“Trapped on foreign soil after the catastrophic collapse of their own nation in September 1939, tens of thousands of Polish soldiers rebuilt their army in France, determined to continue the struggle against Nazi Germany.”
By Wojciech Medycki
THE Western World watched in shock and disbelief in May of 1940 as Hitler’s war machine shattered the French army, long considered the finest in Europe. Within six weeks, Paris was in German hands, the remaining Allied forces had been withdrawn from Dunkirk and France’s Third Republic had fallen.
Yet, there were distinct moments of heroism amid the larger story of defeat. Consider the enduring and unjustly contribution to the defence of France made by Poland’s army in exile.
Trapped on foreign soil after the catastrophic collapse of their own nation in September 1939, tens of thousands of Polish soldiers rebuilt their army in France, determined to continue the struggle against Nazi Germany.
Here is some of their story.
Rising from the Ashes
Following the partition of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in September of 1939, the Polish government-in-exile, led by General Władysław Sikorski, established its temporary capital in Angers, France.
Sikorski, serving as both prime minister and military commander-in-chief, faced the monumental task of forging a new fighting force from the remnants of Poland’s defeated army. The raw material for this force came from two primary sources. There were the nearly 45,000 Polish military personnel who had miraculously escaped destruction or capture by evacuating through Romania, Hungary, and the Baltic states. Add to that the more than 40,000 military-aged male Poles who were already living and working in France and Belgium prior to 1939.
By May 1940, the Polish army in France had grown to over 84,000 men. Shaping this into an effective fighting force would prove to be a herculean task. Red tape and bureaucratic inertia with the larger French army and government hampered efforts through the winter of 1939 to 1940. So did severe material shortages, and obsolete equipment. In fact, some units were still only just receiving their heavy weaponry and vehicles when Germany carried out its invasion of France and the Low Countries on May 10. Yet, despite these paralyzing deficiencies, the Polish high command managed to slap together several combat formations, most notably the 1st Grenadier Division, the 2nd Infantry Rifle Division and the 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade. These units would be quickly thrown into battle in the days following the German invasion.
The Crucible of Lorraine
Two weeks into the Battle of France, the 16,000-man 1st Grenadier Division, an infantry unit commanded by General Bronisław Duch, found itself attached to the larger French 4th Army and rushed to the fortified sectors of Lorraine in late May.
By mid-June 1940, as the French front there began to dissolve under relentless German pressure, Duch’s men were ordered to fight a rear guard action to cover the retreat of their French comrades in the Lagarde sector. This would prove to be the division’s finest and most tragic hour.
On June 17 to 18, facing overwhelming and superior German infantry and armoured formations, the Polish grenadiers threw themselves into a series of fierce counterattacks along the Marne-Rhine Canal including a daring night bayonet counterattack to wipe out a German bridgehead.
Eventually however, the French 52nd Infantry Division located on the Polish flank collapsed and withdrew without warning, leaving the 1st Grenadier Division vulnerable to encirclement. To avoid total destruction, Duch ultimately issued the encrypted “Order 4444″ to dissolve the division, commanding his men to destroy heavy equipment and break through in small groups to continue the fight.
Amidst the chaos and blinding smoke of Lorraine, Polish heavy machine gunners played a pivotal and heroic role. Stationed in hastily dug, exposed pits, the crews maintained a devastating rate of fire with their Ckm wz. 30 (copies of the famous American Browning M1917). They pinned down wave after wave of advancing enemy infantry and absorbing the brunt of the German assault to buy precious time for their comrades.
Among these frontline gunners was 19-year-old Tadeusz Medycki—whose wartime journals form the basis of this account—manning his weapon through the relentless onslaught.
It was a brutal, exhausting fight. The gunners had to manage constant jams while burning their fingers on scorching water-cooling jackets as incoming artillery fire poured down on them. The fighting raged for 48 hours, with the action at times devolving to hand-to-hand combat. Yet the Poles held their ground, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy.
Out of approximately 16,000 soldiers, around 2,000 to 2,500 successfully broke through the lines to make it to Great Britain and reconstitute themselves there.
Further south, Poland’s 2nd Infantry Rifle Division, under the command of General Bronisław Prugar-Kettling, fought with equal tenacity as part of the French 45th Corps. Positioned in the Clos du Doubs region near the Swiss border, the division defended its sector against the German XLV Army Corps. During the fierce engagements at Maîche and Damprichard on June 18 to19, the Polish soldiers successfully repulsed repeated German assaults, preventing the immediate encirclement of the French forces. Exhausted, out of ammunition, and with their French allies standing down, Prugar-Kettling led his remaining 15,000 men across the border into Switzerland, where they were interned for the remainder of the war.
The Black Brigade on the Marne
While the infantry divisions bled in Lorraine, the 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade, led by the legendary General Stanisław Maczek, was thrown into the chaotic fighting near Paris. Known as the “Black Brigade” for their distinct black leather coats worn during the 1939 campaign, Maczek’s men were among the Allies’ few veterans of mechanized warfare at that point in the war.
Reconstituted with French light tanks and armored cars, the brigade fought a brilliant mobile defensive campaign.
On June 16, Maczek’s forces launched a daring night attack that recaptured the town of Montbard on the Burgundy Canal, rescuing French units trapped there. However, by June 18, the brigade was completely isolated, starved of fuel, and lacking replacement parts for their battered equipment. Maczek ordered the destruction of his remaining vehicles, and his men began a perilous journey on foot through enemy-controlled territory toward the southern coast of France.
Casualties and the Long Road to Britain
All told, the cost of the Polish involvement in the Battle of France was staggering. Approximately 1,400 Polish soldiers were killed in action, and nearly 5,000 were wounded. More than 16,000 men were taken prisoner by the Germans, while another 15,000 were interned in Switzerland.
As France collapsed into capitulation under Marshal Philippe Pétain, General Sikorski refused to accept defeat. On June 18, 1940, Sikorski flew to London to meet with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Churchill famously assured him: “We are companions in misfortune, but we shall conquer together.”
Sikorski issued a dramatic radio broadcast ordering all Polish personnel to make their way to the coast. In the chaotic days following the Dunkirk evacuation, a second, highly successful evacuation operation took place from the French Atlantic ports.
Thousands of Polish soldiers, including those who had successfully broken out of the Lorraine encirclement, marched hundreds of miles across France to reach key harbours along the Atlantic coast, such as Saint-Nazaire, Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
Organized largely by the British Royal Navy alongside Polish merchant vessels, this maritime lifeline managed to rescue approximately 24,000 Polish soldiers and airmen, successfully transporting them across the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay to safety in the United Kingdom.
These evacuated veterans formed the nucleus of the reconstituted Polish Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. Settling initially in camps across Scotland, they reorganized into the 1st Polish Corps, which would later birth Maczek’s famous 1st Armoured Division and the 1st Independent Parachute Brigade. The Polish soldiers who fought in France had lost another country, but their unbreakable resolve in the face of allied collapse laid the foundation for the vital contributions they would make to the ultimate liberation of Europe.
Author Bio: Wojciech Medycki’s father, Tadeusz Medycki fought on the front lines of Lorraine as a heavy machine gunner in the Polish 1st Grenadier Division before spending the rest of the war in German captivity. His complete, gripping memoir was translated into English and published as To See the Future Bright. My Wanderings. The book offers a rare, first-hand Polish perspective on the tragic 1940 campaign, family heritage, and postwar Poland. It is available via Wydawnictwo Rys.
