Tadeusz Lesisz, former Polish seaman

Published on Thursday 22 October 2009 21:53

Born: 10 February, 1918, in Kozienice, Poland. Died: 23 September, 2009, in Manchester, aged 91.

TADEUSZ Lesisz was a sub-lieutenant on the Burza, one of three Polish destroyers met in the North Sea by the Royal Navy and escorted into Leith on 1 September, 1939.

Poland had only a short coast on the Baltic, and, after regaining independence in 1918, sought to acquire a small, modern fleet. Burza was of 1929 vintage and French-built, whilst the other two destroyers, Blyskawica and Grom, were thoroughly modern, constructed by Whites of Cowes, and extremely fast.

The Poles were well aware their small fleet would have no chance against the might of the German navy when war inevitably broke. On 30 August, they ordered three of their five major surface ships to slip the Baltic and join the Royal Navy.

The Germans invaded Poland on 1 September and for three days the Polish crews awaited events. To their relief, Britain declared war on 3 September. Refuelled and re-provisioned, their ships joined the Home Fleet in Rosyth.

In the next few weeks, two Polish submarines, Wilk and Orzel, escaped the Baltic and reached Scottish waters.

These Polish ships were to be the vanguard of a larger Polish invasion of Scotland.

In July 1940, some 20,000 men arrived after the fall of France. They were the remnants of an army formed in France after Poland had, in September 1939, been partitioned between the Soviet Union and Germany. Initially charged with the defence of the Fife coast against a potential German diversionary invasion, they would form the nucleus of the Polish 1st armoured division which fought in the north-west Europe campaign in 1944-1945 and of the Polish parachute brigade, dropped at Arnhem in September 1944.

On Burza was the young Lesisz, the youngest of nine children – four boys and five girls. He had joined the nascent Polish navy as a cadet in 1936 and was commissioned a year before the outbreak of war. He would later recall his first steps on Scots soil. On a few hours leave, in the early afternoon, he and several other junior officers visited Dunfermline. They were disappointed in not being able to find anything to eat. The response invariably being "lunch time is finished". In the end, they managed to get some with rice pudding, a delicacy not entirely to their liking.

Burza was to spend the next months patrolling the Western Approaches, often from Scottish ports. Lesisz would recall returning to the ship in Scapa Flow after leave in London. The tedious journey from King's Cross, in a train packed with service personnel, heading north to Thurso, would be relieved at stations by the ever helpful ladies of the Salvation Army and the WVS with their mugs of tea . There would then follow a crossing over a stormy Pentland Firth.

In December 1943, after gunnery courses in Portsmouth and as an instructor in HMS Nimrod, in Campbeltown, he was appointed second in command of S3, one of ten motor gun boats manned by Polish crews. Based in Fowey in Cornwall, it was involved in protecting British convoys from attack by German E-Boats.

Appointed to Blyskawica as a gunnery officer in January 1941, Lesisz served on North Atlantic convoy duties. In May 1942, Blyskawica was back in Cowes, for a refit. On the night of 5 May, 160 German planes coming up the Solent at sea level attacked the town. A second wave came early next morning. The fierce resistance put up by Blyskawica's ant-aircraft guns forced the Germans to fly high, limiting damage to Cowes. Nevertheless, more than 70 civilians were killed.

On 2 October, 1942, Blyskawica was part of an escort protecting the Greenock-bound Queen Mary loaded with US troops. Lesisz was to witness the aftermath when, due to errors of judgment on both ships, the Queen Mary sliced through the escorting cruiser HMS Curacoa. More than 300 of the cruiser's crew lost their lives in a hushed- up disaster.

In July 1943, Lesisz was appointed to the Polish Dragon (ex-HMS Dragon), a light cruiser of First World War vintage as a gunnery officer. With it, he took part in protecting convoys. Dragon later took part in the D-Day landings, shelling German positions. The ship was put out of action with heavy loss of life, by a German human torpedo. Lesisz returned to Blyskawica as first gunnery officer. Until the end of the war, Blyskawica was to patrol the Bay of Biscay. On 18 February 1946, in Rosyth, Lesisz disembarked from Blyskawica.

His three elder brothers all died during the war. One had been murdered by the Gestapo, with the other two being executed by the Soviets.

There was to be no return to a free Poland for Lesisz. The country had now fallen under Soviet rule. It was to remain part of the Soviet bloc till the fall of Communism in 1989.

Lesisz, like the majority of the some 200,000-strong armed forces that had served under overall British command in North Africa, in the Italian campaign and in north-west Europe, as well as in 14 fighter and bomber squadrons, chose to remain in exile and to keep the faith to the ideal of a truly independent democratic homeland. He felt deeply hurt that, in order not to antagonise Stalin, the Poles were not invited to join the London victory parade in 1946.

In March 1947, he joined the Royal Navy, on a short contract, with the rank of lieutenant-commander.

He had always been interested in architecture and gained a place in the Oxford School of Architecture. Graduating in 1953, he settled in Manchester. He would specialise in the design of housing, schools and mainly Roman Catholic churches in the English Midlands.

In 1956, he married a Polish girl who had taken part in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, as a medical orderly. With her, they had two daughters.

His life was to revolve around the Polish emigree community in Manchester. He tried to ensure that the part played by Polish servicemen alongside their British comrades would not be forgotten. He was to be invited back to the Isle of Wight for the commemoration of Blyskawica's defence of Cowes.

In 1992, he had the satisfaction of being able to return to Poland and be present at ceremonies presided over by president Lech Walesa commemorating the 75th anniversary of the formation of the Polish Navy.