A potentially interesting and rare Second World War Free Polish Forces 1st Polish Armoured Division Virtuti Militari and Cross of Valour group awarded to Lieutenant Adam Jerzy Kostecki, Polish Army. As a Platoon Sergeant and Cadet Officer with the 10th Polish Armoured Cavalry Brigade he won the Cross of Valour for the fighting in North West Europe, and in April 1946 was awarded the highest possible award, the Virtuti Militari 5th Class. He later remained in Exile and settled in Great Britain, latterly in Leicester.
Group of 8: Virtuti Militari, 5th Class, unnumbered 1st type version produced for the Polish Government in Exile by Spink and Son of London, silver, gilt and enamels; Poland: Cross of Valour, bronze version produced for the Polish Government in Exile by Spink and Son of London; Poland: Active Service Medal 1939-1945, bronze version produced for the Polish Government in Exile by Spink and Son of London; Republic of Poland in Exile: Medal of the Polish Combatants' Association, 2nd Grade in silver; Republic of Poland in Exile: 1st Class Gold Medal of Merit of the National Treasury of the Republic of Poland in Exile; Great Britain: France and Germany Star; Defence Medal; War Medal 1939-1945.
Condition: Nearly Extremely Fine.
Together with the following:
Post-war Polish Government in Exile Award Card for the Virtuti Militari 5th Class, award no. 11168, awarding the decoration to PPOR (1st Class Officer Cadet) Adam Kostecki, 1st Polish Armoured Division, signed and dated in London on 20 April 1946, complete with pass photograph of the recipient in uniform.
Recipient’s group of miniature medals, mounted swing style as worn, comprising his wartime decorations, six in all: Virtuti Militari 5th Class; Cross of Valour; Active Service Medal 1939-1945; France and Germany Star; Defence Medal; War Medal 1939-1945.
First Polish Armoured Division Membership Pin.
Republic of Poland in Exile: Polish Combatants' Association 25 Year Membership Pin.
The book ‘First Polish Armoured Division 1938-1947 A History’ by Evan McGilvray and Janusz Jarzembowski
Adam Jerzy Kostecki was born on 13 September 1922 in Poland, but with the Second World War, escaped to Great Britain and as a member of the Free Polish Forces, went on to serve as a Plutonowy-Podchorazy, equivalent of Platoon Sergeant and Cadet Officer with the 10th Polish Armoured Cavalry Brigade in the 1st Polish Armoured Division during the campaign in North West Europe when he was awarded the Cross of Valour, and he went on to be awarded the Virtuti Militari 5th Class in London on 20 April 1946 when a Sub-Lieutenant He was latterly promoted to Lieutenant, and after the occupation of Poland by the Soviet Union, then chose to remain in exile in England. Kostecki appears to have been living in Rugby in Staffordshire when he applied for British naturalisation in November 1958, before being shown as a driver-salesman and living at 54 Melbourne Road in Leicester when he was naturalised as British on 24 August 1959. He was still living in Leicester when he died on 24 July 1993, having been married to Wanda Helena Kostecka. He is buried in Welford Road Cemetery in a grave that clearly has in the inscription his post-nominals, ‘V M K M’ for the awards of the Virtuti Militari and Krzyz Walecznnych’, the latter being the Cross of Valour.
After the fall of Poland and then France in 1940, many of the remaining Poles that had fought in both campaigns retreated with the British Army to the United Kingdom. Stationed in Scotland, the Polish 1st Armoured Division was formed as part of the Polish I Corps under Wladyslaw Sikorski, which guarded approximately 200 kilometres of British coast in 1940-1941. The commander of the Division, General Stanislaw Maczek, was Poland’s premier mechanized commander, and many of his subordinate officers from the unit he commanded in 1939, the 10th Mechanised Brigade, had made their way to Britain with him. They were organized on the British Armoured Division model, equipped with British uniforms, weapons and tanks. They were initially equipped and trained on Crusader tanks but in late 1943 and early 1944 these were replaced with Sherman tanks and Cromwell tanks. They then participated in war games together with the 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division.
By the end of July 1944, the 1st Polish Armoured Division had been transferred to Normandy, its final elements arriving on 1 August on Arromanches, Grayes and Courseulles sur mer where a memorial has been erected. The unit was attached to the First Canadian Army as part of the 21st Army Group. This may have been done to help in communication, as the vast majority of Poles did not speak English when they arrived in United Kingdom from 1940 onwards. The Division joined combat on 8 August during Operation Totalize. It twice suffered serious casualties as a result of "friendly fire" from Allied aircraft, but achieved a victory against the Wehrmacht in the battles for Mont Ormel, and the town of Chambois. This series of offensive and defensive operations came to be known as the Battle of Falaise, in which a large number of German Army and SS divisions were trapped in the Falaise Pocket and subsequently destroyed.
Maczek's division had the crucial role of closing the pocket at the escape route of the trapped German divisions, hence the fighting was desperate and the 2nd Polish Armoured Regiment, 24th Polish Lancers, and 10th Dragoons, supported by the 8th and 9th Infantry Battalions, took the brunt of German attacks by units attempting to break free from the pocket. Surrounded and running out of ammunition, they withstood incessant attacks from multiple fleeing panzer divisions for 48 hours until they were relieved. The total losses of the division from August 7 when it entered combat until the end of the battle of Falaise on August 22 were 446 killed, 1,501 wounded, and 150 missing, or 2,097 soldiers in total during about two weeks of fighting.
After the Allied armies broke out from Normandy, the Polish 1st Armoured Division pursued the Germans along the coast of the English Channel. It liberated, among others, the towns of Saint-Omer, Ypres, Oostnieuwkerke, Roeselare, Tielt, Ruislede, and Ghent. During Operation Pheasant a successful outflanking manoeuvre planned and performed by General Maczek allowed the liberation of the city of Breda without any civilian casualties (29 October 1944). The Division spent the winter of 1944-1945 on the south bank of the river Rhine, guarding a sector around Moerdijk, Netherlands. In early 1945, it was transferred to the province of Overijissel and started to push with the Allies along the Dutch-German border, liberating the eastern parts of the provinces of Drenthe and Groningen including the towns of Emmen, Coevorden and Stadskanaal.
In April 1945, the 1st Armoured entered Germany in the area of Emsland. On 6 May, the Division seized the Kriegsmarine naval base in Wilhelmshaven, where General Maczek accepted the capitulation of the fortress, naval base, East Frisian Fleet and more than 10 infantry divisions. There the Division ended the war and, joined by the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, undertook occupation duties until it was disbanded in 1947; it, together with the many Polish displaced persons in the Western occupied territories, formed a Polish enclave at Hagen in Germany, which was for a while known as "Maczków". The majority of its soldiers opted not to return to Poland, which fell under Soviet occupation, preferring instead to remain in exile.
