WWII, Polish II Corps, Gen. Anders, Mte Cassino, British Army

When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

WWII, Polish II Corps, Gen. Anders, Mte Cassino, British Army:
$34.90

This medal is a part of my Polish medals offer

Visit my page with the offers, please.

You will find many interesting items related to this subject.

If you wish to see more medals, click here, please;

World War II

Poland; History

France, related to

This medal has been minted to honour the soldiers fighting in the Battle of Monte Cassino, 1944.

av. The group of the 3 soldiers in the trenches; the inscription – “Monte Cassini 18th of Mai 1944”

rv. The military badges of the II Polish Corps, the inscription – “Monte Cassino, 11 – 18 Mai 1944”

diameter - 70 mm (2 ¾ “)

weight – 125.50 gr, (4.43 oz)

metal – bronze, beautiful patina

Polish II Corps

Polish II Corps (Polish Drugi Korpus Wojska Polskiego, 1943-1947), was a major tactical and operational unit of the Polish Armed Forces in the West during World War II. It was commanded by Lieutenant General Władysław Anders and by 1945 it grew to well over 75,000 soldiers.

History

The Polish II Corps was created in 1943 from various units fighting alongside the Allies on all theatres of war. The 3rd Carpathian Division was formed in Middle East from smaller Polish units fighting in Egypt and Tobruk, as well as the Polish Army in the East that was evacuated from the USSR through the Persian Corridor. Its creation was based on British Army Act of 1940 that allowed the allied units of the exiled government of Poland to be grouped on one theatre of war. However, the British command never agreed to incorporate the exiled Polish Air Force into the Corps.

In 1944 the Corps was transferred from Egypt to Italy, where it became an independent part of the British Eighth Army under General Oliver Leese. During 1944-1945 the Corps fought on the Italian front, most notably during the Battle of Monte Cassino and the battles of Ancona and Bologna. The forces of the Polish II Corps were crucial in breaking the Gustav Line and the Gothic Line.

In 1944 it numbered about 50,000 soldiers. During the three subsequent battles the Corps suffered heavy losses (in the final stage of the Battle of Monte Cassino even the support units were mobilised and used in combat) and it was suggested to Gen. Anders that he withdraw his units. However, since the Soviet Union broke diplomatic relations with the Polish government and no Poles were allowed out of the USSR, Anders believed that the only source of recruits was ahead - in German POW camps and concentration camps.

By 1945 new units were added composed mostly from freed POWs and Poles forced to join the Wehrmacht, increasing the amount of soldiers to approximately 75,000; approximately 20,000 of them were transferred to other Polish units fighting in the West. After the war the divisions of the Corps were used in Italy until 1946, when they were transported to Britain and demobilised. The majority of soldiers remained in exile.

Composition

In May 1945 the Corps consisted of 55,780 men and approximately 1,500 women from auxiliary services. The majority of the forces were composed mostly of Polish citizens who were deported by the NKVD to the Soviet Gulags during the annexation of Eastern Poland (Kresy Wschodnie) in 1939 by the Soviet Union. Following the Operation Barbarossa and the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement many of them were released and allowed to join the Polish Army in the East being formed in Southern Russia and Kazakhstan. Due to political reasons the Soviet Union soon withdrew support for the creation of Polish Army on its territory and lowered the supply rate, which forced General Władysław Anders to withdraw his troops to British-held Persia and Iraq. From there the troops were moved to British Mandate of Palestine, where they joined forces with the 3rd Carpathian Division which was composed mostly of Polish soldiers who had managed to escape to French Lebanon through Romania and Hungary after the Polish Defensive War of 1939.

The main bulk of the soldiers were from the Eastern voivodships of pre-war Poland. Although the majority of them were ethnic Poles, there were also members of other nationalities who joined the units of II Corps, most notably Jews, Belarusans and Ukrainians. After being relocated to Palestine, the Corps faced the problem of increased rate of desertions by Jewish soldiers, most of whom defected en masse to the Haganah. The most noted among them was Menachem Begin, the future Prime Minister of Israel. General Anders decided not to prosecute the deserters.

The armament was as follows:

248 pieces of artillery
288 anti-tank guns
234 anti-air guns
264 tanks
1,241 APCs
440 armoured cars
12,064 cars, Bren carriers and trucks

Losses

During the Italian Campaign the Polish II Corps lost 11,379 men. Among them were 2,301 KIA, 8,543 WIA and 535 MIA

Lt.Gen Władysław Anders

Lt.Gen Władysław Anders (1892 – 1970) was a General in the Polish Army and later in life a politician with the Polish government-in-exile in London. Anders was born on August 11, 1892, in the Polish village of Krośniewice-Blonie, near Kutno. As a young officer Anders served Tsar Nicholas II in the 1st Krechowiecki Lancer\'s Regiment during World War I, later joining the Polish Army and again serving as an Commissioned officer in a cavalry regiment.

Anders was in command of a cavalry brigade at the time of the outbreak of World War II. The Polish Cavalry was no match for German Blitzkrieg tactics, tanks and motorised infantry, and the Polish forces were forced to retreat to the east. During the fighting and retreat he was wounded a number of times. Anders was taken prisoner by Soviet forces and was jailed, initially in Lviv and later in Lubyanka prison in Moscow. During his imprisonment Anders was tortured.

After the attack on the Soviet Union by Germany, Anders was released by the Soviets with the aim of forming a Polish Army to fight alongside the Red Army. Continued friction with the Soviets over lack of basic weapons, food and clothing led to the eventual exodus of Anders\' men, together with a sizeable contingent of Polish civilians, along the Persian Corridor into Persia (Iran); where Anders formed and led the 2nd Polish Corps while agitating for release of Polish nationals still in the Soviet Union. It was during this time that large numbers of non-combat-capable Polish men and women were sent to Britain. Many stayed, and made their way in the world after the end of the war.

Anders was the commander of the 2nd Polish Corps 1943-1946. After the war the Soviet-installed communist government in Poland announced it was removing his Polish citizenship. Anders had, however, always been unwilling to return to a Soviet-dominated Poland where he probably would have been jailed and possibly executed, and remained in exile in Britain. He was prominent in the Polish Government in Exile in London. He died in London on 12 May 1970, where his body lay \'in state\' at the church of Andrzej Bobola, where many of his former soldiers and families came to pay their last respects. He was buried, in accordance with his wishes, amongst his fallen soldiers from the 2nd Polish Corps at the Polish War Cemetery at Monte Cassino in Italy.

After the war Anders wrote a book covering his thoughts and experiences.

Monte Cassino

Monte Cassino is a rocky hill about eighty miles (130 km) south of Rome, Italy, a mile to the west of the town of Cassino (the Roman Casinum having been on the hill) and 520 m (1700 ft) altitude. It is noted as the site where Benedict of Nursia established his first monastery, the source of the Benedictine Order, around 529, and of major battles towards the end of World War II.

As so often with early Christian institutions, the monastery was constructed on an older pagan site, a temple of Apollo that crowned the hill, enclosed by a fortifying wall above the small town of Cassino, still largely pagan at the time and recently devastated by the Goths. Benedict\'s first act was to smash the sculpture of Apollo and destroy the altar. He rededicated the site to John the Baptist. Once established there, Benedict never left. At Monte Cassino he wrote the Benedictine Rule that became the founding principle for western monasticism. There at Monte Cassino he received a visit from Totila, king of the Ostrogoths, in 580 (the only secure historical date for Benedict), and there he died.

An earthquake damaged the Abbey in 1349, and although the site was rebuilt it marked the beginning of a long period of decline. In 1321, Pope John XXII made the church of Monte Cassino a cathedral, and the carefully preserved independence of the monastery from episcopal interference was at an end. In 1505 the monastery was joined with that of St. Justina of Padua. The site was sacked by Napoleon\'s troops in 1799 and from the dissolution of the Italian monasteries in 1866, Monte Cassino became a national monument. There was a final destruction on February 15, 1944 when during the four battles of Monte Cassino (January - May 1944), the entire building was pulverized in a series of heavy air-raids. The Abbey was rebuilt after the war, financed by the Italian State. Pope Paul VI reconsecrated it in 1964.

The archives, besides a vast number of documents relating to the history of the abbey, contained some 1400 irreplaceable manuscript codices, chiefly patristic and historical. By great foresight on the part of Lt. Julius Schlegel (a Catholic), a Vienna-born German officer, and Captain Maximilian Becker (a Protestant), both from the Panzer-Division Hermann Göring, these were all transferred to the Vatican at the beginning of the battle.

Many additions and embellishments were made during reconstruction so that the abbey acquired the greatness and imposingness it conserved until February 15, 1944, during the final stage of world war II when Montecassino happened to be on the firing line between two armies: this place of prayer and study which had become in these exceptional circumstances a peaceful shelter for hundreds of defenceless civilians, in only three hours was reduced to a heap of debris under which many of the refuges met their death.