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This wonderful album is a brilliant pictorial history of the 1st Polish
Armored Division composed of about 250 photographs, documents and
publications largely collected by WO1 Alexander Leon 'Manka'
Jarzembowski, a veteran of 2nd Armored Regiment, as he soldiered for
Poland between 1917-1949. The collection lay in albums unseen for
decades until recent interest in the Division and its Commanding
Officer, General Stanislaw Maczek, caused Jarzembowski's son, Jan, to
revisit his father's archive in order to provide a narrative for the
almost forgotten Division and for his father's memory. The photographs
themselves cover the period from 1939 and the invasion of Poland before
moving onto the French Campaign of 1940; the bulk of the images
illustrate the story of the Division from arriving in the UK in 1940,
reforming in 1942 and then its campaigns in North-West Europe 1944-45 -
its pursuit of the Germans across northern France, Belgium and Holland,
and finally into Germany. Included are some of the final Divisional
parades prior to disbandment in 1947. There are also many interesting
photographs of dignitaries who visited and inspected the Division
thorough out those years, including General Sikorski. The range of
images available in this album is wide and impressive with many
excellent shots of uniforms, equipment and armor, which not only provide
an aid to historians and veteran's families, but, expertly annotated by
the author, are of great value to military modelers as reference
material. This album is a tribute to the gallant men of the Polish 1st
Armored Division. General Maczek and his men fought the Second World War
from the very beginning to the very end with extreme bravery, but
gained nothing for their efforts, yet maintained their dignity and pride
to the end of their, often very long, lives.REVIEWS ... the
photographs are a delight ... there is an awful lot to like here. The
captions are excellent and the format is clean and tidy without any
distracting elements. I really like this book ... War History Online"
... For the modeller there is just so much material to draw inspiration
from, as many of these pictures will be new to most of us. ... Nice to
see a collection of what were virtually all new pictures to me and find
this personal archive shared with us all rather than hidden away and
forgotten. It makes an excellent memorial to the men of the Polish 1st
Armoured Division."
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Features
- Softcover
- 145 pages
- 31 photos
- 2014
- Size 8.25" x11.75" - 21cm x 29.5cm
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