campaign to restore

General Maczek’s

GREAT POLISH MAP OF SCOTLAND

21 May 2008: David Cameron, Elizabeth Laudenslager and Roger Kelly discuss restoration

General Stanisław Maczek (March 31, 1892 – December 11, 1994) was the most accomplished Polish tank commander of the Second World War. A veteran of the First World War. the Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Bolshevik Wars, he commanded Poland's only major armoured formation during the September 1939 campaign, led a Polish armoured formation in France in 1940, and was commander of the famous First Polish Armoured Division, and later of the First Polish Army Corps under Allied Command in 1942–1945. Of Croatian extraction, Stanisław Władysław Maczek was born in Lwów in 1892 in Austro-Hungarian Galicia. Graduating from grammar school at Drohobycz he attended the philosophy faculty of Lwów University where he studied Polish literature and language. After the outbreak of the Great War, Maczek interrupted his studies hoping to join Piłsudski's Polish Legions, but instead was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army. Assigned to the Italian front, he rose to become the only Polish battalion commander in Austria-Hungary's Alpine regiments. At the war’s end he joined the Polish Army and took part in its later Ukranian and Bolshevik campaigns. His experience in speedy movement and rapid response led -after military college, colonelship and a series of infantry commands- to his taking charge of Poland’s first fully motorised formation during the 1938 Munich crisis.

When Poland was attacked in force in 1939 Maczek led the only Polish units not to lose a single battle. His forces made a dogged defence under Blitzkreig attack but these efforts became eclipsed when Russia invaded from the rear. Appreciated by his superiors and respected by enemy commanders, Maczek was loved by his soldiers, who called him “Baca”, a Galician name for a shepherd like the Scots gaelic “Buachaille”. Ordered to take his brigade over the Hungarian border, he made his way to lead some of the Polish forces in France at the end of 1939, but French commanders left unopened Maczek’s detailed reports on the Blitzkreig tactics they should prepare for. After the fall of France Maczek and many of his men made their way through Africa and Portugal to London, and formed the nucleus of a Polish armoured unit based in Scotland for four years. Trained at Blairgowrie and equipped with the latest Churchill and Sherman tanks, the Poles took up the defence of the Scottish shoreline between Montrose and Dundee. In July 1944 the division transferred to Normandy, attached to the First Canadian Army, and contributed decisively in the Battle of Falaise. General Maczek's Division continued to spearhead the Allied drive across the battlefields of France, Belgium, Netherlands, and finally Germany, where it captured the port of Wilhelmshaven and accepted surrender of the garrison and 200 navy ships. After Germany capitulated, General Maczek went on to become commanding officer of all Polish forces in the United Kingdom until their demobilization in 1947.

General Maczek’s Great Polish Map of Scotland stands in the grounds of Barony Castle, Eddleston, once the home of the Murrays of Elibank, later the Black Barony Hotel. Years after the war, the hotel came into the hands of a member of the Polish community who had been billeted there in wartime. He was a great friend of the General, and gave the Maczeks the use of a suite in the hotel.

General Maczek had been shown an impressive outdoor map of land and water in the Netherlands demonstrating the working of the waterways which had been an obstacle to the Polish forces progress in 1944. He remembered this during his long years of exile in Scotland after he was deprived of Polish citizenship by the postwar Stalinist regime. These were not easy times for the General and those he had led. They were not welcome by the government at home in Poland. Here in Britain the official world had no further need of them either. No Allied government would offer a pension. It was a tragic irony for those who had given so much. But people thankfully, in Breda and in Scotland at least, continued to acknowledge their contribution.

Set in the open air in the Peeeblesshire landscape at Eddleston, General Maczek and his companions conceived The Great Polish Map of Scotland as a permanent three-dimensional reminder of Scotland’s hospitality to his compatriots. The coastline and relief of Scotland were laid out precisely by Kazimierz Trafas, a young Polish student geographer-planner from the Jagiellonian University at Cracow. Engineering infrastructure was put in place to surround it with a sea of water, and some of the main rivers were even arranged to flow from headwaters in the mountains.

General Maczek died in 1994 aged 102 and is buried with comrades at Breda in the Netherlands. Now, after long years of dereliction, and as a first step towards what we hope can become a broadly based effort for restoration, the Great Map has recently been drained and cleared of undergrowth by Barony Castle’s current owners, De Vere Venues.

campaign to restore General Maczek’s

GREAT POLISH MAP OF SCOTLAND

Roger Kelly, David Cameron and Elizabeth Laudenslager acknowledge the help of Steven Sweeny, Deputy General Manager, Barony Castle on 21 May 2008

The project was the subject of a fuller display in the Cowan Institute, Penicuik Town Hall on Saturday 19 July 2008 which will be repeated on Saturday 9 August 10am-1.45pm

The Great Map features in the Scottish Planner of June 2008 and in the forthcoming edition of Cairt –newsletter of the Scottish Maps Forum.

The Polish Chamber Singers Affabre Concinui will visit the Great Map after performing in Edinburgh ¯

The Murrays of Elibank were also associated with Thomas Adams, the Carlops farmer who became regional planner of New York.

www.place.makers.org.uk

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Other displays in the COWAN INSTITUTE PENICUIK

PENICUIK ARTS FESTIVAL 2008

GENERAL MACZEK’S GREAT MAP

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