Desert Rats
They lived in dugout trenches that baked by day and froze by night. Their weaponry was inadequate and food and water was rationed. The Germans contemptuously called them "Rats," but today it's a title they wear with pride.
While great swathes of Europe lay under Nazi occupation, the war continued in North Africa. Sixty years ago in April, the siege of Tobruk began on the coast of Libya.
It earned the dubious honor of being the longest siege in British military history, when, after 242 days of fighting, Allied forces, including British, Australian, Indian and 5,864 Polish soldiers, finally defeated Field Marshal Rommel's infantry and Luftwaffe.
Fighting beside mainly Australian Rats, 109 Poles and about 832 Australians were killed during the siege. Last week, a handful of the remaining Polish "Rats of Tobruk" were invited by the Australian Embassy to honor their lost comrades.
The ceremony was held on April 25 known in Australia as ANZAC day, the country's annual day of war remembrance named after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps that fought in the Mediterranean in World War I. At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Plac Pilsudskiego, the Rats and other Polish and international dignitaries laid wreaths.
Two weeks earlier, an informal afternoon tea was held for the Rats at the Australian Embassy in Warsaw. The gathering included speeches by Ambassador Margaret Adamson and Poland's deputy foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski. But mainly it was an opportunity for the Rats to remember.
"The first morning we landed in Tobruk, I don't suppose I can remember that much because it was such a difficult situation," said Wojciech Gibas, who was 22 years old at the time.
"We'd come from a green land and this place was the opposite," he said. "It was desert and rocks and sand. It was a moonscape. At that time, one doesn't concentrate on the terrain. One concentrates on where you can hide from the bullets."
Mieczyslaw Naruszewicz, who is partially deaf because of shell fire, recalled: "Sometimes there were 80 meters between us and the enemy and you couldn't lift your head up. And each night, every machine gun received a box of 1,800 bullets to keep the enemy under fire."
The Rats belonged to the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade (later incorporated into the Carpathian Rifle Division), which was made up of Polish exiles in French Syria. After France's capitulation, the brigade sought British command in Palestine and in August 1941, they were sent to Tobruk to relieve the mainly Australian troops. After the battle finished in December 1941, the Carpathian Brigade went on to distinguish itself in the Italian campaign.
After the war, many Rats, unable to return to Soviet-occupied Poland, made their home either in Australia or England. Only since the fall of communism have more of them returned to Poland.
"Now we've been recognized (by the government), but in the days of socialism it wasn't even mentioned," said Gibas, who splits his time between London and Warsaw. "People didn't know about Tobruk or (the battle of) Monte Cassino unless they listened to Radio Free Europe. They weren't allowed to know anything of their history. All the history was false. People were living in the dark and didn't know what was happening."
Fellow soldier and president of the Carpathian Soldiers Association, 82-year-old Tadeusz Czerkawski, returned to Poland in 1947. Initially accused of being a member of the Ukrainian insurgency, he narrowly escaped imprisonment.
Awarded the Virtutti Militari medal, Poland's highest military distinction for risking his own life during the Italian campaign, the Soviets stripped him of his officer ranking.
"For those of us who returned," he said, "we were treated very badly."
