THE MISSING HUNDREDS

I have been reviewing my unused notes and I am beginning to reaalise just how many of the brave Poles of 304 Squadron are unaccounted for.  Each and every one of them deserves a place in this tribute but it is so difficult when there is just no information.  So far I have picked up 132 names and I have not yet completed the letter C!  If any one reading this can help with any information/photographs/documents/press cuttings on any of them, please contact me on nevillebougourd@gmail.com but please leave a contact email number!

The first 132 names are listed below and I will publish more as I retrieve them.

ABAKANOWICZ F/Sgt Leon Brunon P-781320

ABCZYNSKI F/O Andrzej Emil Gabriel P-2737
ABRAHAM Sq/Ldr
ADAMCZYK L/Ac Emil P-782423
ADAMCZYK L/Ac Stefan P-703327
ADAMOWICZ Sgt Adam Stanislaw P-782087
ADAMOWICZ Ac1 Jan P-709002
ANANOWSKI Sgt
ANDRUSZKIEWICZ L/Ac Zygmunt P-782560
ANDRUSZKO F/Lt Waclaw P-1933
ANDRZEJEWSKI L/Ac Edward P782081
ANDRZEJEWSKI L/Ac Stanislaw P-793587
ANIMUCKI Sgt Stanislaw P-705563
ARABAS A/C2 Jan L P-704639
ARANOWSKI Sgt A
AWDZIEJEW Sgt Jan Stanislaw P-784934
BACHMAN L/Ac Adolf P-703341
BACHRYNOWSKI L/Ac Bronislaw P-703892
BACZYNSKI Cpl Jozef P-703337
BACZYNSKI F/O Tadeusz Stanislaw P-2503
BAK Cpl Antoni P-784081
BAKOWSKI Ac1 Edward P-707012
BAKUN L/Ac Jozef P-703340
BALINSKI F/Sgt Waclaw P-706896
BALOS L/Ac Stanislaw P-780375
BANAS Sgt Jan Julian P-782919
BANASIAK Cpl Stanislaw P-705786
BARAN L/Ac Jan P-781840
BARAN L/Ac Wladyslaw P-705131
BARANIK Ac2 Czeslaw P-708647
BARCZ Cpl Edward P-780166
BARCZUK L/Ac R
BAREWSKI Sgt
BARSKI Ac1 Roman P-708414 Also known as JANOWSKI
BARSZCZ L/Ac Stanislaw P-781426
BARTECKI Sgt Leon P-782156
BARTELSKI F/Lt Jan Mieczyslaw P-2454
BARTKIEWICZ Cpl Jan P-780032
BARTNICKI W/O Gerard P-705685
BARTNICZAK L/Ac Franciszek P-782178
BARTOSZEWICZ L/Ac Kazimierz P-705791
BASIAK F/O Jan P-0330
BAWOLSKI F/Sgt Edward Antoni P-780312
BEDNARZ L/Ac Karol P-780377
BERES L/Ac Tadeusz Marian P-783022
BERGER Sgt Antoni P-793337
BETLEJEWSKI L/Ac Stefan P-706146
BIALECKI Sgt Jozef Janusz P-783228
BIALEK Sgt Stanislaw P-780723
BIEDA-BIELOWICKI Ac2 Ignacy P-703233
BIELECKI F/O Jan P-2842
BIELSKI F/Lt Zygmunt Tadeusz P-2231
BIENIAS Ac1 Adam P-705796
BIENIASZ Sgt Jan Kazimierz P-782829
BILICKI Sgt Florian Stanislaw P-782091
BLACHOWSKI F/O Jerzy Jozef P-0948
BLAZEJWSKI F/Lt Antoni P-1826
BLOCK Ac2 Franciszek P-709635
BOBA Sgt Tadeusz P-782718
BOBER Sgt Mikolaj P-792487
BOBOWSKI L/Ac Wladyslaw P-703342
BOCHAT L/Ac Teodor Waclaw P-780724
BODNAR L/Ac Antoni P-782144
BOGATEK Cpl Marian P-703231
BOGUSZ Sgt Kazimierz P-782542
BOGUSZEWSKI L/Ac Wladyslaw S P-782088
BOHATKIEWICZ Henryk
BOJARCZUK W/O Romuald P-783111
BOJMAN L/Ac Wolf P-706110
BOLAWENDER Sgt Edward P-705690
BOLESLAW L/Ac Stanislaw P-703992
BONDEL L/Ac Marian P-704105
BONDER L/Ac Stanislaw P-703347
BORECKI Cpl Bronislaw P-784101
BORECKIL/Ac Kazimierz P-703733
BORKOWSKI Cpl Tadeusz P-781956
BORKOWSKI F/Lt Zdzislaw Kazimierz P-2303
BORZYCH F/Lt Jan P-1827
BOUSZE Cpl Stanislaw Tadeusz P-781445
BRAS F/Sgt Antoni P-780309
BRATKOWSKI Sgt Marian Jan P-782686
BRAUN F/O T
BRAZKOWSKI L/Ac Marian P-703346
BROCHMAN F/O Roman P-2955
BRODA Sgt
BRODOWSKI L/Ac Jan P-703334
BROS L/Ac Wladyslaw P782092
BRUCHACZA Act/Sgt A
BRYCH Sgt Pawel
BRZEZIE-RUSSOCKI F/Lt Aleksander Maria P-1978
BRZOZOWSKI Ac2 Tadeusz P-706575
BRZOZOWSKI W/O Zygmunt P-704191
BRZUCHACZ F/Sgt Andrzej P-780757
BUCHMAN L/Ac Dawid P-707638
BUCZACKI L/Ac Tadeusz P-781347
BUCKO Sgt Jan (or Julian) P-794894
BUCZYLKO W/O
BUDKIEWICZ F/Sgt Kazimierz P-784190
BUJAS L/Ac Marian P-784232
BUJAS Cpl Mieczyslaw P-782427
BUKOWSKI F/Sgt P-793105
BULZAK L/Ac Stanislaw P-705544
BURATYNSKI W/O Henryk P-704987
BUREK W/O Jozef P-784160
CEGLA Sgt Jan P-780856
CEGLINSKI Cpl Jozef P-792935
CHARKIEWICZ L/Ac Leon Jozef P-705807
CHILMON L/Ac Aleksander Pawel P-794507
CHLOSTA L/Ac Stanislaw P-703351
CHMAJ F/Lt Tadeusz Kazimierz P-0582
CHMIELEWSKI F/O Waclaw Marian P-2896
CHOINSKI-DZIEDUSZYCKI F/O Jan P-1864
CHOJNACKI F/Sgt Mieczyslaw P-706447
CHOJNACKI Ac1 Pawel P-708651
CHOMICKI Sgt Marian P-704293
CHOMKA F/Lt Waclaw P-0670
CHORZEWSKI Sgt Kazimierz P-704106
CHRISTMANN F/O Rudolf Karol P-0006
CHROMCEWICZ Cpl Jan P-784266
CHRUSCICKI L/Ac Andrzej P-794742
CHRZANOWSKI S/Ldr Wladyslaw P-0134
CHUCHELA F/Lt Wladyslaw
CHUDZICKI Sgt K
CHUDZIKIEWICZ Sgt Tadeusz P-705776
CHWAJA Cpl Waclaw P-781628
CHWALKO W/O Leonid P-783233
CIASTON Sgt Franciszek P-792374
CIBICKI L/Ac Tadeusz P-794104
CICHOSZEWSKI Sgt Maksymilian P-782796
CIECHANOWICZ F/O Mieczyslaw P-2868
CIECHANOWSKI F/Lt Wiktoryn Zygmunt P-1310
CIELEN L/Ac Adam P-782176

MIECZYSLAW BOREK - UPDATE

He was born on 30th September 1922 at Smyga, Dubno Wolyn and was the eldest of five children. On the outbreak of war the family was taken to Siberia and on their release, they travelled to Palestine. He joined the Polish Army in September 1942 and escorted German Prisoners of War to the United States of America.

In October 1942 he transferred to the Polish Air Force and was assigned to 304 Squadron, who were then part of Coastal Command and based at RAF Dale in Pembrokeshire, South west Wales. Their primary function was submarine killing and convoy protection but they also harassed enemy shipping.

He survived the war and made the transition to Transport Command (still with 304 Squadron) where their new function was transporting food and medical supplies to Greece and Jugoslavia. Whilst doing this he was in a serious accident on a routine training flight. On 18th January 1946 the Vickers Warwick in which he was flying caught fire on landing at RAF Chedburgh, Sussex.

Part of the wreckage from Vickers Warwick HG273 (QD-X)

The pilot, W/O Bojarczuk, was killed but W/O Borek and W/O Zurek survived. Mieczyslaw was pulled from the burning aircraft with his clothes on fire. He suffered a badly broken right leg and the tendons in his right ankle were severed. He was sent to 2MRU (Medical Rehabilitation Unit) at RAF Collaton Cross in Devon. He remained there until his discharge from the Air Force on 11th April 1947 after which he became part of the Polish Resettlement Corps.

                    Recovering at 2MRU, RAF Collaton Cross, Devon

He married an English girl in 1952 and raised a family over the coming years. In 1955 he moved to Bristol where he trained as an aircraft engineer. In the mid 1970s he qualified as a teacher and followed that profession until he retired. Subsequently he did voluntary work as an interpreter for the United Nations in Bristol. He was one of those presented with Maundy Money by the Queen at a ceremony in Bristol Cathedral. He was known to be living in Cadbury Heath, Bristol in 2009.

Photos © Mike Borek

JERZY TUSIEWICZ

He was born on 24th February 1922 in Pultusk in Warsaw Province. In 1939 he was in the 2 Cadet Corps in Rawicz. In September 1939 he was transferred to 2 Baloon Battalion in Legionowo. During the September Campaign, on 15th September 1939, he was captured by the Germans and became a Prisoner of War until 23 March 1942. It is highly unlikely that he was released so presumably he escaped.

In 1943 he found himself in England and was directed to the Polish Depot in Blackpool. In July 1943 he was posted to the Flying School at RAF Hucknall in Nottinghamshire (probably 15 Polish Elementary Flying Training School) and then to 16 SFTS (16 Polish Service Flying Training School) in Newton as pilot-cadet with Polish rank of plutonowy (the equivalent British rank is L/Ac). In December 1944 he was posted to Navigation School at RAF Blackpool as a pilot and navigator-cadet. In February 1945 he qualified and was posted to 304 Squadron as a pilot.

In May 1945 he was promoted to the polish rank of sierżant-podchorąży (the equivalent British rank is Sergeant). In May 1946 he finished his flying service as a pilot in 16 SFTS in RAF Newton.

In 1947 he emigrated to Canada and settled in Port Severn, Ontario. He became a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and later, Senior Administrator of the University of Toronto. He died on 18th May 2011.

COMMENTS AND CONTACT

I am very pleased to receive comments on this blog and I will publish them providing they are not abusive or otherwise offensive.  Please feel free to leave your comments but please also contact me directly if you have any information, corrections or photographs that will add interest to it.

Please address any initial contacts to NEVandDOREEN@aol.com

VLADIMIR ROMAN SKULSKI

He was born on 15th April 1921 at Stryj. In September 1940 he moved to Trochaniv where he took up the post of school teacher, which he held until 15th April 1941, his twentieth birthday, when he was conscripted into the Red Army and sent to Russia.

This involved a two week train journey in primitive and unhygienic conditions until he reached the city of Voroshylovsk (now Stavropol) where he was issued with his uniform and a rifle but no ammunition. He was also trained to drive a T33 tank and to load and fire its gun; this must have been difficult as there was no petrol and no ammunition available.

About three months after the Germans turned on their Russian allies, in the late summer of 1941, he was sent to the city of Novorossyisk where he trained on mortars and spent a lot of time working as a lumberjack and living in a leper village. Here he records many hours watching the German bombers pounding the city by night, with no opposition from Russian fighters.

In November 1941 his group set off to march to Stalingrad (now Volgograd), marching only at night and through severe blizzards. After sixteen nights they were put on a train and sent to Rostov-on-Don, backtracking more than half of their march, to meet the German advance. Here they had to dig huge anti-tank trenches as a barrier to the German panzers; they worked twelve hours a day, digging first through the frozen snow and then sixty centimetres of permafrost before reaching soft earth.

At the end of March 1942, he was sent to Stanica Krymskaya, just North of the Black Sea, where he and his team were put to work building a road and an airfield. One of his jobs involved standing waist deep in a river digging out gravel for the concrete. At the beginning of June of that year his group were de-militarised and became a civilian work group – paid but virtually slave workers, with low pay and increased working hours.

On 19th July 1942 he and three friends made a bid for freedom in the hope of joining the newly forming Polish Army in Exile under General Anders> He was wearing his ‘new’ uniform which had a bullet hole through the left breast , with a dark stain around it. The Russians were so short of uniforms that they were stripping dead soldiers.

Furtively they made their way, via back lanes and woodland, to the railway station and mingled with Russian soldiers before taking a train to Krasnodar. From there they got a train immediately to Groznyy, capital of the Chechen-Ingush Soviet Republic; they were heading for Makhachkala which was a port on the Caspian Sea and the capital of Dagestan Soviet Republic. Fron there they caught another train to Baku in Azerbaijan. Here they approached the authorities for help to join the Polish Army, but were arrested by the NKVD (forerunners of the KGB) and were about to be deported back to Russia (?) when they escaped and tagged on to a group of wounded Russian soldiers, eventually boarding a vessel named \Dagestan bound for Krasnovodsk (now Turkmenbashi) in Turkmenistan.

In Krasnovodsk they met a Polish Officer who directed them to the Polish Military office there and were then astounded at the attitude of the man in charge, Colonel Bering, who threw them out, called them nothing more than a bunch of deserters and threatened to have them arrested by the NKVD. However, a sympathetic Polish Officer gave them food and cigarettes and suggested they go to Guzar in Uzbekistan to join General Anders’ army.

After three uncomfortable days on a train through the Kara Kum Desert, they arrived at Bukhara in Uzbekistan and narrowly escaped being arrested by border guards. After a very short time they took a train for the three hour journey to Guzar. As the train was pulling in to the station, Roman was caught by a Policeman but managed to escape through a toilet window and lost himself in the crowds on the station platform. With considerable difficulty, the four men were accepted into the Polish Army on 29th July 1942 and they were fed, given clean uniforms and a shower with real soap. He wryly remarked that they were given toilet paper and that was the first he had had in his fifteen months in the Soviet Union.

Through all their adventures, Roman had to take the lead because he was the only one who was fluent in Russian.

On 4th August 1942 he was assigned to a tank battalion and nine days later the Poles left Guzar and returned to Krasnovodsk where, on 19th August 1942 they boarded the Russian vessel Kaganovych bound for Pahlevi in Persia (now Enzeli in Iran). Whilst there he became the victim of a series of nasty illnesses; firstly it was malaria and then a bout of dysentery followed by yellow jaundice and then a serious eye infection which virtually blinded him – this was caused by a sea water parasite picked up whilst bathing. Soon after leaving hospital he volunteered to go to England to join the Polish Air Force in Exile.

After several aptitude tests and spending some time in Iraq, he left for England on 4th February 1943 and boarded the ship Islami at Basra bound for Bombay (now Mumbai) in India. A week after arriving there he boarded the ship Mariposa which travelled to England via Cape Town, South Africa. He finally arrived at the Polish Depot at Blackpool on 30th March 1943 and was transferred to the Elementary Flying Training School at RAF Hucknall where he also began to learn English. He then moved to Brighton, Sussex for further training and in May 1943 he began training as a pilot.

Due to serious and persistent bouts of air sickness he gave up the pilot’s course and went to Canada to train as a navigator. The air sickness was too much and he was grounded and returned to England as ground crew with 304 Squadron.

After the war he married an English girl in Brighton on 22nd June 1946 and moved to London and then Portsmouth. In the spring of 1949 he was discharged from the Polish Resettlement Corps and emigrated to Canada. He trained at McGill University and qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1955, later he moved to British Columbia. He raised a family of four children in Canada and made several holiday trips back to England.

He died in West Vancouver on 30th March 2008.

STANISLAW ANDRZEJ JOZEF BOCZKOWSKI

I am delighted to announce that I have had contact from the son of this airman.  His father is alive and well and living in Canada and they would like to trace their Polish roots.  What they already know is as follows:

Stanislaw's father was Aleksander (1890-1966) and mother Irena Zurakowska (1899-1994). Aleksander had two sisters - Waclawa and Zofia as well as two brothers - Wladyslaw (married Helena Lewicka) and Stanislaw (married Walentyna Miller).  The family came from Wolyn (Krzemieniec, Oleszkowce, Zaslaw, etc), their "home" was lost to the Soviet Union, massacres, knowledge of massacres including Katyn and generally post war crushing poverty.

This site is currently receiving 800-900 hits per month and about a quarter of them are from Poland so if any of you can help with information on this family, please post it here and I will gladly pass it on.

ZYGMUNT JAN SOLECKI

He was born in Kolomyja on 6th May 1921 and trained as a fitter and turner before his military service which he began in 1937 at Bydgoszcz. He qualified as a wireless operator at Krosno in 1939 but because of the outbreak of war he was evacuated to Romania, crossing at Kuty. He left Romania in December 1939 and made his way via Syria and Lebanon to France where he arrived on 18th January 1940. On the capitulation of France he escaped to England where he arrived on 27th June 1940 and was sent to the Polish Depot at Blackpool. He underwent further wireless and gunnery training and then operational training with 18OTU.

He was posted in to 304 Squadron on 26th April 1942 at RAF Lindholme where he served until 1st August 1943 and completed his tour of duty before moving to 6OTU as an instructor. On 19th July 1944 he began training with 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit where he trained on four engine heavy bombers before moving on to 1586 (Special Duties) Flight at Brindisi in Italy until the end of the war. After this he moved on to various ferry units and, later, 206, 242 and 242 Transport Squadrons and later he was involved in the Berlin Airlift. Finally he joined 40 Transport Squadron in March 1948 and stayed with them until his demobilisation in October 1948.

He was awarded the Silver Cross of the Order of Virtuti Militari and the Cross of Valour three times in his career. This was achieved during 52 operational missions with 304 Squadron and 22 particularly dangerous Special Duties trips with 1586 Flight (301 Squadron).

He settled in Britain and worked in a prominent position in a shipbreakers yard until he retired in 1986. He died in Neath, West Glamorgan, Wales on 28th February 2005 and was cremated there.