered and accepted the presidency of the company. We bought and restored another colonial house in old San Juan.

  I continued to travel to Europe as a consultant for the vacuum sewage venture. Whenever I had a chance, I made an effort to spend some time visiting my father and old friends in Poland. It was on a return trip in spring 1973 that I learned that Nałęcz had died. I was saddened by his death and the fact that I had not been able to see him again after I had escaped from Poland. He was an extraordinary man. Born in 1914 in Latvia, he was a graduate of the Cadet School and Reserve Artillery Officers School. He had started to make his mark as a talented graphic artist when he was mobilised in 1939. He went through the 1939 campaign as an artillery officer and avoided being taken prisoner of war. He was involved in the Underground from the very beginning. He was arrested in August 1940 and spent several months in Auschwitz concentration camp. After his release was arranged, he returned to work for the Underground. He was a brave man, a natural leader who commanded and led from the front.

  In 1974, the communist government first gave and then rescinded permission for the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the Uprising. Nevertheless, we met privately, and I recognised quite a few familiar faces. I continued to visit Poland and watched the deterioration of living standards that led to the creation of Solidarity in the summer of 1980.

  At the beginning of December 1980, Linda and I were in Switzerland for the annual meeting of the FEI (International Equestrian Federation). While in our hotel room I heard the American Armed Forces in Germany radio network declare: ‘The invasion of Poland by Russian forces is imminent.’ We had plans to fly to Warsaw the next day. Remembering that the Secretary of the Federation was a high-ranking reserve officer of the Swiss Army, I called him to ask if he knew anything about it. He returned my call a few hours later to say that according to the latest NATO intelligence there would be no movement of Russian forces for the next three days. We flew to Warsaw the next day. It felt like a completely new country. The spirit of anticipation, of change brought on by the emergence of the Solidarity movement was visible everywhere, but food shortages had become even worse than the last time we visited. We left three days later. Martial law was declared a year later, in December 1981, and was in force for almost two years.

  In March 1989, while on my way to an FEI meeting in Budapest, I made a stopover in Poland to visit my father in Kraków. On 20 March I returned to Warsaw to attend the funeral of Gryf, the oldest of the Mirowski brothers. Walking through the military cemetery, I stopped by the Katyń Monument, which had been erected by the communist government in April 1987 and included the fallacious inscription: ‘Polish soldiers, victims of Hitlerite fascism resting in the earth of Katyń – 1941’. There were two masons there with chisels hammering away the inscription. It was replaced with: ‘Polish officers murdered in Katyń’. I knew that the end of communism in Poland had arrived.

  The first partially free election was held in June 1989. That precipitated the fall of communism in Poland and six months later the total abolition of communism in all of Central Europe.

  I returned in 1989 with my daughter Lisa for the forty-fifth anniversary and the unveiling of a long-demanded monument to the Warsaw Uprising. It was my last trip requiring a visa from the Polish People’s Republic. I was back again in June 1991 to bury my father in Andrzej’s grave. I would return for another funeral in November 1998; I attended Pobóg’s funeral in Warsaw. The last surviving officer of the Nałęcz Battalion, he was buried next to its commander.

  In June 1992, on the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, the Gran Regata Colon brought together the largest gathering of tall ships ever assembled to San Juan harbour. Close to 250 sailing vessels arrived from Europe and South America. There were thirty three-masted ships, encompassing all of the training ships of the world’s naval and merchant marine academies, including two ships from Poland. I was a member of the organising committee in charge of Polish ships. My son Gregory, midshipman of the United States Naval Academy, was assigned to the Iskra, a three-mast brigantine of the Polish Navy. Since there was no diplomatic representation of the newly independent Republic of Poland in Puerto Rico, I was appointed spokesman for the Polish Consul in New York. Upon arrival in the United States, the captains of the Polish ships had signed a petition to have me appointed Honorary Consul in San Juan. After vetting by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United States Department of State, I was appointed in 1994. I was one of the first two Honorary Consuls of the Polish Republic appointed in the United States, serving in this position for fourteen years.

  In 1994 the fiftieth anniversary of the Uprising was celebrated in a free, independent and democratic Republic of Poland. I was there with my two daughters and my younger son, a newly commissioned ensign in the United States Navy. I stood proudly with them among other veterans and their families and thousands of people. I realised then that what we fought for had finally arrived, that the sacrifices of fifty years before had been worth it.

  Since then I have been back to Warsaw many times. In 2004, the sixtieth anniversary, I attended the opening of the long-awaited Museum of the Warsaw Uprising. The names of Andrzej and Wiktor were etched on the Memory Wall with thousands of others. On the evening of 1 August, on the square in front of the old post office building, I attended the commemoration ceremony. I sat in the front row, seated literally 6ft away from Chancellor Schröder, Secretary Powell and other representatives of the Allied Powers (except Russia, which chose not to be represented). After an opening speech by Lech Kaczynski, President of the City, the ceremony commenced with Warsaw’s Symphony Orchestra and Choir performing Verdi’s ‘Requiem Mass’, while excerpts of newsreels from the Siege of Warsaw in September 1939, the occupation and the Uprising were shown on a large screen. They became progressively more graphic and disturbing. As the music reached a final crescendo the screen showed two young Polish soldiers, shot by Germans, in their death throes.

  The music stopped, the screen went blank and there was complete silence. I looked at Schröder. He was visibly shaken. Then he was asked to speak. He composed himself, mounted the podium and said that it was very difficult for him to speak. It was then that I heard him say, ‘Polish pride and German shame’ and ‘we bow our heads in shame at the crimes of the Nazi troops.’

  I was in Poland again in 2014 for the seventieth anniversary with my wife Anne, daughter Lisa, granddaughter Nina, my son Gregory, his wife Megan and my 1-year-old grandson Bryce. Seventy ye
ars later, there are about 2,500 Uprising participants left; 400 attended the commemoration. There were four from Nałęcz Battalion: ‘Nałęcz’ Stanisław Tański, ‘Janusz’ Janusz Maksymowicz, ‘Borys’ Ryszard Budzianowski and myself. As is our custom, we met at 5 p.m. in the Powąski Military Cemetery as sirens wailed throughout Warsaw and salvos of honour guard echoed between the graves.

  The warmth of the general population towards us, particularly among the younger generation, was overwhelming. It reinforced my realisation twenty years ago that, after all, the sacrifices were not in vain. A poll of public opinion taken on the eve of the 2014 anniversary confirmed that 61 per cent of Poles believed that the Uprising was necessary and beneficial to Polish national interest.

  Abbreviations

  AK

  Armia Krajowa, Home Army

  AL

  Armia Ludowa, People’s Army

  Batt.

  Battalion

  CO

  Commanding Officer

  Co.

  Company

  C.Off.

  Cadet Officer (Podchorąźy)

  DP

  Displaced person

  DW

  Died of wounds

  KB

  Korpus Bezpieczeństwa, Security Corps

  KIA

  Killed in action

  LWP

  Ludowe Wojsko Polskie, Polish People’s Army

  NKVD

  Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrenikh Del, People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs – Russian secret police

  NN

  Nieznany, Unknown

  NSZ

  Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, National Armed Forces

  PIAT

  Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank

  Oflag

  Offizirslager, POW camp for officers only

  PRC

  Polish Resettlement Corps

  POW

  Prisoner of War

  PWX

  Ex-Prisoner of War

  RONA

  Russaya Osvobodityelnaya Narodnaya Armya, Russian National Liberation Army

  ROTC

  Reserve Officers’ Training Corps

  Stalag

  Stammlager, POW camp for other ranks

  UB

  Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, Security Office

  UNRRA

  United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration

  USAAF

  United States Army Air Force

  WU

  Wounded in action

  ZUWZoNiD

  Związek Uczestników Walki Zbrojnej o Wolność i Niepodległość, Association of Participants of Armed Struggle for Freedom and Independence

  Code Names

  Battalion KB ‘Nałęcz’1

  Battalion Command

  Nałęcz

  Lt./Cpt.

  Stefan Kaniewski

  CO Batt.

  WU 23 August 1944

  Pobóg

  Lt./Cpt.

  Stanislaw Kiersznowski

  CO 1st Co.

  WU 23 August 1944

  Edward

  Lt./Cpt.

  Tadeusz Łukaszewicz

  CO P-20 Co.

  KIA 12 September 1944

  Holski

  Lt./Cpt.

  Adolf Hoffman

  CO 2nd Co.

  Skóra

  2nd Lt./Lt

  Henryk Głowacki

  2nd in C. 2nd Co.

  KIA 30 September 1944

  Sokół

  2nd Lt./Lt.

  Kazimierz Skubiszewski

  Other Ranks

  Abczyc

  C.Off./2nd Lt.

  Waldemar Uzdowski

  KIA 23 August 1944

  Alicja

  Medic

  Unknown

  WU 24 August 1944

  Baśka

  Lt.

  Dr Barbara Zylewicz

  CO Medics

  Baśka II

  Pte.

  ‘Burned’ Unknown

  WU 23 August 1944

  Bohdan

  Pte./Cpl.

  Bohdan Hryniewicz

  Runner

  Borys

  Pte./L.Cpl.

  Ryszard Budzianowski

  Runner

  WU 20 August 1944

  Czajka

  C.Off./2nd Lt.

  Jozef Wanarski

  WU 23 August 1944

  Dąb

  C.Off.

  Henryk Mirowski

  Dąbrowa

  Lt.

  Unknown

  WU 3 August 1944; DW 4 August 1944

  Dębina

  C.Off.

  Alojzy Pluciński

  Delfin

  C.Off.

  Władysław Hoffla

  WU 20 August 1944

  Edek

  Pte./Cpl.

  Edward Szymaniak

  Grisza

  Cpl.

  Grigory Siemionow (Russian PWX)

  WU 10 August 1944; DW 12 August 1944

  Gryf

  C.Off.

  Zbigniew Mirowski

  WU 15 August 1944

  Halina

  Medic

  Unknown

  WU 24 August 1944

  Jaga

  Medic

  Zofia Martens

  KIA 17 August 1944

  Janusz

  SSgt.

  Janusz Maksymowicz

  WU 16 August 1944

  Jasia

  Medic

  Jozefa Kulczycka

  KIA 24 August 1944

  Jerzy

  Lt.

  Teofil Pietrowski (Pelerynka)

  Quartermaster

  DW 2 October 1944

  Jur

  Lt.

  Juljusz Kowalski

  WU 3 August 1944

  Kmita

  C.Off./2nd Lt.

  Ludwig Owsiany

  KIA 20 August 1944

  Kruk

  C.Off.

  Ryszard Pohorski

  Leszek

  Lt.

  Czesław Kossak

  Łuniewski

  C.Off.

  Tadeusz Baranowski

  Mama

  SSgt.

  Julian Biernacki

  Miki

  2nd Lt.

  Jan Sobór-Kulagowski

  WU 18 August 1944

  Mocny

  Sgt./SSgt.

  Mieczysław Wojcicki

  Nałęcz

  C.Off./2nd Lt.

  Stanisław Tański

  Ninka

  Medic

  Unknown

  KIA 15 August 1944

  Orwid

  Lt.

  Jan Płoński

  WU 24 August 1944

  Pantera

  C.Off.

  Tadeusz Janczyk

  Patriota

  C.Off./2nd Lt.

  Zygmunt Królak

  Pigularz

  Pte.

  Unknown

  Medic

  KIA 15 August 1944

  Runiek

  C.Off.

  Jerzy Kruczewski

  Sten

  Pte./LcCpl.

  Zdzisław Grzybowski

  WU 16 August 1944; WU 5 September 1944

  Sternik

  C.Off./2nd Lt.

  Janusz Wiśniewski

  Szczeniak

  Pte./Cpl.

  Krzysztof Jachimowicz

  WU 21 August 1944; WU 24 August 1944

  Szczesny

  2nd Lt.

  Dr Janusz Harich

  WU 23 August 1944; DW 26 August 1944

  Tadeusz

  Lt./Cpt.

  Tadeusz Garliński

  CO P-20 Co.

  Tarzan

  Pte.

  Andrzej Hryniewicz

  Runner

  WU 17 August 1944; DW 21 August 1944

  Wiera

  Medic

  Weronika Orłowska-Hartman

  Wilk

  C.Off./2nd Lt.

  Jerzy Mirowski

  Wit
old

  C.Off./2nd Lt

  Witold Markiewicz

  Zadra

  C.Off./2nd Lt.

  Czesław Teofilak

  KIA 30 August 1944

  Zbyszek

  C.Off.

  Zbigniew Zieliński