Captain Danuta Lechna's wartime journey

When Danuta Maria Piekosinska was born in Lwow (now Lviv in Ukraine) in 1911, Poland was partitioned between Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The south of Poland was under Austrian rule and part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the beginning of WWI, the family moved to Gorlice, southeast Poland, but the main battle was to pass through here, so they were evacuated to Freidental (now Freistadt), near the borders of Austria and Czechoslovakia. After the war, the family went to live in Brzesko, near Krakow.

Danuta was a linguist. She was already fluent in German and learned Latin and Greek at school. Later in exile, she would also speak Russian, Italian, English, and Spanish. Danuta was a language teacher, married, and had a son, Andrzej. In May 1939, her husband, Captain Zdrochecki, was transferred to the eastern frontier of Poland with Russia. Danuta and her son moved back to the Lwow area. On September 1st, Germany invaded Poland from the west. The Russian Soviet army invaded Poland from the east, not honouring the pact of non-aggression. Polish academics, officers, and anyone in authority who might attempt to interfere with the spread of Stalinist communism were arrested. They were sent to hard labour camps in Siberia or shot and buried in mass graves, as her husband was at Katyn.

At 3 am on April 13th, 1940, Russian soldiers came to deport Danuta and her son. All property was confiscated and given to incoming Russian peoples. Crammed 60-70 people in cattle wagons, they were transported by train for 18 days across Siberia until they reached Pavlodar in Kazakhstan. Those who survived were then shipped along the River Irtysh to Semipalatinsk near the border with Mongolia and set to slave labour. Some of Danuta's jobs were making bricks by treading clay, manure, and water in bare feet, laundering clothes for Russian officers, and collecting camel skeletons so that the hetman could carve buttons and combs from them. The most frequent prayer on Danuta's lips was "Give us this day our daily bread." Here she had to speak Russian but, in the evenings, taught Polish to young deportees.

Danuta's faith helped her survive, and from these experiences, she developed a resilience and courage so typical of many Poles. When Germany declared war on Russia on June 22nd, 1941, Russia joined the Western Allies in order to be reassured of their help. General Sikorski negotiated a brief amnesty so that Poles, who had been deported to Russia, could leave in order to form a Polish army in exile to fight Hitler with the Allies. Danuta was fortunate to hear about this amnesty from a relative in London.

She and her companions obtained permission from the Soviet authorities to leave but were not given any transport. They made their way walking, sometimes hitching a lift on a truck, working for a piece of bread on the way, to Tashkent and Jangi-Jul on the border of Uzbekistan, where Poles from all over Russia were gathering. Danuta was enrolled to serve in the Women's Auxiliary Army of General Anders's Polish Army in exile fighting for the Allies. They moved on to Samarkand and then to Krasnovodsk on the Caspian Sea. On August 18th, 1942, Danuta sailed to Pahlevi in Persia (modern-day Iran) and freedom.

Danuta began officer's training in Tehran. As a quartermaster, she was sent with a lead group to Kirkuk in Iraq to prepare quarters for the army. In Gedera, Palestine, she was transferred to the 317 Transport Company and promoted to second lieutenant. Only now does she learn that her first husband was murdered in the massacres at Katyn (Russia) in 1940, one of 21,857 Polish officers and intelligentsia killed there by the Russian NKVD.

The whole company moved to Egypt to prepare for battle in Italy, and Danuta was promoted to lieutenant. In Italy, she supplied troops in action on the Italian front against Hitler, including at the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944, for which she received the Polish Silver Cross of Merit with crossed swords.

At the end of the war, she married Major Stanislaw Lechna in Rome and finished her army career as a captain. She was awarded the 1939-1945 Star, the Italy Star, the Defence Medal, and the War Medal by the British and also the Polish Golden Cross of Merit and Polish Active Service Medal in Exile. Although Hitler was defeated, Poland was now under Soviet communist rule and again not free. Danuta and her husband stayed with the British 8th Army, arriving in Liverpool in 1946 and living in a series of army camps in Foxley, Penley, Shobdon, and Hereford in Wales.

Danuta continued to work for the Polish cause by supporting the Polish Social and Cultural Association and working for the Polish Treasury in exile, for which she was awarded the National Treasury Gold Medal three times. After the death of her husband in 1981, she painted in oils more seriously and joined the Association of Polish Artists. Her impression of the scene after the Battle of Monte Cassino was exhibited at St. Martin in the Fields in an exhibition entitled Remembrance.