Tailor of Inverness, The (7 page)

We have the family of Hutsuls, they come from the Carpathian mountains, they always come in the summer to help with the harvest. Those mountain people, all they have was just some goats and sheep. They not have any arable land to have crops, you see? They come the second week of July and they stayed till harvest finished, till August. After harvest was in, wheat was threshed on the machines and a father 
apportioned their due, so many sacks of wheat, barley and oats. And that was loaded onto the carts and taken to the railway station and they were taking that all home! Naturally they mill the wheat to flour to last them for the winter. Oh I enjoyed the harvest because it was very hot, and we enjoyed romping in the straw and hay!

And after the Hutsuls went away, potato harvest came in. There was again, number of people come to help. They been paid for it, daily. Potatoes were dug, we didn’t have machines. Men been digging them and right behind, women and children been picking them up into the heaps. They sort of a crofters, subsistence farmers. They always got paid for it however they want, sometimes with wheat, sometimes with money. Maybe they had too small a croft they didn’t have enough potatoes so they made agreement with father he give them a ton of potato for the winter.

Was not many farms the size of ours. That was ours and a my Uncle Anton and Uncle Michal. It was bigger farm one time and was divided in three, between the three brothers. Just before the second world war, it was decreed to stop that subdividing. Because you see, what would happen? Was three of us. Now our farm would have been divided again on three! You would end up with very little. You wouldn’t be able to make a living. So now one would inherit the farm and the rest have to get the job somewhere else, in towns or whatever. So I went to do tailoring. And Kazik didn’t want the farm. I think Adam would have been left with it. I had ideas about making lots of money!

Kazik had a civil service job. He was sort of a tax inspector. I don’t know what I was going to do but I had my eye on Warsaw, because my cousins were there you see. To go there and make some sort of a fortune there. But it never came anything to it because war broke out.

Was no police in our village.
We never have any
trouble,
any vandalism or anything. If anything sprung like that the people dealt themselves with it and that’s that! There was feuds between neighbours. About most irrelevant tings. Like maybe the neighbour’s sheep went over the fence and tramp the onion bed or eat their flowers. And they yell at each other …keep your animal at your place, look at the damage its made I’ll sue you for it! There was one family, two brothers, and they always been fighting. They lived just next door to each other. They have a wee crofts. The Kuszpisz brothers. And they fight nearly every week. Nobody took much notice, though there was a number of times father was called and my uncle to settle what they been fighting over.

One brother accused the other that he stole his chickens. And one accuse the other that he stole his bullock. He say, ‘If I stole the bullock, he would be somewhere here! You think I put him in my pocket?!’

‘Ah you stole him you b so-and-so, you went to the market and sold him to the slaughterhouse!’

And father and uncle try to pacify them by saying to one you must have stolen it.

‘Oh, I didn’t steal it.’

‘Well, you give him so much.’

‘I’m not giving him anyting, because I didn’t steal it.’

‘Well, who did?’

And so on. And they were father’s age! Old men, yes!

There was one woman who lived on her own, they call her a witch. She was no more witch than anybody else! But we were afraid of her. We teased her and she usually chased us with a broom. Wawolka we call her.

‘Wawolka, tell us a story!’

‘Come on, I’ll tell you the story, come over here, I’ll give you skelp on the ass!’

But sometime if there was just few of us: ‘Sit down and I’ll tell you a story.’ She was good at making cures. Even my 
mother been gathering various herbs. A lot of people went to her for cures. Cos there was no doctors. And that’s how they call Wawolka a witch because she was sort of a medicine woman.

I still remember my granny on mother’s side. She was about ninety when she died. Karolina was her name. She always give me 50 groszy or a zloty, you know? For 50 groszy was heaps of sweeties! She lived about three kilometres from us. Another settlement. I think it was about ’37 when she died. And a mother’s brothers, was Michal and Roman, always with each other too and father was quite friendly with them all. So there is that chap in Tarnopol, I still get postcards from him, that was the son of Roman. Nicholas, Mykola, the teacher.

Somewhat a haphazard. I should have made some sort of a …diary but you know I never did. Some people, those diary writers they put everything so meticulous. If I did that I probably would have a big book to write!

Wouldn’t be any point to go back there, aye. No, no. I would go back if it was free passage and see what happened. But to stay there, no! Adam say you wouldn’t recognise it at all. Nothing, nothing, nothing would resemble what you would know. So there you are, aye.

My father’s brother Kazik 1939

I’d been in about 9 months. That army you know how it is, there’s a lot of square-bashing, there’s a lot of bullying going on. But on the whole I quite liked it.

Rumour of the war been going on for a while and then latterly it did happen, the war broke out and there was a flood of reservist to our regiment, 51
^st
Infantry Regiment, based in Brzezany.

I was surprised and I wasn’t. You see, war was anticipated for a number of years but everyone thought that as we had strong alliance with France and Britain; they were not going to violate that. And especially nobody expected that Russia would come from the other side. We didn’t expect to be hit as quick and as hard as that.

We were in the south-east of Poland. You know, the territory called Galicia. We were quite near Russia to the east and Romania and Hungary to the south.

Many a time when I snatch a weekend pass, went home. Was not far. The last time I was home for the weekend about a month before the war broke out. We just did the usual thing you know. And father ask how it is in the army, they hear anyting? I say we don’t hear anyting in the army, nobody tell you anyting there! And that was end of it. That was the last time I saw them. Never saw them again.

We headed somewhat north-west. For a week. We didn’t move very far because the transportation was horse and cart! Everyting was carried on horses, machine guns, cannons and heavy equipment. After that it was obvious that German advance is very fast and there is no established front line. So we were ordered back and head for, head south to Romania or Hungary, to get across there. And the commanders
themselves
were in disarray because the High Command was away from Warsaw already! On their way to London. Who was left to order anyting? We were dispersed into smaller units. Because was no use travel by the convoy, there was no way of getting
over the frontier that way. Anyway. A lot of them made it.

And then, and
then
we know that Russians are across the eastern frontier. They were supposed to be the great liberators or something. Who asked them there to do, nobody know! After they caught us they said: ‘We are the liberators from the tyranny of capitalism, and that crap you know?’ So I didn’t make it.

We were cut off and gathered to certain points and in the cattle truck and away. To Russia. We went to Kiev and then east. And from time to time when the train stop, so many was taken off and somehow I arrived about three weeks after on the other side of the world!

Everyone was starved to, half dead practically. We were dispersed to various collectives, collective farm you know?

And the Russians, they been so, beautifying everything. ‘You are going to the collective farm to help build socialism. You are not prisoners as such, sort of a free workers from Europe. Free workers from the oppressed western capitalism.’ Ha-ha.

So we end up beyond Ural practically. Er, what do you call the area? Forgot
– Uzb…Uzbe…Uzbekistan.
Of all places, the damn ting you know? We revived a little from the starvation there because the food was reasonably good. We have the same as the other people there. A lot of vegetables like a cabbage and fish, a lot of fish, salted fish.

What was the name of the place? Aaah…see that’s again…I forgot again…where was it now?…Pr-…no, no…It was smaller than a village. A couple of hours from the station. 2-3 hours. We marched of course. Eh…
Halenka, Halenka… Halenka
it was
called,
I tink.
Halenka,
yeah. It was Uzbek village, but was a lot of White Russians too. Criminals in the eyes of the regime! Psha! I come across people they serve 5 years, 7 years, and none of them know what for. They told they been part of some conspiracy against the state, and that’s that. And not even that, they used to uproot whole villages, and shift
them 
thousands of miles and leave them with nothing in the middle of nowhere. Maybe in the middle of a forest and they have to build shelters, huts or holes in the ground and they have to eat whatever they could find and if they were strong, they might survive the first winter. The Russian have such a vast country that they have room to manipulate it that way. Not only villages, sometimes whole shire was uprooted and shifted to Siberia. The Communist must have been tinking that people might organise some resistance against them. If they start shifting them about, they have no chance, which was true. When you are uprooted like that, you have no chance to organise anyting!

The Uzbek people were suspicious of strangers but once they got to know our group, that we are not Russians or Communists at all, they were quite open. They hated the regime. They got on fine with some of the Russians there, but the bosses….well the bosses were doing their job. If they not doing it somebody else would because they would be replaced and they might end up in the labour camp.

But those Uzbeks, they didn’t like the system at all. They expected the Germans to come and they would welcome them with open arms as far as we understood. And that happen that way in Russia, in a lot of places. Till the Germans start their atrocity. Till they got to know what the German all about, they not any better.

So I was on the farm. Looking after pigs, tilling and ploughing the field. Tings like that. Slept in a sort of a barn, plenty straw for bed and plenty straw to cover yourself. And in the winter, very very cold. Snows were 2-3 metres deep sometime.

I was not that long there, about year and a half.

The Uzbeks sometime offer you tea with a lump of butter, a lump of fat in it you know? Mm-hm. Which uh…I didn’t like it in the beginning but you have to drink it ‘cos they
don’t
 
like you not to take it. And of course, there were members of the NKVD in the place. Four in the village, and their spies too, of course. You afraid. As they say in Russia, ‘the walls have ears’.

The Uzbeks, they are Muslims. Strict Muslims. They still had their mosque. But the authority in Russia, they been trying to replace religion with their doctrine of Communism. All religion. The NKVD man would stand at the door of the mosque and peer in, who going there? Supposing a job came in, a promotion for a man. He wouldn’t be promoted if he went to the mosque. They been trying to get the people to believe in just Communism, nothing else…nothing else exists…you pray to Stalin!

When was it, the amnesty? Was ’42, aye beginning of ’42 the amnesty was declared for the Polish prisoners. They never tell us officially. Nothing said! I found out about it the
round-about
way.

A lady doctor was on her weekly round and said, ‘You know that there is a points that Poles gathered, forming the Polish army again.’

I say ‘Where?!’ ‘Somewhere in the region.’

Doctor Halinka, Doctor Halina, that was all we know her by. Helena Rostropovich. Was it not Nadia? No. Helena, now I remember. Helena Rostropovich, that’s what it was.

After that, we gather together and say ‘Here, we must leave and find our people because nobody tellin’ us anything.’ And then we two by two, two by two, we just…
kind of escape.

We knew that train is just passing at such and such a time. Cattle train or passenger whatever it was, you just hang on to it and went on. I travelled myself about for a couple of months, hundreds of miles back and forth.

I was with that chap from Warsaw. Jankowski. We have some money, because we been getting a little pay. But that wasn’t much. The rest of the food you beg or steal! One
time 
I got a loaf of bread from the army unit. I found out where the bread was stored and I went there at night and stole another two! Through the window. It was a fortune! And around the bend I found another two Russians with a chunk of pig’s fat, about two or three kilogrammes of it.

I say ‘Where the hell you got that?’

They say, ‘Well you got the bread.’

So we bartered, I give him half a loaf and he gave me a chunk of the fat. That’s the way you survive, you just couldn’t survive any other way, just steal and jump from train to train. And we met Poles like ourselves yes!

‘An’ a which way you travel?’

‘Oh, we travel that way.’

‘I been that way!’

‘Oh. Did you meet any, any of our people?’

‘No.’

‘No?! They bound to be there, they must be there!’

And one time I was on one of the station lookin’ for something to eat and I spotted the uniform of the Polish officer.

I say, ‘What you doing here?’

‘Well that what we look for, people like you. On every station we have the duty officer.’

‘On every station!? I been on a hundred of station!’

Proskurov….I tink it was Proskurov…yeah Proskurov station. Er, the names, I never looked at. You just travelled, you see?

Naturally, we thought that we would go back to fight for Poland. Hundreds of Poles gathered there and the NKVD was still checking everything, because some of the Russian been trying to latch on to us. Most of them been pulled out. NKVD been always alert. But some got out, pretending to be Poles. There is one in Inverness. He runs the Queensgate Hotel. He latched on the same way and he managed to get out.

Was everyone in all sorts of ting, dressed, how they can. 
Most of them everyting is torn, bashed, all sorts, you see? And I hear hair-raising stories. Just the same as us, sometime worse, sometime better. Some of them tangled with the NKVD and been shot. I was lucky, a few of us came out unscathed.

We were at Proskurov station for, I don’t know, maybe a month… we got reasonably regular food then but not very much of it. Mainly black bread, cabbage soup and kasha. We didn’t hear much about the war at all. The paper been a month old before we get hold of it you know? Maybe the officers know a bit more but never told us much.

That time when we managed to get out of Russia, that was the last transport. Because that was the time when Katyn came out. When those graves were discovered where the Russians massacred 24,000 Polish officers. Sikorski, our leader, he been twice to Moscow to see Stalin and demanded the officers. He says ‘Well there is my men I’m gatherin,’ but no officers, where is my officers?’ ‘Oh, they must be in the very far north, takes long time to come down or maybe they escaped to Manchuria.’ They damn well know what happen to them.

We were lucky because after Katyn was discovered, the Polish Government in Exile in London demanded the International Enquiry. And the Russian been trying to plant that on Germans. But they couldn’t succeed because it was the Germans who found them! And after the Polish Authorities insisted on the International Commission, the Russians broke their diplomatic ties with the Poles. Closed the frontier and not let any more Poles to Persia. All the other Poles that were gathered were drafted into Soviet Army…and those Polish units became the so called Koscziusko’s Army. They went into Poland after the Russians. That was the basis of the Polish Army after the war.

So we were the last batch. We were embarked on to the boats on to the Caspian Sea and on to Persia, to Tehran. So in Tehran, I didn’t bide there very long, maybe two months, 
till we got organised and revived from a hunger and all that. No much time to mix with a local population. Language barrier and all that. We just nodded to people. Were taken on the sightseeing, tings like a mosques. Which I didn’t take somehow much into heart because always been tinking about the war and going back home. How we going to get there?

And there was no way to get in touch with the family or anyting. The officers were trying to establish some contact through the Red Cross, but there was none, not at that time. German kept clamp on and the Russian on the other side and that was that. No way contact anybody you see…

The men with some, higher education, degree or
under-graduates
, they went to the officers’ school on the drastic courses to get trained because there was no officers to command! And rest of us were transported by Iraq and Syria, by hair-raising transport over that mountainous terrain to Egypt. Those drivers, they been driving so fast and roads so narrow and the drops hundreds of feet down, oh dear! It makes you dizzy looking at it you know? And the stones falling from under the wheels and cascading down! And we ended up in Cairo. Near Cairo, yes.

There was a huge camp there, tents, various regiments…that’s where we were properly organised into battalions. Proper drill was done. It was a Polish camp, and a British camp there too. Couldn’t do that all on our own because the British rule! We were there six months or so, training. Fattened up nicely. But was not our fight! Was nothing to do with a Poland! Was a bit of resentment, but ach, we still went and done our job there to get the Nazis out. That was the main fight. To get them out. To get them beaten.