Stanisław Dąbrowski

Stanisław Dąbrowski was born on 26th March 1922 at Iłża near Starachowice (at the time in the Kielce Province, nowadays in Świętokrzyskie Province). His parents were Michał and Albina née Szyprowska. He was known to his relatives as Stach. His father had fought in the Imperial Russian Army in WWI and then in the Polish Army in the 1919-1920 war against the Bolshevik Russia. When Stanisław was one year old, his father got a job as a building construction technician at an ammunition factory at Skarżysko-Kamienna in the same region (the town was known simply as Kamienna until 1928). The whole family moved to Skarżysko-Kamienna, first to Rejów, then to a newly built workers’ housing estate at number 12, in 1929 to a 3-storey tenement house, No. 40 apt 27, and in 1934 to another such tenement house, No. 41 apt 18. Stach lived there until the outbreak of the war. He had a half-sister Halina (from his mother’s previous marriage) who was nine years older and a brother Jerzy (known as Jurek) who was four years younger.

He completed the first three classes of primary school at a local hut-style building, and the last three classes in a school at Bzin, about 3 km away, to which he usually rode his bike. After passing the entrance exam in 1934, he began studying at the ‘A. Witkowski’ co-educational secondary school at Skarżysko-Kamienna. In July 1939, he passed the minor matriculation exam, and his younger brother Jerzy completed his first year at the secondary school.

Stach was very independent and always wanted to show that other boys were not better than him, whether in sports or in youthful pranks or fights, but in learning he was not among the best pupils. He liked swimming, rowing on the Rejów Pond, fishing, cycling (once he even rode his bike to his aunt at Ostrowiec), skiing, and walking alone in woods and old quarries, from where he brought various snakes, vipers, newts, and lizards. For a short time, he was a member of the boy scouts with whom he took part in a summer camp at Rejów, but this membership was short-lived due to his uncontrollable nature. He was also a member of a gliding club, where he almost lost his life on one occasion, when his glider went straight up, and then turned back and flew straight towards the ground. Fortunately, he managed to regain control of the glider and land safely.

In the summer he and the family used to visit his mother’s younger sister at Ostrowiec, who had three daughters younger than him, his mother’s oldest sister first at Wołkowysk (now Vawkavysk, Belarus) and then at Baranowicze (now Baranavichy, Belarus), who had two daughters much older than him and one younger son, and his father’s brothers, one at Kamień Koszyrski (now Kamin’-Kashyrs’kyi, Ukraine), who was a parish priest there, and the other in Warsaw, who was a major in the Polish Army and had one daughter.

In 1937 Stach spent a part of the summer holidays at a water boy scout camp, kayaking from Lake Narocz (now Narach, Belarus) to Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania). During his last summer holidays before the war in 1939 he was in the Tatra Mountains at Poronin near Zakopane.

On one occasion he was in a group climbing the Kasprowy Wierch mountain, from where they were all supposed to return by cable car. His brother, Jerzy, who ‘already knew’ the Tatras, persuaded him to take ‘a shortcut’, so they ended up late at the cable car station. Stach only had enough money for one return ticket, so they had to return on foot. They had walked over 30 km that day, but everybody was happy to see them return safely as a police search for them had already been arranged!

In June 1939 Stach underwent training in anti-aircraft defence, and when the Germans attacked Poland on 1st September 1939, he was appointed the commander of an AA observation post on the roof of a tenement house at Skarżysko-Kamienna. On 6 September, when German guns could already be heard, he, his father and brother Jerzy left their home and mother at 9:30 p.m. and rode their bikes with a group of about 40 other people to the east of Poland. Nobody knew whether the troops seen in the distance were Polish or German. In the early hours, Stach fell asleep on his bike and when their road turned right, he rode straight ahead and, having ridden through a ditch, he hit a fence with his head and woke up. In the morning, they crossed the Vistula near Lipsk over a bridge, which was destroyed by German bombers a few minutes later. After passing through Lublin, they stopped for a meal at Piaski Lubelskie, where somebody stole Stach’s bicycle. He had to walk to the train station at Trawniki, where he caught a train to Kowel (now Kovel’, Ukraine) and from there to Rożyszcze (now Rozhyshche, Ukraine). From there he rode on a horse-drawn cart to Wiszenki (now Vyshen’ky, Ukraine), where his uncle was the parish priest. He arrived there on 12th September, one day before his father and brother Jerzy.

Soviet troops crossed the Polish border on 17th September, and a few days later passed through Wiszenki. No one welcomed them. They robbed the church, taking tablecloths from the altar (for bed sheets), altar candles, and anything they liked. They took his uncle’s typewriter, saying they would convert the letters into Russian. The boys managed to sell scout compasses as watches to Soviet soldiers, who knew nothing about it!

On Easter Sunday, the Soviet authorities held elections, organising polling stations near churches. People then voted upon leaving the church after the mass and were photographed to show how ‘crowds were going to the polls’. Of course, there was only one candidate ‘of the communists and non-partisans’, and whoever could not prove to have voted already, had to vote again. As a result, the sole candidate received 102% of the votes!

They managed to send several letters to his mother at Skarżysko ‘by a roundabout route’. The German Red Cross misinformed the mother that a few days after leaving Skarżysko, the father, Stach and Jerzy had died near Warsaw and were buried there. This notification arrived a day after a letter from Wiszenki, which assured the mother that all three were alive and well!

In April 1940 Stach was interrogated by the NKVD as to whether he wanted to become a Soviet citizen or to return to his native town under German occupation. He opted for the latter: to return to Skarżysko-Kamienna to rejoin his mother. As was the case with many other Poles, the ‘politically incorrect’ answer probably prompted his deportation into Siberia.

At 2 a.m. on 29th June 1940, armed Soviet soldiers arrived in a horse-drawn cart. They woke up everyone in the rectory, gave the father and brothers two hours to pack, and took them in this cart to the train station at Rożyszcze, where they loaded them into one of two cattle trucks, closing the external latches on the doors so that no one could escape. There were 30 people in the truck, half of whom were loaded onto two shelves, and the other half were under these shelves. The rear door had a round opening with a primitive seat, which was to serve as a toilet. These rail trucks were taken to Kowel to be attached to 48 similar ones for shipment to Siberia.

After two days, the entire train set off eastward. For three days they were given neither food nor drink and were not allowed to leave the truck. Finally, the train stopped in a field between long barbed-wire fences, armed Soviet soldiers standing along these, and everyone was allowed to get out of the rail trucks so that they could ‘empty their stomachs’ under the train or under the fence. Everyone squatted next to each other, men, women, and children, and no one was ashamed. Then the train stopped at the Homel station, where for the first time they were given pearl barley to eat and were allowed to get ‘kipyatok’ (hot water) for tea or soup, if one had something to make it. From then on, the train stopped at stations once a day for pearl barley and ‘kipyatok’.

After two weeks of travelling through Kazan, Omsk, Novosibirsk, and Tomsk, the train reached Asino on the Chulym River, an 1,850-km-long right tributary of the Ob. Here, from the station, the people were taken 8 km in open lorries to a dock on the river and loaded onto two ships for a two-day journey of 240 km upstream. The ships were so cramped that it was difficult to even crouch down for the night. One had to wait for over an hour to use the toilet. Finally, on 15 July, the ships reached a ‘quay’ near the high, right bank of the river. Everyone was unloaded here and taken by horse-drawn carts to two settlements deep in the marshy taiga. The first was 4 km from the river and the second, the ‘Sibiryak’ logging site (Sibiryakovskiy Lesozagotovitielniy Uchastok – Forestry Preparation Unit), which would become the Dabrowskis home until September 1941, 7 km away.

The winter here lasted eight months and a half, the snow was very deep, and the temperature dropped to 57°C. In the summer, due to mosquitoes and gadflies, one had to put a bag with a mesh over one’s head in front of the face. Stach first worked in his father’s brigade in construction work, later he himself became a ‘dyesyatnik po stroityelstvye’ (construction sub-foreman), having under him two or three working teams, including a team of women who made bricks from clay, but he also had to do physical work.

In January 1941 he was transferred to work on tree-felling, working more than 4 km from the settlement. On one occasion he was 20 minutes late, so he had to walk 20 km to a court at Teguldet to receive a punishment sentence for this offence. In April, after a minor misunderstanding with the forest foreman, he was sent to work in timber rafting on the river. His brother Jerzy took care of the house and on 22nd May, although he was only 15, he also started working to help with finances and to be allowed to buy more bread. On 27th May 1941, their father died and was buried the following evening in the forest outside the settlement. In July, Stach and Jerzy worked on forest surveys for a short time. Here, on one occasion, when they stayed overnight deep in the taiga, a bear visited them but fortunately did not hurt them and marched on.

When the Germans attacked Russia in the summer of 1941, and after reaching an agreement with General Sikorski, the Soviet authorities freed them, officially so that they could join the Polish Forces and help them fight the Germans. On 1st September 1941 they were informed of the ‘amnesty’ for Polish citizens and issued with documents that allowed them to travel to join the Polish Forces in the USSR. However, they were denied their outstanding payment and banned from taking a river boat (the only means of transport available to actually leave this place). To be able to use the ‘amnesty’ they built rafts made of wood logs, and using these they eventually left ‘Sibiryak’ on 18 September. After a two-week journey on the river, they arrived at the nearest railway station at Asino on 3rd October. From there, they travelled by train to Pavlodar in Kazakhstan, where there was a Polish organisational unit. They reached it on 24th October. Here, Stach worked in a felt boot factory for a few weeks. They left Pavlodar on 16th November and travelled by train through Tatarskaya and Novosibirsk to Jambul and then through Tashkent to Jalal-Abad, close to the Chinese border, arriving there on 16th December. Here, Stach worked at the ‘Kirov’ Kolkhoz picking cotton.

Finally, on 13th February, at Jalal-Abad Stach was called up to join the Polish Forces, at the 5th Infantry Division, and Jerzy was accepted as a liaison, because he was not yet 16. The next day Stach left for the army unit at Gorchakovo (now Yangi Marg’ilon, part of the city of Margilan, Uzbekistan), but he was not uniformed until 3rd March, when he was posted to the 26th Infantry Regiment in the 9th Division. On 27th March he left for Krasnovodsk (now Türkmenbaşy, Turkmenistan) on the Caspian Sea, from where he went by ship to Pahlevi in Persia (now Bandar-e Anzali, Iran). Jerzy also arrived at Pahlevi a day or two later, but somehow, they failed to find each other there, although they knew they were both there.

On 6th April Stach left for Baghdad and from there to Palestine, where he arrived at the camp in Qastina on 17th April. Here he was attached as a clerk to No. 3 Recruitment Office of the Polish Army at Gedera. On 22nd April the review committee gave him the air crew category ‘A’. From 7th May he was in No. 23 General Hospital near Richon-le-Zion, and on 19th May he joined the 3rd Company, 5th Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 3rd ‘Carpathian’ Rifle Division. On 21st May he returned to No. 23 General Hospital, where on the 23rd he was operated upon to drain water from his knee.

Jerzy arrived in Palestine on 25th May and visited him in the hospital on 29th May, this being their first meeting since 14th February 1942. In June Stach returned to hospital for two more operations. He spent the whole of July in hospital and on the 31st he was transferred to a seaside convalescent camp at Natania, where he stayed until 29th September, when he went to Gedera. Jerzy often visited him in hospital, at Natania and Gedera, and he also visited Jerzy, who was studying at the Junior Military School at Qastina. They sometimes went together to Tel Aviv. On 10th October, Stach moved again to the convalescent camp at Natania.

In November 1942 he volunteered to join the Polish Air Force and on 17th December, he left for Khanaqin in Iraq via Baghdad. On 31st December, he passed the selection board, then passed the written and oral exams on 5th and 6th January 1943, and after an RAF medical board on 18th January, he was accepted without reservations into the air force to be a pilot. On 4th February 1943 he embarked a ship to go to Britain, travelling via Basra in Iraq, Bombay in India, and South Africa. He reached the port of Greenock in Scotland on 30th March 1943. The following day he was interviewed at Blackpool.

On 11th April1943, he formally joined the Polish Air Force (PAF) at Blackpool and received service number 704873. On 22nd April he was posted to the Polish Air Crew Training Centre at Hucknall. From 18th July to 22nd October, he completed Initial Course No. 143 at the Polish Initial Training Wing at Brighton, and from 8th November he was at No. 25 (Polish) Elementary Flying Training School at Hucknall at No. 26 Course of elementary pilot training.

On 13th November he flew for the first time in a Tiger Moth aircraft with an instructor, and on 11th December he soloed on this type. Having completed that course, on 24th February 1944, he was transferred to No. 16 (Polish) Service Flying Training School at Newton. Here he took part in No. 28 Course flying, either with an instructor or solo, in the Master II and Oxford aircraft. He completed the course on 17th May, earning his pilot’s wings.

On 12th August 1944 he was posted to 639 Squadron at RAF Cleave (near Bude in Cornwall) for flying practice. The unit’s role was to tow targets for anti-aircraft artillery training and he flew Henley, Hurricane and Martinet aircraft there. Jerzy joined the Polish Air Force in England on 24th October 1944, and from that date they visited each other. On 6th January 1945, Stach joined the Polish Infantry and Motorised Cavalry Officer Cadet School (Air Force Class) at Crieff, Scotland, from which he graduated on 7th April with the Polish rank of Sergeant, Officer Cadet, while having the British rank of Flight Sergeant.

On 16th April, he was posted to the Polish Air Force Depot at Blackpool, awaiting operational posting. On 17th May, he was posted to No. 22 Personnel Transit Centre (PTC) at the Middle East Air Force HQ and four days later to No. 5 Aircrew Reception Centre at RAF Gianaclis.

This posting was originally intended for him to complete a course at No. 74 Operational Training Unit at Petah Tiqva, Palestine, as a fighter-reconnaissance pilot, for subsequent posting to No. 318 Polish Squadron in Italy. The posting was presumably cancelled as the war was drawing to an end and No. 318 Sqn would not need new pilots. From 18th to 23rd June, he was at RAF Ismailia in Egypt, subsequently re-posted to No. 22 PTC and went back to Britain by sea, returning to the Polish Air Force Depot at Blackpool.

On 21st July, the PAF Depot was transferred to RAF Dunholme Lodge near Lincoln. On 6th October 1945 he was posted on paper to RAF Ipswich for flying duties, but this posting was cancelled before it came into effect (at the time No. 88 Group Support Unit was the only flying unit at RAF Ipswich). On 20th May 1946, he dislocated his knee and was in the sick quarters. On 4th June, he went to the hospital at Lincoln and did not leave the sick quarters until 28th June. From 17th July to 3rd September 1946, he was at No. 2 Medical Rehabilitation Unit at Collaton Cross near Plymouth, near the beautiful River Yealm. On 3rd December 1946 he joined the Polish Resettlement Corps at Dunholme Lodge.

It was only after the war that Stach learned about the death of his mother, who had died in German-occupied Poland.

From 15th May 1947 to 5th April 1948, he served with No. 1102 Marine Craft Unit RAF at Hardway near Gosport, which used fast motorboats to rescue air crews after sea crashes. While there, he was commissioned to the Polish rank of second lieutenant on 5th February 1948.

On 6th April 1948 he was transferred to No. 5 Polish Resettlement Unit at RAF Framlingham. On 9th August 1948 he was released from the Polish Resettlement Corps and accepted into the Royal Air Force for a 5-year service, receiving the rank of Pilot II. On 3rd October he moved to RAF Innsworth near Gloucester, and on 24th November he was posted to No. 1 (Pilots) Refresher Flying Unit at RAF Finningley, where he flew Harvard and Spitfire aircraft. On 1st March 1949 he moved to No. 203 Advanced Flying School at RAF Chivenor. Here he flew Harvard and Spitfire aircraft. On 15th March, the engine in his aircraft failed in flight and Stach had to land it like a glider. From 8th June he was in No. 226 Operational Conversion Unit at RAF Bentwaters, where he flew the Tempest II aircraft. On 28th July he was posted to No. 5 Personnel Despatch Centre at RAF Hednesford, before leaving for Egypt.

On 21st August 1949 he arrived at RAF El Hamra in Egypt and on the 25th at RAF Deversoir on the Suez Canal, on posting to No. 213 Squadron RAF. In that fighter unit he initially flew Tempest F.6 aircraft. On 24th November (the day his sister Halina died) soloed on the de Havilland Vampire FB.5 jet. Between 20th March and 5th April 1950 he underwent No. 7 Instrument Flying Course at the Instrument Rating Flight at RAF Shallufa in Egypt (flying Harvards), and he then returned to No. 213 Sqn at RAF Deversoir.

On 11th May 1950, during his second sortie of exercises over Egypt, during which he had very good results in camera gun attacks on bombers, his Vampire FB.5 VZ188 collided head-on with a Lincoln B.2 heavy bomber of No. 148 Squadron and Stach lost his life. He was buried in the cemetery at Fayid near RAF Deversoir.

At the time, his brother Jerzy, who had married Miss Gwen Dean on 18th February of that year, was a fourth-year student at the Polish School of Architecture in London, where he received his degree in architecture the following June. Three weeks before Stach’s death, he received one last photograph from him, showing Stach swimming in the Suez Canal, waving his hand as if to say goodbye, but captioned on the back: “Don’t worry about me, nothing will ever happen to me!”

Stach’s fiancée, Pamela Allen, whom he had known since 23rd May 1947, unable to get over his death, emigrated to Canada a few months later.

Stach’s British decorations included the 1939–1945 Star, the Defence Medal, the France & Germany Star and the War Medal 1939–1945, and he was also awarded the Polish Air Medal. Throughout his flying career, he was rated ‘above average’ as a pilot.

Jerzy Dąbrowski, Andrew Dąbrowski, Wojtek Matusiak