PITCHED BATTLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 December 1943, Page 5

PITCHED BATTLE

FOUGHT BV POLISH CAVALRY AGAINST GERMANS IN SOUTH POLAND. TIMES OF KOSCIUSZKO RECALLED LONDON. October 29. “History repeats itself." the truth of this saying is confirmed by Poles in the present day armed struggle against the Germans, which is reminiscent of the times of the Polish national hero, General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who also fought in the American War of Independence. Not far from Raclawice, in South Poland, where Kosciuszko won the historic battle in 1795, soldiers of the Polish Underground Forces attacked a German detachment, and the fight lasted some hours. These facts were reported in some Polish underground papers, copies of which have now reached London.

The fight took place last July, the opposing parties consisting of about 500 men on each side. The Poles, armed with machine guns and hand grenades, forced the Germans to retreat. There were dead and wounded on both sides. The Poles took their wounded back with them into the forests. Near Slupia, where Kosciuszko’s staff had its headquarters during the Battle of Raclawice, a detachment of Polish cavalry in their regular Polish uniforms suddenly appeared. They had been concealed in the depths of the Kielce forests. The people were overcome with delight, and girls threw flowers to the cavalrymen. The German police fled from the town and the Polish cavalry remained three hours in the town before withdrawing to the forests. The Warsaw hero in Kosciuszko’s time and leader of the civilian armed rising was the shoemaker Jan Kilinski, whose monument was recently pulled down by the Germans. The present day hero of Warsaw was Jan Kryst, a locksmith who, acting on an order of the underground movement, carried out a sentence of death passed on three Gestapo men. He went in broad dayI light to a cafe where the three men were sitting, and threw a bomb at their table, killing them on the spot, Jan Kryst was subsequently shot by the Germans.