The Man with Three Names

When does any war end? Is it simply when the fighting stops? Or is it perhaps when a family or a community comes to terms with loss…or when the rebuilding process is finally complete…or maybe when a veteran finally comes to terms with physical or mental handicap? Any of these processes can take years - sometimes decades - sometimes the damage is permanent and life-changing. This book describes the transformative and damaging effects of the Second World War on the author's Polish father who was only a 12-year-old boy in Warsaw when the bombs started to fall on 01 September 1939. For the next 5 years - his adolescent years - he was exposed to the ever-increasing horrors of the Occupation, joining the Resistance and ultimately fighting in the ill-fated Warsaw Uprising in 1944 during which he was badly wounded. After the war, he found himself in a Polish hospital in the UK, exhausted by his wounds and by his years in the Resistance. All he had left was hope. But this hope was finally crushed by the Western Allied leaders who secretly betrayed Poland, agreeing to leave the country occupied by the Soviet Union and by doing so, leaving over 200,000 Polish soldiers with no home to safely return to. For many families, this situation turned the stresses of war directly into the post-traumatic stresses of the post-war decades. This unthinkable outcome of the war for Poland became a wound that for many soldiers, like the author's father, simply could not heal.