Andrzej Kowerski - Life

Life

During the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Lieutenant Kowerski fought gallantly as a member of Poland's 10th Motorized Cavalry Brigade, commanded by Col. Stanisław Maczek, winning his country's highest military decoration, the Virtuti Militari.

When Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland on September 17, forcing Poland's government to evacuate south into Romania, Kowerski and his "Black Brigade" (so called after their black leather jackets) evacuated to neighboring Hungary. There he busied himself covertly exfiltrating interned Polish, and other Allied, military personnel out of Hungary.

When Kowerski subsequently worked for British Intelligence and the Special Operations Executive, he was given the cover name "Andrew Kennedy." Having lost part of a leg in a prewar hunting accident, he became the first disabled man to complete SOE's parachute training. (His lover, Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, was the first woman to pass the same course.)

Read more about this topic:  Andrzej Kowerski

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    “Modern equalitarian societies ... whether democratic or authoritarian in their political forms, always base themselves on the claim that they are making life happier.... Happiness thus becomes the chief political issue—in a sense, the only political issue—and for that reason it can never be treated as an issue at all.”
    —Robert Warshow (1917–1955)

    “Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment.... The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium.”
    —Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

    “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
    —Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)