A Question of Honor: The Kosciuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II by Lynne Olson & Lynne Olson

Author:Lynne Olson & Lynne Olson [Olson, Lynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307424501
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2015-10-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“The War Is in Poland”

FOR A FEW months in the midst of the war, an exquisitely embroidered, hand-stitched banner was on display at Northolt. Under the care of the Kościuszko Squadron for that period, the banner was the official standard of the Polish Air Force in Britain. It had been secretly sewn in 1940 by women in the city of Wilno, which was occupied then by the Soviets. From Wilno, the banner had been smuggled into England by the Polish underground.

Bearing an image of the Virgin Mary and the words “Love Demands Sacrifice,” the banner was designed in late 1939 by a young Polish fighter pilot who, with thousands of his countrymen, had just arrived in France. Another pilot, a native of Wilno, arranged through underground contacts to have the standard made in his hometown. A search began for scarlet and white damask and for gold and silver embroidery thread, which were finally found in Berlin, of all places, and brought to Wilno by neutral diplomats. For more than three months, Polish women throughout the city risked their lives to work on the banner. It was completed in June 1940, but France had fallen by then and the problem of getting it to the Polish Air Force in England seemed insuperable. Once again, a diplomat—Wilno’s Japanese consul, whose country was still nominally neutral at that point—came to the rescue by sending it out in a diplomatic pouch. The standard finally reached London in the spring of 1941. Most of the women who had sewn it never knew that: they, like hundreds of thousands of others in eastern Poland, had vanished—deported to the gulags and collectives of the Soviet Union.

That July, General Sikorski handed over the standard, which symbolized the connection between the Polish Air Force and the people of Poland, to 300 Bomber Squadron. Every three months, Sikorski declared, the standard would be sent on to another Polish squadron—until the fliers could carry it back to its rightful home in Poland.

A Kościuszko Squadron pilot hands over the official Polish Air Force standard to a pilot of 304 (Silesia) Squadron in March 1942. The standard was secretly sewn in 1940 by women in Wilno, then under Soviet occupation, and smuggled to London. (PolishInstitute and Sikorski Museum)

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