XV 24th June 2000
The rapeseed was frozen out in winter because it was exposed in turn to warm weather and hard freezing. It was a loss, but we still had time to plough the fields and replace it with spring rape, which though not a plentiful crop would compensate. We have sown in spring a new barley: Atol - which is a special brewery quality, of larger grain, sown at lower rate of 150kg per hectare to increase the spread of plants, allowing the sun to get better to the ears during maturing. We signed a 200 ton contract with a brewery in Sierpc, which produces the famous ʻKasztelanʼ beer. Varying its produce is an advantage to the farm and the price anticipated for this grain is two to three times better than for ordinary barley. Of course the cost is more, particularly in cleaning and careful selection of ecological herbicides.
We bought, second hand, a large German Fortschritt grain-cleansing machine to fulfil the contract, and installed it transversely in the garage, turning the dust flue to the back. The machine is 5 meters long and two high, and has a powerful electric motor moving various guiding, selecting and shaking sieves; the cleaned grain is deposited into a timber container built by us, whilst various smaller or broken sizes and rejects are fed by the machine into sacks through nozzles at its side. The grain is loaded into it at high level, by hand, from a trailer placed at the side - it is a large but functional operation, and we have already cleaned some of our own grain for sowing with good results. This year the three “hungry saints” Pancracy, Servacy and Bonifacy, on 12th, 13th and 14th of May were cold, which predicts the arrival of a cold spell, but nature did not slow down and we hope for a good harvest.
There was a demonstration in Warsaw concerning Katyn, remembering 15,000 Polish officers taken prisoner by the Soviet army in 1939 and subsequently shot by the Russian police. Major Zylinski father of a girl who became my wife, was taken prisoner with his company on 19th September, two days after the Russians marched into Poland. A Red Army officer invited him into a peasantʼs cottage, which he made his headquarters, and inspected his army papers in which he found details of his having fought in the forces supporting Kolchak and Denikin, the generals of the white counter revolution; the officer thanked him, gave him back his papers and had him taken outside and shot against the wall of the cottage, while his unit was marched without him to a prisoner of war camp. This was a war crime. In Normandy I saw one of my soldiers shoot a German prisoner marching with his hands up; I gave him 3 nights of guard duty and warned him that he will be court-marshalled if it happens again. That also was a war crime. Walking the leafy lanes of the French countryside the same morning, two hands heaved out of a hedge screaming fearfully ʻJa Polakʼ (I am a Pole); and a German soldier holding up an old battered Polish scouts identity card was pulled out; we sent him back as prisoner. We took many prisoners, whose fear was great, seeing the label ʻPolandʼ sewn on the shoulders of our uniforms, and knowing our hate, at the very time when, they were burning Warsaw. Anchored in our mind at this time was the wrath that we wanted to defend her, with a passion to avenge her here.
Later I was shot in Holland by a Russian soldier of the Ukrainian SS division fighting for the Germans, while I myself was leading a platoon of men who were German soldiers, with my Bren-gun carrier being one of the last German wounded, evacuated from Stalingrad. They were experienced soldiers of Rommelʼs army, taken prisoner in Africa, now fighting bravely, with their Silesian spirit, for the Polish cause - with a disconcerting preference for German arms, which they grabbed and used; a startling experience for anyone hearing a Schmeisser or a Spandau at oneʼs shoulder. The hates and loyalties in all parts of Europe, on both the allied and the enemy sides, were opaque, confused, concealed and contradictory. Major Zylinski (my posthumous father-in-law) who, if not then, would probably have been shot in Katyn represented for that Russian officer a rightist who helped to turn a ruthless revolution into a bloody, foreign-inspired civil war, which cost Russia ten million lives. While this is not a justification of the dastardly crime committed in Katyn, against Polish prisoners of war - the fact is that a young Polish State born on 11th November 1918 was in 1919 invading Russia, at the same time as Japanese army was moving into Kamchatka, Americans had units in Irkutsk in Siberia, British and French forces were landing in Archangel, the Czech army was taking over the railways in the Urals, while Poles, led by a brave patriot, and founder of the Polish state, a great leader Piłsudski - himself a socialist and a revolutionary with Lenin in 1905, was occupying Kiev and sending Polish naval flotillas down the Dnieper and Pripet rivers to support the White counter-revolution of Kolchak and Denikin. We know about the heroic defence of Warsaw and the Miracle of Vistula on the 15th August 1920, which rightly is a great pride for the nation, and remember what our parents did then including my father, as a young soldier and his brother Stephen, a lieutenant, decorated for valour, who died shortly of illness caught in the campaign. But there is a balance to render in human affairs - and duty to face the past without doubts - because we can believe that each new generation is strong enough to face the whole truth and live with pride with it.
In Leszczyn, our grandmother who as a young chatelaine before the First World War built a crèche and taught village children, no longer did so later, though it continued and was maintained with a teacher and by aunt Ewa. The reason for grandmotherʼs decision was the fact that when the Red Army occupied this side of Vistula in 1920 and our family had to flee across the river to save themselves, the villagers of Leszczyn built a triumphal arch to welcome the Reds. We hold many memories in Europe, from Spain all the way to the Urals, which an Englishman could only compare with the times of the civil war and Oliver Cromwell - with the then changing loyalties and doubts - but here it is still happening today.
