Język Polski
English
God, Honour, Fatherland: a Banner-Relic of the Polish Air Force (Part 2)
Abstract
The second part of this text is devoted to the remarkable story of the banner of Polish airmen, which was made secretly in the occupied Poland and smuggled by land and then by air from Vilnius to London via Kaunas, Berlin, and Stockholm. Presented to airmen on 16 July 1941 in Swinderby by the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces in Exile, General Władysław Sikorski, it was handed over to successive Polish squadrons every three months until the end of the World War II. It was not until 3 September 1992 that it could be returned to the free Republic of Poland on board the presidential plane, welcomed in Warsaw by President Lech Wałęsa. The moment it landed on Polish soil, the airmen's banner was for the second time in Polish history the first military banner carrying the motto “God, Honour, Homeland”, predating its formal use on the banners of the Polish Armed Forces introduced by the Act of 19 February 1993.
Keywords:
God Honour Homeland, banner of the Polish Air Force, Jan Hryniewicz, Władysław SikorskiDetails
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
