Are Polo mints really made in Poland?

The last day of 2018 started for me at 3.30am when the bleeding alarm clock goes off. I hate it to bits because it’s still so early but without it I would never be able to ‘fire up’ the old Viano again and today it needs to be on the ball because I have a lot to cram in. After a quick run through the 3 S’s I fire the old girl up and we are off to take a family to Heathrow Airport. Roads are empty which is nice so back home in deepest Hampshire by 8am – a blessing. Is my day over? Not a snowballs chance because surprise surprise my wife and I had decided we would take a short New Year’s break starting that day, so once we are ready, me with a toilet bag sized suitcase and her with a ‘steamer trunk’ I get one of my chauffeurs to take us back to Terminal 5 at Heathrow for our flight to Krakow Poland - and no it’s not pronounced KRAKOFF – that’s something completely different!

A few hours later it’s touchdown in Krakow and we take a short taxi ride to the Sheraton Hotel in the city centre. Bags dumped we then start to plan what we were going to do and see the following day. This didn’t last too long because were so cream-crackered and fell asleep. Some New Year’s Eve for us – we missed it all!

The following morning, New Year’s Day, we grab a swanky breakfast and then walk outside to get our bearings. A brief recce around the neighbourhood is followed by a Krakow Costa which as you know does weird things to the digestion so it was a quick dive back into the hotel again for a short ‘comfort break’. Feeling better we venture outside again where we find an old battered taxi with an equally old battered driver (he must have been at least 75). Anyway he seemed to know his way about and even better than that he was cheap! A bonus made even better when he agreed to stay with us while we did ‘our thing’ throughout the day.

Our first stop was the Krakow Rakowiki Cemetery

where there are 482 Commonwealth War Graves from the 2 nd

WW of which 26 were those who had served in

our former regiments of the OBLI, KRRC and RB. The war grave map must have been commissioned by an officer because it took us everywhere but to the war

graves! Anyway being a typical Rifleman I kicked it into touch and used my near perfect sense of direction instead and it didn’t let me down.

Like all other war graves sites I have visited in Europe this one was well kept with every grave in neat rows with the Cross of Sacrifice on each. It would appear that they have very few (if any) visitors from family as there were no personal touches anywhere such as a posy of flowers or even a card. We therefore make a point in visiting every grave belonging to a member of our former regiments and laying a single poppy on each. We quickly discover that most of the graves are originally from the large POW Camp at Lamsdorf Stalag VIIIB later known as Stalag 344 where there was a hospital for Commonwealth prisoners. There were also a lot of airmen buried there who had lost their lives whilst dropping supplies and bombing the factories and railways in and around the area.

As always there are the graves of the ‘Unknown Soldier’ with the inscription ‘A British Soldier of the 1939- 1945 War - Known Only unto God’. This was of course a CWG cemetery and there were also many graves of our allies including Polish and even Indian (there has to be an interesting story there). A really nice additional touch we discovered were two graves of British gardeners who had dedicated their lives to looking after the cemetery .

A quick dash back through the cemetery found that as sure as eggs are eggs our driver was still patiently waiting for us. I thought his patience was simply down to good customer service until I realised I hadn’t paid him yet!

Later that evening we went for a meal in a place called the Piano Bar. Now if you are anything like me I immediately associate places with names like that as being a bit ‘iffy’ if you get my drift. Anyway by the time we left and despite the grub being excellent I was absolutely convinced by its dark red flock wallpaper that it doubled up as a house of ill repute! Not that I would ever know anything about such places after all as I was only a Rifleman.

At the crack of dawn on day 2 the alarm goes off (notice the missed joke there?) and it’s off down to the restaurant for some Polish breakfast. Looking out of the hotel window we see that it’s snowing heavily and a Polar Bear trudges passed with a sack of coal and looking for 3 brass monkeys. Yes readers its b***dy cold!

Today we decide we are going to do something a little different and so jump on a bus and head off to the Wieliczka Salt Mines not far from the city. It was unusual to say the least because we spend the day 135m underground where we are invited to lick salt off the walls! Now I may be a window licker and at times a crayon muncher but licking walls in a mine where everyone else’s grotty taste buds have scraped is a little too far even for me. The mine dates back about 700 years and has over 600 steps and 57 flights of stairs to get down to the 90m level and a good deal more to get

to the 135m level. As you can imagine we got down at a good speed but far from the 140 paces to the minute to get back up again! You know the funniest thing of the day was seeing a manikin dummy dressed as 700 year old mine slave who just so happened to be a dead ringer for Roy Stanger – I kid you not! Anyway not much more you can say about salt mines really unless you like lots of the stuff on your chips and so it was back on the bus again and back to the hotel for a wet and light snack before going out again. Listen there is going out and going out right such as a night out with the lads but remember folks I have my wife with me and so it was decided a little bit of local ‘culture’ should be included in our break. As a consequence we head off to a traditional Polish restaurant with a ‘Folk Show’ where we were entertained by some guy dressed as horse (reminded me of the Piano Bar), a woman on a fiddle (yes she could have been on benefits), another fella shouting every few seconds, and some young girl running around in circles! Give me the old hokey cokey any day of the week – at least I know when to put it in and take it out again (see what that Piano Bar has done to me). And so to bed once I have got this salt out of my ear-ole!

Woke on day 3 to snow once again falling very heavily. Why is it that their buses and trains don’t come to a grinding halt when it snows? Anyway a quick breakfast and then it was on the tour bus for a 7 hour visit to the Concentration Camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau.

We knew it was going to be a bleak day but in truth nothing really prepared us for what was to come and I apologise if my words are not as they should be. First we had a 90 minute bus ride to Auschwitz & Auschwitz 11 better known as Birkenau. It was all a bit unreal as we left Krakow behind and made our way through small snow bound villages not really knowing what we were about to see. Eventually the bus stops in a large car park from which we can just about see the entrance of the camp which don’t look too bad or as threatening as you see in the films. A quick coffee follows in the main museum itself and after that we pick up our guide and the tour starts by going through the main entrance.

The inscription above the gate reads Arbeit Macht Frei (Work will set you free). Although as we all know that didn’t happen no matter how hard you worked. Before the start of the war the camp had originally been a Polish Army barracks consisting of rows of 2 story accommodation blocks built to house approximately 100 soldiers. However as a concentration camp between 700 and 1000 prisoners were housed in each of these blocks with no sanitation to speak of and straw for beds - all whilst under the daily and constant fear of death in the gas chambers. We hear from our guide all the horrific things that went on in this terrible place from the mass killing of people of all ages in the gas chambers to the unlawful and terrible medical experiments that were carried out, but what brings the horror home even more is to see the piles of shoes and an even bigger pile of human hair that was weaved and used to make cloth.

The Commandant and Governor of this camp was a Rudolf Hoss (not Hess) who was found guilty of War Crimes on the 14 th

April 1947 and hanged by a short drop gallows constructed between his house in the

camp and the gas chambers. Kinda fitting I think!

We eventually leave this dark place and get on the bus again for the short journey to Auschwitz 11 (Birkenhau). This is the camp which has appeared in many films and documentaries and is the one with the railway line running through the main gate – known as the Gate of Death. It was here they were sorted and marked out as workers or for death.

The snow on the ground is absolutely freezing solid with a wind chill of -10 and I am wrapped up like the proverbial Michelin Man, but still cold. The thought that so many poor souls had to endure similar or even worse freezing temperatures with little or no clothing horrifies me. I am in a bit of shock in truth particularly when I see the remains of the rows of wooden huts still with their chimneys starkly reaching for the sky, the barbed wire still in evidence and a restored railway cattle carriage that brought the prisoners to the camp. As the war was coming to an end and the SS received word it was no longer going their way they tried to remove all evidence of their activity by blowing up the gas chambers (which no longer exist) and disposing of the tons of human ash in the nearby river. The most poignant moment for me however was seeing the lasting monument at the bottom of the camp which lists the numbers that died in this horrible place. In all 1.1M Jews, 150K Poles, 23K Gypsies from all over Europe, 15K Soviets, and over 10K from other countries. In January 1945 Red Army soldiers liberated the camp and the 7,000 prisoners who had remained there, simply because they were too sick, or because they had nowhere else to go.

There is so much more to say about these horrible places but it would simply take up so much time. However I would say that if you ever get the chance to visit - please do so. The terrible suffering these poor souls went through puts everything you will ever do into perspective, so when the Amazon delivery doesn’t happen when you expect it to, and the Man Flu hangs around a little longer, just think on those poor souls, and it kinda doesn’t matter anymore. As you can imagine our mood on the return journey back to Krakow was a lot sombre than on the way out and continued into the last evening of our stay. One thing is for sure this is one experience that will be remembered by us forever.

Our last day in the country that possibly makes the mint with the hole. Dawn breaks with yet more snow and biting winds of -10 degrees. But who cares I am on holiday! We quickly pack, grab another healthy Polish breakfast – which by the way is supposedly the same a “Full English” except it isn’t as the sausages are rubbish and you get no toast! We leave our suitcases with the hotel concierge and dive off into town for another – yes Costa. For our final few hours in this lovely city we decide to go all OBLI and get a horse drawn carriage for a tour round the old part of the city. Our journey takes us about half an hour or so and is a great way to see

Oskar Schindler the sights of the old Krakow. A few horse ‘comfort stops’ later and with the smell of fresh horse manure clinging to our clothes we jump into a taxi for the short ride to see Schindler’s Factory. This is the factory where Oskar Schindler (a German) helped to save over 1,200 Jews from certain death by buying them from their German captivity. His reason for doing so and despite becoming a wealthy man due to the war he just didn’t like or agree with what his countrymen were doing to their fellow human beings. He died poor and penniless in 1974. If you ever get the chance have a look at the film Schindler’s List starring Liam Neeson please do so.

Although our visit to Krakow was tinged with both pleasure and sadness it was a trip I will never forget or want to, particularly for the sadder part. As I said earlier, although I am not good with words the experience nevertheless moved me more than I could ever imagine and I just had to put something down on paper to share. As a rough tough ex-soldier who fully expected and accepted if captured to be humiliated, abused, tortured and even killed still finds it hard to understand mankind’s inhumanity to the defenceless.

Fire-Up the Viano Driver I am coming home

A blast from the past !

A photograph sent to me and featuring some well known 1 RGJ faces of the Bn rugby team. Spot our chairman !