|
Franciszek KURAK According to the practical application of the international
law, for a soldier the internment in a neutral country means a change
of status from an active participant to a mere passive observer of events.
The former status gives one the opportunity to fight for a set goal,
with calculated hardship of the front-life, not to mention a considerable
risk of losing one's life. The latter option usually promises relatively
comfortable conditions to wait out the storms of history. When, towards
the end of 1939, after a few weeks of struggle with the Nazi-Soviet
invasion, thousands of Polish soldiers and officers found themselves
in the internment camps in Rumania and Hungary, only a few felt that
their soldier's duty was fulfilled and became occupied with organizing
their "new" life within the confines of the camps' wires. An overwhelming
majority, taking advantage of a favourable attitude of the Rumanian
and Hungarian authorities (limited, to be sure, by the pressure from
the Nazi diplomacy), as well as the evacuation action, efficiently organized
by the Polish authorities, begun to disappear from the proverbial "golden
cage" almost daily.
|
|||||||
|
Franciszek Kurak was born on February 17, 1915 in St. Petersburg, in a family of Polish deportees, who in 1918, when Poland regained her independence, came back to Poland and settled in Poznan. After completing the elementary school in 1934, and the Vocational School for Mechanics in 1936, he was conscripted for military service in the 7 Engineer Battalion in Poznan. He finished the Non-Commissioned Officers School with honours and a promotion to the rank of a corporal. In 1938 he took part in the regaining of the Cieszyn Silesia (Zaolzie), awarded to Poland by the Treaty of Versailles, but occupied illegally by Czechoslovakia. Following his return to Poznan he worked for the H. Cegielski company, and then in the Polish State Railways Management. He served the military campaign of 1939 in the 6 Engineer Battalion, and on September 21 he was taken prisoner by the Soviets. After an escape, which he organized with two other prisoners in October, he managed to get to Hungary, where he was interned in a camp in the town of Tapioszele, near Budapest. In April 1940, with the help from the Polish Consulate in Budapest, he was directed to the Polish Army in the West. The road led through Yugoslavia, with a particular difficulty of crossing the border river Drava. From the two possible options: the "dry" (over a bridge) and the "wet" (on a small boat), he got the latter, which cost him pneumonia after the boat capsized on the river. After a month of recuperation in the Yugoslav port-town of Split he was, together with others, transported to Beirut in Lebanon, where the Carpathian Lancer Regiment was just being formed within the frames of the Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade. The fall of France caused the evacuation of the Brigade to Palestine where Corporal Kurak underwent further training and completed engineer's courses with specialization in the installation and disarming of field mines. The Libyan Campaign of 1941 Franciszek Kurak did as an already fully trained engineer, scouting the front sections taken over by the Brigade as well as marking out foot-paths amidst mine fields for reconnaissance patrols and expeditions. He paid for it with a minor wound while making the rounds in the vicinity of Tobruk and another time being buried in sand following an artillery shell explosion during one of the reconnaissance missions on the Medauar Hill. In the Italian Campaign, which for the Carpathian Lancer Regiment begun in January 1944, he took part in combat operations on the Sangro River and in the struggle over Monte Cassino. One day, during the fight over Monte Cairo Cpl. Kurak and his twenty men strong patrol were caught in the cross-fire of the enemy artillery, which unabled their retreat and threatened to kill off the patrol. On top of that, they lost their radio communication equipment, destroyed by enemy fire, and with that the ability to effectively direct their own artillery fire on to the enemy's positions. In this hopeless situation, Cpl. Franciszek Kurak, in civilian life a born athlete, took upon himself a mission, which today he thinks of as the most difficult and the longest run of his life. He ran under constant enemy fire a distance of about half a kilometre of a mountainside overgrown with thorny bushes. He did it twice, in order to deliver new radio communication equipment to the patrol held at bay. They were saved. Only after the operation was over did the corporal realize that his body was studded with hundreds of thorns from the bushes he forced his way, and what was stranger still, he did not feel any pain from them during the runs. For his action Cpl. Franciszek Kurak was awarded the War Order of VIRTUTI MILITARI and promoted to the rank of a lance sergeant. Soon after this, he was fatally wounded by a piece of mortar shell during the removal of mines on the foreground. In a hopeless condition, with his chest thorn open and a mangled lung, he was waiting, as the soldiers used to say, "for blankets and oils" (blankets were used to wrap the bodies of those killed in action, and oils, of course, with regards to the Extreme Unction). He remembers only asking the priest, how long he was going to live. He is convinced to this day that he owes his life to Adolf Bochenski, who regardless of his regimental comrade's hopeless condition, organized his transport to the British military hospital in Bari. During his convalescence, by now in the Polish 2 Military Hospital, he met his future wife - Stefania Jablonska. When, after the period of recuperation, as unfit for further military service, he was in "danger" of being shipped to England, he reported to the commander of the 2 Corps' Base with a request to be assigned to his mother unit - the Carpathian Lancer Regiment. General Waclaw Przezdziecki (a former officer in the Russian army, who spoke Polish with frequent Russian inclusions), familiarized already with Lance Sergeant Kurak's combat and medical records, looked at the medals on his uniform and said: "What, Sergeant. You've got your troubles and your cross already. Why stick your neck out again?". But he handled the assignment. War, however, was over, at least officially. Lance Sergeant
Franciszek Kurak, after a few years spent in England, decided with his
wife to move to Canada, where they came in 1952. Thanks to his training
as a mechanic, he had no problems finding a good work and providing
for his family. • Although his warring past is just a fade-away memory today, sometimes remembering it and looking at his military decorations, among them: the Silver Cross of the War Order of VIRTUTI MILITARI (nr. 10678) and the Cross of Valour, Franciszek Kurak wonders with some measure of perverseness - if it took all this to be promoted from a corporal to lance sergeant, what would he have to have done for the sergeant's promotion? January, 1996 Franciszek Kurak passed away on August 28, 1996 in Hamilton, Ontario Translation: Agnieszka K. Marszalek
Last modified September 20, 2008 7:28 PM |
