2nd Polish Corps: ‘We were united by the blood we shed together’

The core of the Polish Army in the East was made up of people brought out of the ‘inhuman land’: former prisoners and exiles who found themselves deep in the Soviet Union after 17 September 1939. The commonality of experience - of enslavement, starvation and disease or, finally, evacuation - bound these people firmly together. This was all the more so because many of their commanders had been through prisoner-of-war camps in the USSR or NKVD prisons - not only General Anders himself, but also his subordinates: General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, General Bronisław Rakowski or Colonel Nikodem Sulik.

The second component of the Polish troops in the Middle East were the soldiers serving until recently in the Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade, fighting from August 1941 in the defence of the Libyan fortress of Tobruk, and, after it was unlocked, participating in the victorious Battle of Gazala. In March 1942, the brigade was moved to Palestine, where, after being supplemented by evacuees from the USSR, it became the core of the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division (Polish acronym: DSK).

The veterans of the North African campaign were called ‘Rameses’, while those evacuated from the USSR were referred to as ‘The Orthodox’. A third distinctive group consisted of ‘Lords’, or officers who had been sent to the Middle East as staff and commanders. Such was the future deputy of General Anders, General Zygmunt Bohusz-Szyszko, commander of the Independent Highland Rifle Brigade in the 1940 Norwegian campaign. But before combat experience could unite the various groups of soldiers, it became necessary to organise and train them - so that they formed a cohesive operational union ready to go to the front. The trace of these different backgrounds and experiences is reflected in the text of 'The March of the 2nd Polish Corps':

Units under the command of General Anders were deployed in garrisons in Iraq - the core troops in the Khanaqin-Quizil Rabat area in the central part of the country, north of Baghdad (the command in the area of the latter village), while the 3rd DSK in the north, near Mosul and the oil fields there. In addition to carrying out infrastructure cover tasks, the APW was supposed to train.

First, however, the capabilities of the subordinate units had to be restored - it should be remembered that the soldiers who had arrived from the USSR in the months preceding the evacuation were serving in the reality of a harsh climate and shortage of supplies. The Iraqi conditions were not favourable for the arrivals from Europe either: heat (up to 50 degrees in the shade) and sandstorms were a problem. Malaria was also an issue for the malnourished and sickly soldiers - General Anders himself had contracted it in July 1943.

At the same time, the forces at their disposal were being reformed. First, the three divisions arriving from the USSR were reorganised from Soviet (regimental) to British (brigade) units. This proved to be an overstretched structure - after excluding those unable to serve and sending some evacuees from the USSR to supplement the British forces, there were just over 62,000 soldiers under General Anders' command, instead of the full-time equivalent of 71,000. Thus, some rudimentary units were liquidated, the 7th Division from the USSR became an army replenishment centre, and the 2nd Tank Brigade, formed in Palestine in the spring of 1942, was attached to the 6th Lviv (Lwowska) Infantry Division (Polish acronym: DP).

On 27 May, a plane with General Sikorski on board landed in Cairo. The Commander-in-Chief was embarking on an inspection of troops in the Middle East, which had two objectives - to check their condition before their planned deployment to the front and to verify reports of a nascent mutiny among the officers. In the first half of June, the General visited Polish units near Kirkuk, observing demonstration exercises of the 3rd DSK and the 5th Borderlands DP. On 9 June, an army review took place and delegations of all Polish units marched in front of the Commander-in-Chief.

During his stay in the Middle East, General Sikorski also conferred with British commanders. It was then that the decision was to have been made to send a corps to the front under the command of General Anders, who also retained command of the Polish Army in the East.

On 4 July 1943, General Sikorski was killed in a Gibraltar plane crash. His successor as Commander-in-Chief was Lieutenant General Kazimierz Sosnkowski. On 9 July, the Allies landed in Sicily, thus beginning the Italian campaign. A few days later, Churchill decided to send Polish units to support the offensive on the Italian peninsula.

On 21 July, an order was issued to change the organisation of the APW. Line units became part of the 2nd Polish Corps, which was to go to Italy. The commander of British forces in the Middle East General Henry M. Wilson expressed to General Anders his expectation that the corps would reach combat readiness on 1 January 1944. In August 1943, the transport of Polish units to Palestine began, with line troops located in the Gaza area.

During this time, many soldiers of Jewish origin, influenced by Zionist agitation, deserted from the Polish army, joining the local self-defence - one of whom was the future leader of the Irgun and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. General Anders was said to have ordered the gendarmerie not to prosecute the deserters. In October, Polish divisions took part in exercises codenamed Narcissus and Verille, with emphasis placed particularly on mountain operations. In parallel, the 2nd Armoured Brigade was rearmed with Sherman-type tanks.

The 2nd Polish Corps was redeployed to southern Italy between December 1943 and February 1944 and incorporated into General Oliver Leese’s British 8th Army. A total of more than 48,000 soldiers, including 3,000 officers, were sent to the front. There were also 559 Women’s Auxiliary Service volunteers assigned to support operations. The core of the troops commanded by General Władysław Anders consisted of two infantry divisions: the 3rd DSK (under Brigadier General Bolesław Bronisław Duch) and the 5th Borderlands DP (under Brigadier General Nikodem Sulik), each composed of two three-battalion infantry brigades, reinforced by artillery, a reconnaissance armoured car regiment, as well as arms and service subdivisions.

The armoured fist of the Corps was formed by the 2nd Independent Armoured Brigade (under Brigadier General Bronisław Rakowski) with 164 Sherman and Stuart tanks, divided between three armoured four- squadron regiments. The corps had strong artillery, amassed in the 2nd Artillery Group. Units subordinate to the corps commander were the three-squadron reconnaissance Carpathian Uhlan Regiment, equipped with armoured cars, as well as specialist subdivisions, among them the 12th Geographical Company.

Both the corps and its subordinate units had elaborate symbolism. The identifying insignia of the entire tactical union was a white mermaid on a red background, while soldiers also wore the so-called Crusader shield on their shoulder, the 8th Army's identifying insignia - a gold cross on a white background. The symbol of the ‘Carpathian’ troops was a green spruce on a white-and-red background, while that of the ‘Borderlands’ troops a brown bison on a yellow background.

It is worth mentioning that many regiments referred to the traditions of pre-war Polish Army units, especially cavalry ones - hence the presence of the 1st Krechowce Uhlan Regiment (armoured), the 12th Podolia (Podolski) Uhlan Regiment and the 15th Greater Poland (Wielkopolski) Uhlan Regiment (reconnaissance) or the 7th Horse Artillery Regiment (self-propelled artillery).