28 FLYPAST September 2018
very early morning
Rhubarb’ – an operation over
occupied territory against enemy
aircraft at low level, or surface
targets. The others were Fg Off
Mieczysław ‘Mike’ Gorzula, Plt Off
Stanisław Czarnecki and Fg Off
Bolesław ‘Mike’ Gładych.
Gorzula and Czarnecki took off
from Heston, Middlesex, and
crossed the French coast to the north
of Le Touquet. Picking up the
railway line to Étaples, they strafed a
large factory and were engaged by
intense flak. They re-crossed the
coast at Plage St Cecily where they
stirred up more anti-aircraft fire
from a radar station. The black puffs
of smoke followed them two miles
out to sea, an unnerving sight.Gładych and Nowakiewicz made
landfall further south of Le Touquet
and, due to bad visibility, managed to
miss Étaples altogether. Finding an
army base with camouflaged Nissen-
type huts and a radio station, the pair
swooped to attack, and were almost
immediately enveloped by flak.
Gładych strafed one of the machine
gun posts and Gienek joined him to
hit another, although the German
gunners continued to maintain an
impressively high rate of fire.
At some point, Gienek’s Spitfire,
Mk.V BL549, was hit and Gładych
failed to raise him on the radio. By
this stage, Gładych was having his
own problems, receiving strikes to
his cockpit hood. Heading back
out to sea, he landed at Hawkinge
at 0725hrs.
Of Gienek, there was no sign. He
was soon listed as ‘missing’.
Spitfire BL549 had received a fatal
blow, stopping the engine dead and
obliging Gienek to crash-land at highspeed. Dazed and confused, but still
in one piece, he managed to extricate
himself from his badly smashed
aircraft and scramble away.
Exhausted, he collapsed in a nearby
wood and had an overriding memory
of watching a spider spinning its web
and seeing the early morning dew
glistening on its threads.BETRAYAL
A pair of local girls found Gienek
before the Germans arrived. He was
spirited away to their farm where his
wounds were treated. They destroyed
his uniform and identity discs and
found him work in a local hospital,
enabling him to hide in plain sight.
A capable and intelligent man who
was excellent with languages, Gienekdid not arouse immediate suspicion.
After some weeks and suggestions of
a rash plan to steal a Luftwaffe
aircraft and fly it back to Britain – a
concept that Gienek never
confirmed – he was betrayed to the
Gestapo and arrested.
Without any means of
identification he was harshly
interrogated and sent to the
infamous Fresnes Prison to the
south of Paris, where further
beatings occurred. On more than
one occasion, the Germans
conducted a mock execution,
laughing as they did so and telling
Gienek: “We are going to kill
you... but not today!”
In prison his health and weight
deteriorated rapidly. He had
carbuncles on his neck and survived
partly thanks to the kindness of
others. Once, when he was at his
lowest ebb, his spirit was lifted by a
bucket of hot potatoes in their skins
left by an anonymous benefactor.Eventually satisfied that he was
neither a spy nor a resistance fighter,
Gienek was released into the custody
of the Luftwaffe. He was transferred
to a prisoner of war camp firstly at
Szubin – only a few miles from
Bydgoszcz, where his flying
adventures had begun.
Shortly afterwards he was
transferred to Stalag Luft III, at Sagan
(now Żagań, in Poland) later the
scene of the ‘Great Escape’. Taking
part in the ‘Long March’ ahead of the
advancing Soviet army, on May 2,
1945 Gienek was freed near Lübeck,
on Germany’s western Baltic coast.
With his health recovered (his
weight had more than halved from
16 to only seven stone), Gienek was
sent to the Cranwell-headquartered17 Flying Training School in January
1946, for refresher training, and was
released from the Polish Air Force in
1947 as a flight lieutenant.
He settled in England, marrying a
former ‘Miss Nottinghamshire’, Rita
Moseley. He changed his name to
Novak, becoming a British citizen,
and worked as a pig farmer and later
a potato merchant in Lincolnshire.
He died on January 5, 1998.
With an enormous appetite for life
and a character to match, Eugeniusz
‘Gienek’ Nowakiewicz deserves
recognition as one of the most
aggressive and fearless of all Polish
fighter pilots. This spirit earned him
the French Croix de Guerre and
Poland’s highest recognition for
bravery, the Virtuti Militari.The author acknowledges the
kind help of Gienek’s daughter, Rita
Oakes, in preparing this article and
for exclusive access to her father’s
photo collection.1918 2018“On more than one occasion the Germans conducted a mock
execution, laughing as they did so and telling Gienek: “We are going
to kill you... but not today!”
Right
Nowak, right, with
another pilot, during
captivity.Right centre
A formal gathering
of Polish pilots at the
war’s end. ALL
VIA AUTHOR