This collection of memories cannot be the complete history of a group of ten boys, which at one time was the first squad, second platoon, third company of the Scouting Battalion Parasol (the Umbrella). We got together in occupied Warsaw mainly through the underground school called the Lelewel. After that came the underground scouting movement, the trips outside Warsaw, the scout camps where we used to sing old scouting songs. Who would have thought that a few years later they’d be singing songs about us?
Seven of us died there: in Wola, Starόwka (the Old Town) and Czerniakόw. In many cases the exact circumstances of the death aren’t clear as the witnesses also died. Some bodies were never found or were not identified. Their only mark are their pseudonyms engraved on the Parasol monument in the Warsaw military cemetery of Powązki.
Of the three who survived …
‘Baszkir’ was the only one in our squad who wasn’t wounded. We were together for a while in the prisoner of war camp at Stalag XB in Sandbostel, near Bremen. After the liberation he stayed for a while in Germany then returned to Poland to his family. Due to his young age (he was sixteen during the Uprising) he wasn’t arrested by the UB (Polish communist secret police) after the war. He studied engineering and lives in Warsaw.
‘Sławek’ was heavily wounded in Czerniakόw, one of the few who escaped the slaughter of the wounded. He was bundled into a boat and transported to the right bank of the Vistula, and spent many months in hospitals. He was the eldest amongst us (during the Uprising he was twenty years old), and unfortunately could not escape the notice of the UB, who made his life difficult after the war. Despite this he finished his studies and lives in Warsaw.
‘Deivir’, the author. After the liberation from prisoner of war camps in Germany the main topic of conversation was: what next? Nobody was under any illusions we will be welcomed back home as ‘the heroes who fought for freedom’. There was plenty of time in the prisoner of war camps to realise that those who were about to ‘liberate’ our country would not be well disposed towards ‘reactionaries’ like us. Several newspapers reached the POW camps from Poland, filled with vitriolic rhetoric against the principles which we considered normal and had fought for. Then we started to hear stories about people from Parasol and their families being arrested and interrogated. Those who were involved with the assassination of Kutschera (Head of the Warsaw Police District) were considered particularly dangerous. All this news was not encouraging to return home.
As for me, I always dreamt about being an engineer, to make new machines and installations. These opportunities were available in England. That’s where I ended up after a journey across the Alps to the Polish division stationed in Italy, from there to transit camps in England and, finally, a university in London.
Zbigniew George Czajkowski
February 1999