Polish Holy Cross Brigade - Cdr's History
 

Thank you Joker for the go-ahead, as well as the advice to break it into smaller chunks.

EXSUM: The attached document was originally done in Polish and of extremely small-scale distribution when published. An Army buddy, whose father was a junior officer in the brigade and in whose house Polish was learned before English, has spent the last 5 years translating it as best he could and I've done some slight assistance (some proofing, grammar/tyrant) in getting into a format that works (hopefully) to get a wider audience.

The formal title is "I Was the Commander" (of the Holy Cross Brigade, the Brygada), authored by Colonel Antoni Bohun-Dąbrowski. This particular resistance effort separates itself from others who were either rolled up by the Nazis, or chose to collaborate with the Soviet Army (and NKVD) only to find themselves shot or shipped off to Siberia when no longer useful.

As my reviewer's note states:
"They understood, as many did not, that their entire culture was at risk of extermination from either or both sides, Fascist or Communist. The ancient proverb, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" rings hollow when thus situated. The Brygada knew, deeply, that your enemy is your enemy until he becomes otherwise."

Hence, the Commander's motto:
"In the hardest, even seemingly-hopeless situation
it is not allowed to lose faith in achieving the desired result."

The Brygada not only managed to keep themselves intact, but continue a movement west to ultimately link-up with the US Army and, among other things, stopping on their way to raid & liberate a concentration camp with over 1,000 women in Czechoslovakia.

Thanks to 144.1 for the modern rendition of the Brigade patch seen on page 4. 258 pages, broken into 4 PDFs.

The docs were originally in MS-Word. Numerous hyperlinks in the method exported still work on at least 3 different PDF readers I have for those who may want add'l info - point, hold down Control key, and click. (Sorry for vanilla wiki locations but, hey, they don't move & consistency is important.)

Hope some of you will enjoy.